Defining ‘bad’ language

Having given a brief overview of the historic development of swearing, I would like to turn to linguistic definitions of swearwords. In the past centuries swearwords were largely neglected in linguistic research due to various reasons. Firstly, their taboo nature was considered too unfitting for scientific research and public display. Even authors claiming to describe ‘real’ language use often omitted offensive uses (Beers Fägersten

& Dalarna: 14-15, Hughes 1991: 2, Steiner 1980: 23, 36).

This discrepancy is also visible in dictionary composition. Traditionally, there were two kinds of dictionaries: one dealt with ‘proper’ words and completely omitted

‘vulgar’ language and the other kind dealt exclusively with ‘lower’ registers such as slang and ‘improper’ uses of language – including offensive words and expressions. An interesting fact is that the ‘improper’ tradition, which dates back to the Elizabethan era, is actually older than the ‘proper’ one. For example, Thomas Harman’s A Caveat for Common Cursetors was published as early as 1566 (Hughes 2006: 123-124, Steiner 1980: 23-24).

However, in the last few decades restraints on the investigation of offensive language have relaxed greatly and various sciences – including psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics – have looked into the topic. Beers Fägersten and Dalarna point out that nowadays “profanity is a legitimate research area within psychology,

philology and linguistics” (2007: 15). This development has gone hand in hand with the comeback of the popularity of slang and swearword dictionaries starting in the 1990s (Hughes 1991: 2). Numerous new editions are published every year. Concerning the topic of offensive language in linguistic research, it should be added, that swearwords have also been overlooked because they are (to this day) often said to lack specific phonology and grammar (McEnery 2006:1). According to Andersson and Trudgill the same grammatical rules that apply to ordinary language also apply to swearing (2007: p.

198).

Nonetheless, research on swearing is still not completely free of prejudices and constraints. Beers Fägersten and Dalarna (2007: 15) continue their argument cited above as follows:

Nevertheless, despite an increasing amount of attention devoted to profanity […], the true picture of dirty word usage is still compromised.

This gives rise to the questions why ‘bad’ language is so bad and how bad is really bad – issues which will be dealt with below.

As mentioned above, the research on swearing is a fairly young branch in various sciences. But in the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in this specific field. I would like to give a brief summary of how different linguistic approaches have addressed the topic. In an article published in 1989 which deals with the fundamental question of ‘What makes bad language bad?’ Davis discusses three major linguistic approaches to swearing, leading to her own assumption as to explaining

‘dirty’ words. In the following paragraphs I will use Davis’ article and her four different approaches as a framework for looking at past research in the area of defining ‘bad’

language.

3.1 The sociolinguistic approach

The first and most widespread approach (which is also called ‘orthodox approach’) is based on the assumption that the use of certain lexical items is connected in a fairly systematic way with social indices such as class, gender, age and race, on the one

hand, and situational variables like formal or informal conversations, on the other hand. Sociolinguists analyze these correlations and explain them in terms of prestige (covert versus overt), differences in male and female talk, permissiveness, and so on.

According to Davis’ article, sociolinguistic research has concluded that gender and class are the two most important variables in the analysis of swearwords – a view shared by other scholars such as Francis Shirley (1979: xii). For this reason, I want to discuss these two indices in more detail in the succeeding paragraphs.

Regarding class, Trudgill (1985: 29) claims that

the type of word that is tabooed in a particular language will be a good reflection of at least part of the system of values and beliefs of the society in question.

Further, he argues that swearing is more likely to be found in the working class rather than middle or upper classes. To this argument I would like to add, that it is probably true, that working class people swear more than middle or upper class citizens, but the latter are by no means strangers to ‘foul’ language. As a matter of fact, arguing from a historic point of view, Hughes affirms that swearing has also been prevalent in the upper classes. He explains this phenomenon by the “assumption that the upper classes are not bound by bourgeois prissiness, norms, and expectations” (Hughes 2006:

81). An early example of swearing in upper classes is the flyting tradition carried out by the British nobility. Also, various British monarchs have been recorded to use ‘foul’

language including Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and present day Elizabeth II’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh and their children Princess Anne and Prince Charles. One can also add a number of American presidents to this list such as Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. (Hughes 1991: 33-34, Hughes 2006: 81-82 and Fuck 2005)

Another assumption about the social functions of swearing is that the use of certain vocabulary marks social difference or signals social solidarity (Crystal 1997: 61 and 2003: 173). Burridge (2004: 207) mentions studies concerning swearing patterns and the amount of swearing in closed communities which attest to this fact. Also, the more swearing there is in a group, the more relaxed are its members.

