Topics Language

Question I would like to take liberty on discussing an issue which is taxing my mind for the last many decades, which is "Vulgarism and Other Errors of Speech." I am proud to say that I have been brought up by my moralist father on universal ethics and moral grounds without any streak of religious thought or teaching. His education and moral guidance inculcated in me not to speak a single vulgar word ever in my life. I have never spoken a vulgar or indecent word from the day I learned to speak up till today. But it has been bothering me, why people use vulgar and indecent words in their speech when it has no pragmatic role. It is all over the world in every culture and in every society. Highly educated people have a vulgar explitive or a 'F' and 'S' word needlessly and habitually used in speech which they will spit out whether sitting in the drawing rooms or in the company of family members. I was almost stunned when the Vice President excitedly said to President Obama that this 'Fucking Bill of Health is finally approved.' I would welcome your opinions and views on this subject that, what is the psychology or mentality behind this linguistic phenomenon that people use vulgar language unnecessarily. There are no books or any article in my knowledge on this subject and if some one knows any reference, article, book and etc., please let me know. Mirza

Accepted:
July 3, 2010

Comments

Very interesting! Your specific interest seems to be vulgarity as opposed to blasphemy (e.g. using 'God' or 'Jesus' in cursing) or insults in general. I am not acquainted with much philosophical work on vulgarity per se, but there is some literature on politeness and respect that may be relevant. Some have argued that politeness is a virtue itself (what Hobbes called small morals) while others have contended that politeness is a reflection of greater virtues (the shadow of great virtues, to use G.K. Chesterton's expression). I suggest that vulgarity may be used for a host of reasons: to insure familiarity with someone, to use as an insult, to simply get attention, and so on. There was an important Supreme Court case in the USA --I believe it was Cohen versus California-- in which it was argued that a person had a right to wear a shirt that had the words "Fuck the Draft" on it because only using the explicative was the person able to fully express his convictions and thus it was protected under our first ammendment. You have chosen an interesting path in refusing to use vulgarity, but you might consider two other matters: first, in an emergency such as an outbreak of fire in a building, don't you think more people would respond straight away if a person shouted out "There is a Fu*king Fire in the F***ing building! Get the F*** out of here!" rather than if someone left out the F word? Second, there is another way to drain the vulgarity out of the F and S word and that is by over-use. Some people use the terms so much that they seems as pointless as repeating "um" or using the word "like" to punctuate your sentences