Expletive Deleted By Ruth Wajnryb

Seven dirty words--shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. A group of words that roll off your tongue a little better every time they are spoken. We can thank George Carlin’s monologue “Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television” for this catchy assortment of swear words that can be categorized under foul language. There are many different ways to classify the foul language and swearing used by majority of American society today. The novel Expletive Deleted: a good look at bad language, written by Ruth Wajnryb, takes a big step for a linguist to dive deeper into investigating the subject of swearing. Over the last few decades, there has been a lack of research dedicated to the topic. This is probably due to swearing

In order to effectively communicate with those around us it’s important to understand the context of a given situation. We can usually recognize these connections right off the bat and when it comes to cathartic swearing this is especially so. These expletives are very straightforward and are frequently referred to as the ‘stub-your-toe’ class of swearing because with yelling, “FUCK!”, you unleash a healthy amount of pent-up emotion or anger that may have even been causing some stress. The only issue seen with this variety of swearing is the commonness in which it occurs. Toddlers and small children will often pick up the words and phrases that are being said around them. As Wajnryb states in chapter 3, “The fact is that kids swear because they copy the modeled behaviors around them, usually in the home. You stub a toe, you swear. Your child overhears and learns how to react in similar circumstances. It doesn’t matter what the phrase is, it becomes the language associated with the emotion of anger or frustration” (pg. 89). The most interesting thing about this is that when the child first repeats a

In both of these categories of swearing, our emotions have a large role in what we say and what we do. Although cathartic swearing can emit a quick outburst of negative emotion, abusive swearing takes it a bit further. Wajnryb writes, “An abusive assault can achieve two ends for the swearer, a cathartic release as well as a venting of spleen on a chosen target” (pg. 34). The crucial difference between the two is that abusive swearing has aim at a victim compared to yelling at the inanimate object you ran into. Going back to bringing gender into play, linguists have found that the inequality between the genders goes further than who should and should not be swearing, but extends into the phrases used in abusive swearing. “There’s a limited range of words that women can use in swearing at a male, and most of them---make statements about the target’s irritating personality or, at worst, absence of moral fiber,” says Wajnryb (pg. 136). But this isn’t the case when it comes to words men can use to swear at women or even each other. If you take women out of the exchange completely and have a man directing an abusive swear at another man, women somehow are still involved, “‘Son of a bitch’ and ‘motherfucker’ both offer circuitously female pathways toward verbal violence. Why, one wonders, is it not offensive to curse a man via his father or