In terms of gender, one conclusion of sociolinguistic surveys is that women are more sensitive as to the offensive nature of swearwords (Beers Fägersten & Dalarna 2007: 23). Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that men swear more than women in

informal situations⁶ (Svensson 2004: 13). Naturally, the latter finding may be explained by the former and by the fact that swearing is not regarded ‘standard’ language which women are more prone to use. Davis (1989: 3) suggests that women are “more conscious of propriety and upward mobility, [and therefore they] try harder to avoid using such terms”.

However, in a study published in 1987, Risch questions this and other assumptions concerning female use of ‘dirty’ language. She collected the swearwords used by women to refer to men and her forty-four female subjects came up with a sum of seventy-nine different derogatory terms. Risch concludes that the standard versus non-standard distinction does not apply to male versus female discourse. Nevertheless, she admits that her investigation method had one flaw since the swearwords were elicited by female interviewers. It is questionable if the test persons would have used such terms in the presence of men.

On the whole, Davis rejects all orthodox sociolinguistic approaches arguing that they do not pay enough attention to the different communicative contexts. According to her, they merely prove that ‘bad’ language exists and try to explain its uses, instead of providing an answer to the question ‘What makes bad language bad?’

3.2 The feminist approach

The next approach Davis examines in her article pays more attention to context. The approach was formulated by Cameron in 1985 and looks at how language is used to oppress women, thus being referred to by Davis as ‘feminist approach’. Cameron (1985:

77, cited in Davis 1989: 4) argues that swearing is in fact a “form of social control”

(1985: 77 quoted) because there are more derogatory expressions insulting woman, or referring to female body parts and female animals than their male equivalents:

[… ] generally speaking, taboo words tend to refer to women’s bodies rather than men’s. Thus for example cunt is a more strongly tabooed word than

6 There appears to be no remarkable gender difference in swearing in formal settings (Svensson 2004: 13-14).

prick, and has more tabooed synonyms. Even words like bugger and arsehole whose reference is male are insulting because they connote homosexuality, which is not only tabooed in itself but associated with femininity as well. (Cameron 1985: 76, cited in Davis 1989: 4)

Cameron’s observations made above strongly correlate with findings by Allan (cited in Burridge 2004: 204-205), Hughes (1991: 206-209), and Macaulay (2006: 100-101).

Allan argues that not only in English, but in many languages terms referring to female genitalia have a wider range than male ones and are generally more powerful and thus more insulting. According to him, male sex organs such as prick can only be applied to men, while female body parts are applicable to both, men and women. He concludes that female-derived terms are much more potent. For example, Davis mentions a confrontation which occurred on a British cricket field in 1987, where a male player called another a “fucking cheating cunt [emphasis added]” (Davis 1989:1). The incident had caused huge agitation in the British media.

Furthermore, Burridge (2004: 204-205), Aman (1996: 157) and Hughes (1991:

209) suggest that women are usually not downgraded by being ascribed the characteristics of a man and thus cannot be offended by male terms. Quite to the contrary: a woman that ‘has balls’ is complemented for her strength of character. Men, on the other hand, that are called sissy, old women or girl, are highly downgraded and insulted. Thus, often we complement females by ascribing them male characteristics, but usually insult men by referring to them with female-derived vocabulary.

Nevertheless, cases in which women were insulted by male-derived swearwords have also been recorded. For instance, Risch mentions an incident where a male student called a female a dick and thus suggests that derogatory vocabulary might be “losing their allotted features [+ male] or [+ female] altogether (Risch 1987, cited in Davis 1989: 3).

