(a) Cursing The intent of cursing is to invoke harm on another person through the use of certain words or phrases. These words are imbued with power granted to them mainly through religious or social demarcation. A religious curse may sound something like: damn you, goddamn you, damn your hide, to hell with you. Cursing also can be non-religious but still wish harm to the target person, as in: eat shit and die, I hope you break your neck, you should rot in jail for that crime.
(b) Profanity Profanity is based on it religious distinction. An example of profanity would be a word of phrase which seeks not to denigrate God, religion or holy affairs but would be based more on ignorance of or indifference to these matters. These might be something
While profanity is related to the secular or indifferent (to religion), blasphemy aims directly at the church. These expressions are particularly offensive to the very devout,but may be humorous to the non-believer: Screw the Pipe!, shit on what it says in the Bible!, the church can stick their new fund drive!
(d) Taboo A taboo operates to suppress or inhibit certain behavior, thoughts, or in this case, speech. Different cultures, in order to preserve social order, use taboos to control individuals within the group. The function of the taboo is to prohibit the behavior of a speaker and preserve social cohesion. Example of taboo such the words for body part (dick), body processes (piss) or sex (screw).
(e) Obscenity Obscenity as used here is a legal term. The function of obscenity laws is to protect listeners. In America English obscenities are pointedly sexual in nature. They do not necessarily have to be so; for example, it could be decided that words that depict physical violence (kill or murder) are more dangerous than sexual term. Obscene words are considered the most offensive and are rarely, if ever, used in public media. Words that gain universal restriction would be: fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker, cunt, or
In the modern society, millions of people realize that several offensive words with insulting taboo meanings heavily disturb their daily lives and break some special groups of people’s respect to push them to feel like outsiders of the whole society. As a result, more and more people join some underway movements to eliminate the use of these offensive words in people’s everyday speech and writing. However, these offensive words themselves are not the culprit, the bad meanings people attach are the problems and some other functions of the words are useful in the society. Christopher M. Fairman the author of “ Saying It Is Hurtful, Banning It Is Worse” also argues that although
In 1978 a radio station owned by Pacifica Foundation Broadcasting out of New York City was doing a program on contemporary attitudes toward the use of language. This broadcast took place on a mid-afternoon weekday. Immediately before the broadcast the station announced a disclaimer telling listeners that the program would include "sensitive language which might be regarded as offensive to some."(Gunther, 1991) Pacifica believed that this was enough warning to give people who would be offended, but placing a warning in front of something is like placing chocolate cake in front of a fat guy. Humans thirst for the unknown, and at this time, sexual perversion was a big unknown.
There were countless uses of the word fuck and motherfucker. Also, there were instances of moderate to mild language such as “dickhead”, “jerking me off”, and “pricks”. Finally, some of the language used is sexual/biological such as "go fuck yourself", "motherfucker", and “butt-fucked.” (I apologize for typing the language used here, but I felt it helped to answer the question.)
After discussing the use of swear words amongst Tourette’s patients she begins to discuss the physiological aspects of swearing. She speaks on “higher order linguistic circuits are tapped, to contrive the content of curse. The brain’s impulse control center struggles to short-circuit the collusion between limbic-system urge and the neocortical craft, and it may succeed for a time.” (772). While this is interesting to look at the chemical and physiological processes carried out by the human brain in the urge to swear she does not finish she thought process. She ineffectively ends the article with “Yet the urge still mounts, until at last the speech pathways fire, the verboten is spoken and archaic and refined brains alike must shoulder the blame.” (772). This is in no way a conclusion to the article and is likely to leave the readers with an uneasy feeling of confusion.
Freedom of speech is one of the most necessary and most commonly exercised rights allowed to the people of the United States. It is also, sadly, one of the most abused. I believe strongly that more should be done to stop our citizens from bringing filthy language into our streets and businesses. I believe this for 3 reasons: 1.) Works of media or art are diminished by the use of profanity. 2.) Children exposed to profanity in a public setting may come to believe that profanity is an acceptable form of language, rather than the gruff set of exclamations and insults that they are. 3.) It makes the American people appear less intelligent and, to be put simply, crude and uncivilized.
