A Pallette of Profanity for My Palate

Ciao! Come sta? Sto molto bene.*

Some of you may have noticed that two of my recent posts have dealt with taboo words. In one of those threads, ildi mentioned Rick Steve, a travel writer and tour guide whose image is that of, as she put it, “a clean-cut middle-class American.”

As it happens, the deacon and I will be traveling to Italy this spring (a factoid that I mentioned here). In preparation for our trip, the deacon gave me Rick Steve’s guides to Venice and Rome as Christmas gifts. This past weekend, I ordered three Italian phrase books from Amazon, two of which arrived yesterday. One of these was Rick Steve’s Italian Phrase Book and Dictionary. Eager to start learning some rudimentary Italian (it may be useful to know, at the very least, how to ask where the bathroom is (Dov’e la toilette? – if you must know)), I perused both books last night. I’m sorry to report that I have not yet committed them to memory. Give me a few weeks and I’ll get back to you on that (ha! I wish!).

As I neared the end of Rick Steve’s book, I was amazed and, I must confess, delighted, to come across this entry:

As musical as these words and phrases sound as they roll off the tongue, I still like the four-letter Anglo-Saxon words to which I am accustomed. For example, “dannazione” is, on my tongue, much more cumbersome than “damn it!” And “vaffanculo” sounds too pleasant to mean “fuck you.” Nor do I think I’ll ever get the hang of saying “merda” when a simple “shit” will suffice. I will admit, though, that “balle” is growing on me, and may soon be nearly as useful a word to me as “bullshit” is. There’s also a strong possibility that “sei uno stronzo” may become a handy substitute for “you are an asshole.” Who knows? Even though I’ve forgotten most of my high school Spanish, I may yet end up getting the hang of this foreign language stuff. In the meantime, I’d better hit the books and learn some words that are more suitable for mixed company.

Uno, due, tre, quattro…

– the chaplain

* Hi. How are you? I am very well.

 

A Nation of Juveniles

Yesterday afternoon, during the TV broadcast of an Olympic hockey game (the Swiss men’s team beat the Norwegian men’s team 5-4 in overtime), a sportscaster told a bizarre story. Actually, the story wasn’t bizarre at all – it was entirely believable in the brutal world of hockey; what was bizarre was the way he told the story, which hovered somewhere between infantile and juvenile. This is what happened.

The TV camera zoomed to a closeup of a Norwegian player wiping blood from his forehead; his head had met the edge of another player’s hockey stick and suffered the predictable – in fact, familiar – consequence of such an encounter. As viewers and sportcasters watched the player’s blood transfer from his head to his handheld towel, a sportscaster reported another injury this same player had suffered in a previous season:

He took a stick to a very rough spot for a male, if you know what I mean. He missed a lot of games because of that injury, and doctors thought, for a while, that they might have to cut away some parts of that rough spot, if you know what I mean.

I shook my head in wonder at the juvenile idiocy of this commentary. The player’s “rough spot” has a name – either his penis or his testicles. I apologize for my lack of specificity, dear readers, but that’s the best I can do at parsing exactly what the commentator was talking about. I can’t help wondering whether talking about this injury, even in such a vague, circuitous fashion, made him blush profusely. What kind of juvenile, puritanical nation are we when adults can’t discuss body parts without resorting to nonsensical euphemisms? Why is it so difficult for so many of us to identify penises, vaginas, breasts, or testicles, as easily as we identify arms, legs, toes and the like? I understand, and expect, that broadcasters will not generally use common terminology (which is sometimes considered to be – and sometimes is, in fact – crude) when discussing medical issues and anatomy. But, can’t they please call body parts by their proper, grown up names? Doing anything less than that makes them sound like juveniles. Moreover, listening to such linguistic nonsense makes the rest of us appear to be similarly juvenile. Worst of all, accepting this nonsense in public discourse makes it easy for all of us to think, as well as speak, like juveniles. We really need to grow up and start talking – and thinking – like adults.

– the chaplain

 

FUCK

Let me say, right from the start, that this post probably is not about what you think it’s about. Don’t blame me. Blame Christopher Fairman, the author of the book under discussion here.  Let me also say that, if you take a quick look at the title of Fairman’s book (and miss, overlook or ignore the subtitle), you may be dismayed to discover that his book is not about what you might have thought it would be about either. Nevertheless, if you care at all about freedom of speech and ideas, this is a book you probably should read.