Swearing is also more socially acceptable among men. According to Reinhold Aman (1996: 157), men are allowed to curse and fight, while women are restricted to crying. Therefore, if a man cries, he is considered as being feminine and weak and when a woman curses or fights, she is called masculine or vulgar (Aman1996: 157).

Unfortunately, Cameron does not account for all uses of ‘bad’ language. For instance, it is not clear how men wield power over women by insulting other males with

terms such as cunt. Also, Cameron’s approach has been criticized for excluding derogatory vocabulary which is not female-derived.

3.3 The speech-act approach

The third approach goes back to Harris (1987) who tried to define swearwords in terms of ontology, giving an explanation of why their mention and use are prohibited. Harris stresses the importance of explaining the speech act before analyzing this double prohibition, therefore his approach was entitled ‘speech-act approach’ by Davis. For Harris (1987: 185 and 187, cited in Davis 1989: 6), the mere pronunciation of a swearword is swearing because

semiotic displacement is the operative mechanism in the ontogenesis of swearing. […] It therefore represents a primitive attempt to extend the use of learned signs as an indirect means of control over one’s environment.

[…] [S]wearwords become unmentionable precisely because institutionalized swearing is the unique and marginal case where locution and illocution are one: the utterance is the deed and the deed is the utterance.

According to this definition, even if a speaker recounts a situation in which offensive vocabulary was used by someone else, the speaker becomes a swearer himself no matter if she or he means to do so or not. Thus even “to say ‘Damn!’ is to swear whether you intend to or not” (Harris 1987: 187 quoted in Davis 1989: 7). However, this approach fails to explain why words such as cock, prick, God, or Christ are only considered derogatory in some contexts, but standard in others.

3.4 The Victorian idea

Disapproving of the three approaches above, Davis argues that the Victorian concept of swearwords is still applicable. According to this old theory swearing is described as

immoral language use. Once again, I would like to point out that this attitude towards

‘bad’ language is ambiguous because swearwords are used commonly and frequently in all population strata, while they are not acknowledged as standard language. It is this

“discourse of purity as a discourse of power” (McEnery 2006: 2) which underlines the taboo nature of swearwords and thus allows regulatory institutions to suppress their usage.

Alhough Davis’ article was published in 1989, her assumption still holds true two decades later and more recent publications affirm this. Tony McEnery defines ‘bad’

language as “any word or phrase which, when used in what one might call polite conversation, is likely to cause offence” (McEnery 2006: 2). Unfortunately, he does not give explanations as to what might be ‘polite conversation’. Reinhold Aman (1996:

165) argues similarly when asserting that any word used in an offensive way is a swearword. Burridge (2004: 200) expands this theory by saying that words alone are never offensive, but their shocking character lies in their context and the way they are used. Consider, for instance, the following two examples:

(129) Lady Mary, would you like to come in?

(130) Can you make uo your mind, lady?

Obviously, context plays an important role in the definition of swearwords.⁷ In an article in 2007, Andersson and Trudgill (2007: 195) name three main characteristics of swearing:

(a) refers to something that is tabooed and/ or stigmatized in the culture;

(b) should not be interpreted literally;

(c) can be used to express strong emotions and attitudes.

In order to demonstrate their definition, Andersson and Trudgill (2007: 195) use the example of the word shit. Literally, shit refers to excrement which is part of the tabooed category of scatology. Yet when used as an expletive swearword, its literal sense does not apply, but it is rather an expression of emotion. In this case, the literal meaning has been completely lost. In other words, there is no “shit” in “Shit!”.

According to Davis, swearing is assimilated to other linguistic ‘faults’ (such as misspelling, mispronunciation, or mistakes of syntax) and thus is considered ‘bad’

language as opposed to offensive behavior. Nevertheless, she points out that the

7 I will return to this notion in the subsequent section.

category ‘swearword’ is essentially open-ended and suggests that more research has to be done in this area. As in all sciences, it is quintessential to continue investigation and analyze current issues, i.e. present-day language use.