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Since I was very young and my mother threatened to wash my mouth out with soap, I have wondered how a word can be dirty. Words that we hear every day in normal conversation are banned from radio and TV as though they are more than mere words. Mind you, I understand the power of words to move emotions, spread ideas and stimulate thought. But why are we so puritanical regarding certain words? We refer on radio and TV to the "F word", what is the difference between referring to the word in such a way that everyone understands the reference and just saying it? Why is the most common word said following an accident "unsayable" in a public forum? What is this power ascribed to words that makes some of them unpronounceable in certain forums? I'm afraid I can't see any words as "dirty". I certainly see certain actions as obscene, but war, murder, rape nor mutilation are not banned words.
I think I agree with you. I'm not entirely sure. Dirty or not, it is very possible for words to refer to the same thing, communicate different shades of approval, and produce different impact on the hearer. Just check any thesaurus: baby; child; offspring; young; heir; descendant; issue; brood; spawn. So it is not strange that some words are considered "dirty" while other words referring to the same thing are not: excrement, stool, shit, dung, manure, waste, poo.
Referring to "the F word" is much more clinical than actually uttering fuck. It signals that you are going to discuss the word or its meaning with some detachment, rather than to use it with its full force.
Having said that, circumscribing these words, wrangling them up, and lynching them or their users is, in my opinion, a fool's errand.
I've thought a lot about this topic. I always wondered how a newspaper could write f--k and that was OK, but writing out the whole word made it "not family publication" or some such thing.
I do think as a society we tend to arrive at an understanding when there are many words that have similar meanings. It's fairly universally understood that "we had sexual intercourse" is clinical, "we made love" is a nice euphemism, and "we f---ed" is crass, rude or offensive. In many cases, the F word implies violence or anger, or some sense of one person having the power, while "we made love" doesn't seem to imply any of those things. If you were writing a story, your choice of phrase to describe a sex scene would matter greatly.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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