Swear words are taboo for a very good reason
Topic of the week: the politics of language
HAVING been very impressed by some of Hardeep Singh Kohli’s observations, I can’t believe he doesn’t understand why some swear words are offensive and why a “middle-aged Church of Scotland-looking couple” left his performance early. (Glaswegians swear differently from most folk I know, Comment, August 14).
It was Kenneth Tynan, an upper-class, literary critic in the 1960s who first used the “F” word on television to prove that BBC standards were fuddy-duddy and that he was such a fearless and superior force for intellectual freedom that he’d break the taboo surrounding the use of this word.
Since then, television has opened the floodgates to its almost universal use and I have noted attempts to make the “C” word acceptable in our society. It is not. It is not respectful. Other articles in the same newspaper show that words hurt and in my opinion are more than “sticks and stones” although those often swiftly follow hurtful words – (I can no longer live in a society where I am not normal or accepted, A perfect storm and Cases of sexual discrimination drop sharply as tribunal fees make it ‘impossible’ to challenge harassment, News, August 14).
I wonder if Mr Singh Kohli fully appreciates the background to Patricia Lynch QC’s squashing of the 50-year-old racist she was crossing swords with. Does he understand how deeply offensive it is for a woman to have the name of her most intimate part hurled at her as a term of abuse? Perhaps not. Perhaps you have to be a woman who has had a lifetime of being told to accept this kind of insult to understand how degrading it is.
Words and expressions become taboo because the idea they describe is unacceptable in their society. He writes that he seldom intends to “upset/offend/abuse when swearing” but by using taboo words that is exactly what he is doing as far as many people are concerned – even though in our society today, to express this hurt is to invite scorn and derision.
The acceptance of the “F” word coincided with the idea that sexual union was something of a physical exercise, like aerobics, without the need for emotion on the part of either participant. Guidance departments in schools all over the country struggle to redress this concept and explain to young people that sexual intercourse is not like gymnastics but has often serious, emotional consequences and I suggest that the acceptance of the use of sexual swear words has played a part in depersonalising the act of love.
The holy books of most religions exhort their followers to treat each other with respect and to regard sexual union as the precious gift that a man and woman give to each other.
Integral to this is disapproval of open use of words which denigrate intercourse and show contempt for a man or a woman’s private parts. Such words and expressions become taboos.