Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

>
> I'd say "damn < shit < bloody < fuck < cunt". I'm assuming (except in
> the case of "cunt") that the target of the swearing is an inanimate
> object and not another person, since this is usually the case.
>
Despite your statement to the contrary, in the informal dialects around
where I am in the middle of England, "fuck" is certainly at most as
offensive as "shit". So Carsten's teacher was right for some English
dialects at least.


> "Damn" isn't a swear word at all, IMO, whereas anything rightward of
> "fuck", inclusive, is quite unacceptable. Anything in between is
> acceptable in limited contexts, i.e. when you've got a good reason to
> be angry.
>
Damn is a very mild swear word I'd say.

>
> I have the same belief about "fuck". A word for sexual activity that
> is so abrupt phonetically seems intuitively to go hand-in-hand with an
> attitude dismissive of the other person. It's for precisely this
> reason that I'm fond of the word for sex in Gzarondan, which is
> pronounced [65'KlE@`] (assuming I correctly understand what [@`] is).
> It's such a soft, pleasant word, which lingers on the tongue...
>
I think another reason "fuck" is more offensive is because the person
you "fucked" becomes the object. This is not the case in most other ways
of saying you slept with someone:

to sleep with
to have sex with
etc

whereas with vulgar words like "fuck" and "shag", the person you slept
with is demoted in animacy from being a kind of co-actor in the polite
terms, to being a passive recipient of your "fucking".


> How do you define a swear word in a cross-linguistic context?
>
> I'd say that the attributes of the prototypical swear word are:
>
> (a) Intrinsically offensive in many contexts, in some cases all.
> (b) Alternatives exist with the same meaning but without the
>    intrinsic offensiveness.
> (b) In most cases the word can legitimately be used to express anger
>    or other strong negative emotion, especially in private.
> (c) Used by children and immature people with much hilarity.
>
> Are there any languages with no words that exhibit all four attributes
> or is swearing a cultural universal?
>
I'd mostly agree with this characterisation, although (c) seems to me to
be an unnecessary requirement. (a) and (b) (the first b) are the main
requirements, with the second (b) (your sequence went a b b c not a b c
d) also being slightly dubious.

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