Lillian M.R. Jacks
Ms Maggert
English III 5th hour
7 December 2016
The Acts of profanity
Cursing, swearing, blasphemy, expletives are all words to describe the four letter ones. Four letter expletives are commonplace now. Our government system doesn't quite think that with how the Supreme Court views “Fighting Words” or as the Supreme Court ruled them “words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace” wrote Scott Felsenthal’s in his article “Profanity and The First Amendment”. Curse words are not protected very well which causes huge controversy and confusion. Curse words can even reduce pain levels. Really saying s*** can relieve pain. Cursing is also an indicator that you are actually smart, not like that old myth cursing is an
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If a person curses it is only because they have nothing really important to say. A person's words can define a person but words are words especially curse words. A curse word is just another word an expletive to use like “ow” and “yay!” “Cursing can indicate that you have an extensive knowledge of words” as stated in the article “Science Proves That Swearing Makes you #!$%ing Smarter” by Paul Seaburn. Marist College and Massachusetts College of liberal arts did a study to prove that curse words are just typical words. In the study the patients had to list as many curse words as they could then as many animal words as they could. There were more curse words listed than animal words but each patient had a sufficient number of animal names. The study also found that the people who curse did know the difference between a cuss word and appropriate words. “A voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities rather than a cover for deficiencies” (Seaburn). So the statement an unintelligent person has nothing good to say is a total misconception because smart people curse
The first amendment is being abused by more people now than ever before. People like to shout, “First Amendment” when they find themselves in a controversial situation because of certain things they wrote or spoke about. People are being less responsible for their actions and are blaming the constitution for their slip-ups. In “Free-Speech Follies” by Stanley Fish, Fish addresses the First Amendment issue. Fish claims that people use the First Amendment to try to get themselves out of trouble or criticism and that they need to start being responsible for their actions and need to start having a sense of judgment.
“It was a pleasure to burn,”(3) that was the idea Ray Bradbury was trying to get across in the novel Fahrenheit 451. This novel takes place in the future, where governments only law is to burn books. In this novel, you will see how Bradbury explains the life of Guy Montag, a fireman who burns houses for a living. However one day he burns a house with a woman in who is willing to die for her books, this made Montag have the urge to steal a book. The stealing of the book is what lead him to believe society is lead by censorship. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury shows us a world in the future, in which free thought is controlled through censorship, which leads to an ignorant, insensitive, and non independent society.
In Garrett Epps's article "Free Speech Isn't Free," he discusses the United States law involving freedom of speech. One of the major points addressed is that it's not necessarily free because it has the ability to harm other people emotionally. Also, the way it's done in America isn't the only way to go about it. Epps introduces the idea of the law being in place so that people will have verbal disputes instead of immediately resorting to physical violence. Epps begins his personal argument with the insinuation he was going to evaluate both the positive and negative aspects of free speech equally. However, he ultimately uses the all of the data provided to present free speech as a trivial tool used the American public. It allows them to emotionally
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
Stupid, retarded, crazy, insane; throughout time, these words are used to explain the behaviors of the mentally ill. These are just words, right? Actually, these words can have hurtful connotations. Since the first individual with a mental illness walked this earth until now, hurtful labels have been assigned to them. But society does not stop with just words, there are also unfavorable mannerisms used to explain visually, stupid, retarded, crazy, or insane. These descriptive words and mannerisms used in jest amongst friends can cause distress to anyone who bears witnesses to include an individual who is intellectually disabled or mentally fragile. If we look at it from the perspective of the intellectually disabled, they have been
are simply meaningless words meant to damage, humiliate and degrade certain groups of people. To prove those words worthless, the same groups of people that those hate words
Freedom of speech was a big topic spoken about in the 1950’s and even today. Schools in the 1950’s had to recite a specific prayer every morning in school not like today. Students had to recite the “twenty two word regents prayer”. The Engel Vs Vitale case has to do with separation of church and state, meaning that there should be a separation between peoples views on religious freedom and the government. In the first amendment, Thomas Jefferson introduced this law and rule during the colonies but then this later evolved into the United States, where into the 1950’s became a huge debate on who was right and who was wrong. The Supreme Court case Engel v. Vitale expanded the rights of Americans because the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Stephen Engel and the families of the students against prayer in schooling; because of this decision, students should be able to absent themselves from prayer in school.
People even today use crude language,like the commonly used word,”Nigger” (20 Steinbeck). This word is used in pop culture frequently and is a common word in some communities. Another example would be when,”Son-of-a-bitch”was stated (27 Steinbeck). This is a recurring word used in western language that people use when they are angry or mad at someone. This is already language teens see and hear in America, so why is vulgar language so bad when it’s in writing?
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...
Swearing has the ability to get someone in a whole load of trouble at the dinner table with their mother but could also be their choice of words when they accidently stub their toe on the coffee table in the living room. Natalie Angier discusses this controversial topic of words that shouldn’t be said in her article feature in The New York Times, “Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore”. Provoked by a recently proposed bill to increase fines for using swear words on television, Angier analyzes not only the impact of swearing, but also where the desire to speak obscene words comes from. She references many credible studies and sources as she unfolds her argument. She uses a diverse slew of studies, experiments, and famous pieces of literature and
Ray Bradbury criticizes the censorship of the early 1950's by displaying these same themes in a futuristic dystopia novel called Fahrenheit 451. In the early 1950's Ray Bradbury writes this novel as an extended version of "The Fireman", a short story which first appears in Galaxy magazine. He tries to show the readers how terrible censorship and mindless conformity is by writing about this in his novel.
The main component of the high school curriculum is to prepare students for college and ultimately the ‘real world’. We are supposed to engage them in critical thought, not only to increase their ability in cognitive thinking, but also to help them form their own opinions, and to help them be able to express those opinions.
A third example is a waitress having a bad day, and taking it out on the customers the child in the booth next to the customers and the waitress is thinking that this is a proper way to communicate. All of these examples are using improper language for children to hear (Shoeder 72). Parents are then expected to explain and make excuses for the vocabulary being used by others. Profanity has become uncontrollable and has had a great role in the moral decay of our society.
Freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental right guaranteed by Indian Constitution to all of its citizens. “Right to freedom of speech and expression” is not an absolute right. It is subject to imposition of reasonable restriction as there is a correlative duty not to interfere with the liberty of other citizens. Indian Constitution is the ultimate source of law and from it all the rights emanate. Its place is higher than legislation because the validity of the latter is determined with reference to the former. Constitution is the product of national consensus and it is the fundamental law of the country. Each is entitled to dignity of person and of reputation. Nobody has a right to disintegrate others right to person or reputation. The legislature in its wisdom has not thought it appropriate to abolish criminality of defamation in
In the article, "You Can't Say That," the author Diane Ravitch talks about how certain words are deleted from books or not shown in films because they could offend certain groups. In the article, Ravitch argues that although it may seem like we live in a world where anything goes, the truth is, that's not true. Diane does research and gathers a list of more than five hundred words that regularly get deleted from textbooks and tests. Some of the words include cowboy, brotherhood, yacht, and primitive. Personally I believe that the censoring of words these days is somewhat extreme. I understand that certain groups could be offended by such words but why should everyone else not get the original words the author is trying to write because of that.