...es not turn our society toward violence. There are other possible solutions though, like making a list of words that are indecent, meaning offensive to community standards. This would illiminate harmful curse words that are derogatory.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens.
The U.S. Supreme Court has defined “fighting words” as words "which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” and are words that are "likely to cause an average addressee to fight." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572
One example is the use of the word “fuck”. In my house hold growing up I attempted to use this work once when I dropped a plate. It was the angriest my father has ever been at me. This word is often considered the worst of the curse words in modern English. This simple utterance has been in use since the early 16th century. Fuck often evokes strong emotion and response, considered one of the seven dirty words that can’t be said on American broadcast
One example is explained when Wright said “Whut yuh tryin’ t’ do, nigger, git smart?” (Wright 4) This is verbal abuse because the word “nigger” is what whites would call blacks in a bad way. No one should call anyone something they don’t want to be called. “Nigger” is a word that was used towards blacks when white people would feel disrespected by black people. This was a word used to make black people feel like they are lower than white people, like slaves; even though some were. Even though “nigger” is a word that is still used today, it is not as offensive as it was back then. When black people use this word among themselves, it’s not really a problem, but if a white person calls a black person ‘nigger’ it brings some hostility. Another example explained in Wright’s “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” is when he said “You black son-of-a-bitch! You call me Pease, then!” (Wright 6). This is verbal abuse because using profanity towards a person is verbal abuse, especially toward a child. Calling someone that word could make a person feel so low in a way. This could make a person feel low in a way where it’s double-consciousness (Dubois). Double-consciousness is when you feel some type of way about yourself and it could be different in the eyes of others. Meaning you might think you’re smart, while others think you’re dumb. When you call someone a name, like “son-of-a-bitch” could make you change
Banning a book on the basis of profanity is merely a superficial reason of those who wish to limit beliefs that do not coincide with their own. By excluding a novel from a high school curriculum in order to shelter students from profanity, is an attempt to do the impossible. Profanity is found everywhere. According to TV Guide, "Profanity is uttered once every six minutes on American primetime television...
There are still people that go to church and don't cuss and cares about there family vale and try to keep that away from their kids as long as they can.they want the censor stuff for there kids.Cursing
For this assignment, I chose to abstain from the use of profanity. I chose to give up profanity because it is something that I know will be difficult for me. I also chose this particular activity to give up because I associate my use of profanity with a very hard time in my life. Since that time, I have worked very diligently to be a better person and to erase the aspects of the person that I used to be. By giving up the use of profanity, I will be able to start erasing another aspect of that person that I did not like very much. One reason why abstaining from the use of profanity will be so difficult for me is because of how long I have been using profanity. I started using profanity at a fairly young age, probably 5th or 6th grade, and since then I use profanity every day, multiple times a day. I think I started using profanity because in the 6th grade my mother had a stroke and during that time I felt like no one was listening to me. My family was very wrapped up in my mom’s care and I felt like I was being forgotten about. I remember one day in class I used profanity in front of the whole class and my teacher stopped what she was doing and addressed my profanity use in front of everyone. At that moment, I realized that by using profanity I could get attention. In the past, I have tried to abstain from profanity; however, it has never lasted very long. I remember one time I was able to abstain from profanity for about a week. However, once I started using profanity again, I realized that trying to stop was a lost cause.
Profanity in pop music has become a major burden on today’s society and is negatively affecting the behavior of the listeners. It does not have a positive message and it tells the listener that doing the wrong ok. It contradicts what the Bible says.
There are not many taboo words or expressions that offend me, however, I realized that there is a word that I do not like saying and, for some reason, cringe when I hear others say the word. Some people have argued with me that it is not a swear word because it is a medical term, but penis is not a word that I would want children casually throwing around, and therefore I consider it a taboo word. Jay claims that clinical terms seem too formal and do not evoke deeper emotional reactions that slang and obscenity do (2003); however, I argue that we find other ways of letting kids express that they need to use the bathroom without using the medical term, including pee pee or wee wee, and therefore it has some taboo quality to it. This word falls under either the category of taboo word “bodily effluvia/organs” or “sexuality” (Hutchins, 2015). The categories are fuzzy, and in this case, I find that I am more repulsed by a word that