In this provocatively titled book, Fairman discusses the word “fuck” in great detail. He discusses the power of the word, much of which derives from its status as a taboo word and the object of word fetish. He discusses the word’s etymology, linguistic and psycholinguistic contexts, its historical uses as a referent to sex and in other ways (as political speech, for example), and its inconsistent judicial status in American jurisprudence. His primary purpose in doing this is to encourage all who care about freedom of thought and speech to protect the use of all language in the formulation and transmission of ideas. Fairman says,

Whether you shout it in the street or whisper it in the bedroom, say it deliberately as a political protest or accidentally let it slip out, make a single fleeting reference or sing an expletive-laden rant, intend to be funny or downright foul, if you say “fuck,” someone wants to silence you. We shouldn’t passively watch as tiny coalitions with a webpage and a word fetish take some of our words away. When it’s the government trying to cleanse your language, you should really worry. We shouldn’t tolerate any part of our representative government mucking around in our words….

At issue isn’t just protection for some entertainer’s potty mouth. Words are ideas. If the government can control the words we say, it can also control what we think. Ultimately, my concern is for the preservation of our most basic liberty – a freedom of the mind (p.10).

Fairman’s historical discussion of “fuck” begins with the observation that the word has systematically been excluded from most English dictionaries. He calls this “a deliberate attempt to cleanse the language of this word” (p.37). He also alerts readers that some of the urban legends about the origin of the word as an acronym (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Fornication Under Consent of the King) are false, and explains why this is so. Notwithstanding concerted attempts to wipe the word “fuck” clean out of the English language, the word has been resilient. He explains the reasons for this in a chapter devoted to linguistic and psycholinguistic analyses of the word. One reason for its longevity is its ability to be used in many ways – as a verb (in this case, often with a sexual meaning), an adverb or adjective (these uses are not usually sexual), as a noun (this could be a sexual meaning, but often is not), or simply as an interjection.

One of the evidences of the power of taboo, and the power of fuck as the object of both taboo and fetish, is the use of euphemisms (f-word, f*ck, etc.) in place of the word itself, a practice that Fairman derides as “silly” (p.57). “Fuck” as the object of taboo is in play when its use is avoided (by some) and when its use is deliberately intended (by others) to shock and/or offend; “fuck” as the object of fetish is in play when people have extremely negative emotional reactions to the term and seek to prohibit its use in all circumstances (pp. 59-60). Fairman discusses examples of the fuck taboos and fetishes in TV, music, workplaces, classrooms and even courtrooms.

Since Fairman is a lawyer and professor of law, it’s not surprising that much of his book deals with legal cases surrounding various uses of the word “fuck.” The body of work devoted to legal parsings of this humble little word is quite large, varied and interesting. Not surprisingly, given the seemingly schizophrenic character of American society, the legal status of the word “fuck” is inconsistent, and, consequently, unclear. Sometimes it’s obscenity, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s protected speech, sometimes it’s not. Fairman contends that this state of uncertainty is not healthy for civic discourse. He bluntly concludes,

The future of fuck is clear. If we continue to allow the state to pick and choose the words we can use and the context in which we can use them, freedom is at stake…. Once that word is extinguished, gone are its literally hundreds of uses, hence hundreds of ideas…. Now you might think I’m an alarmist and that the First Amendment stands to prevent precisely what I foreshadow. But before you discount my fears, please remember: Fuck is being fucked in the shadow of the First Amendment. Neither a Commission nor a court nor a cop should have power over our ideas. To ensure freedom of the mind, fuck must be set free (p. 191).

Fairman’s book is well-written, easily grasped and a worthwhile read for anyone with any interest at all in freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, the book’s provocative title was chosen deliberately, precisely because the word “fuck” is tremendously evocative and powerful. It was also chosen deliberately because it is a marginalized (perhaps even endangered) word. When words are marginalized and endangered, the marginalization and endangerment of ideas is not far behind. Freethinkers and freedom lovers can never, in good conscience, allow the intolerance, marginalization and extinction of words and ideas to go unchallenged. I, for one, am indebted to Christopher Fairman for speaking out for my right to fuck.

– the chaplain