Swearing, and females swearing.

[spectroscopy]

my situation is pretty similiar to EEEEEEP's. Just gonna be completely honest in this post because my experience is probably different to alot of people on here and might be interesting to some. With people i grew up with/most of my friends/my family/most people I meet from the westside in melbourne, pretty much any word is okay and will never get any sort of reaction. Whether its used in a shop or on the street or playing sport or whatever people usually never care. Around here I find that swear words just fit into sentences very naturally with very little emphasis on the swear words themself, and they just come out naturally, rather than to express emotion or emphasise a point. The words really just have had the venom taken out of them for me because I hear them all the time and they are never particularly emphasised in a sentence, even when someone is mad. I actually notice it when I talk to other people that when they swear its usually a thing that happens cos they are mad or frustrated or really upset, and when these words are said with this emphasis, i think "damn this dude is mad", but with people from my area there is no extra emphasis on the f word or the c word or anything. ie: most people when angry would say something like "you F***ING dickhead" with the swear word really emphasised, but in high school/around people I know it would be more like "YOU F***ING DUMB C*** F***ING FIGHT ME" and even then the swear words dont really register as anything special in my head because people will say them all the time.

the exception is racial slurs which are not okay and will definitely get you weird looks and often someone will say something. This might be because its a super multi-cultural place, but the words just always seem out of place and particularly bad. They never really come to mind for most people I know because you never really hear them. They definitely aren't in peoples 'heat of the moment' vocabulary, and I cant recall a time anyone has ever 'slipped' and said a racial slur because they are words that really arent used. Even in super heated footy games where there were bogans screaming from the sidelines competing against a team full of minorities, I never personally heard it. Unless its someone from a completely different social circle (usually not even from my side of town), in which case everyone will be like 'wtf' when they hear it. some people say them just to be like super edgy but even thats rare. literally every other word that is not a racial slur is probably in most people's daily vocabulary though. Thats not to say some people don't make racist jokes and stuff like that - but using actual racial slur words like n****r or k**e is a line that just never gets crossed.
I try to be good and not swear whenever I can, because I socialize in other social circles these days +uni/work stuff, but pretty much no words have any venom when said to me because I have been so desensitized from a very very young age by literally everyone around me.

Even words that are objectively very firmly homophobic are used commonly by pretty much everyone I know from my part of town, even by classmates and relatives I have who are gay/trans but grew up in the same area as me. These words are NEVER used to describe actual lgbtq people or homosexuality though. ie: when someone says someone is "f****t" they never mean they are literally homosexual, it means that the person is lame or annoying or something. I've known people who have really hated a gay kid at school (not for that reason) and they would still never call him a f****t referring to his homosexuality. A close relative of mine is gay and would still use these words (again, not referring to lgbtq people in particular or homosexuality or anything) and so would their same sex partners. Or for example if someone said that a school rule is "super gay", that means its just a stupid rule that ruins peoples fun aka. lame.
If someone from my area/schools referred to a person I didnt know as 'gay', my initial interpretation would definitely be that the person in question is a heterosexual who is annoying/lame/not fun to hang around, because that is the most common use for the word in my life by far.

I don't really say these words cause I know they can be hurtful, but growing up where I have, the words a) have a different meaning all together and b) no venom. I have literally been called a f****t by a lesbian I am close to, because I was being annoying, and no one for a second stopped to think it meant anything other than that. I just never ever hear those words used with hate in my daily life. Anyway, this might be a slight detour off-topic, but since the topic is swearing I thought I would throw in my 2 cents from my part of the world.

Back on the initial question of swearing and females. as mentioned above, I hear girls swear alot and it pretty much never gets a reaction different than a guy would get. No one really cares as long as you keep the racial slurs out of it. I am fully aware that outside of my demographic and in most situations, swear words are treated more seriously.  I just thought I would throw in a different take on it.

[Calebark]

It's weird with me and swearing. For others, it seems like such an effortless thing to do, like walking or something that comes naturally. I don't swear very often, and sometimes when I do say the word 'fuck' or even spell it out, I'm not going to lie it feels incredibly awkward and a bit uncomfortable that I have even the capability of using such a strong word I'm not accustomed to using. I talk in the same way as I would write, and normally if I'm really in the mood for conversation I talk in paragraphs or at least - in a semi-formal way. It's just more satisfying for me at least forming sentences with vocab outside of swearing, and for me, it disrupts that niceness that goes with using polite language. In hindsight, however, I think it's mostly due to my upbringing (growing up in a strict-asian-Catholic family) and the people I surround myself with (people who are distinctly articulate and debate an exhausting amount and never tire from it *groans). Swearing, although I definitely am only just starting to integrate it into my vocabulary, is just never going to be something I can use that will express fully any emotions I'm feeling. But I do see the expressive value it has for other people 

There's nothing wrong with not swearing! If you can find better ways of expression, all power to you!

I think background is definitely a factor. Coming from a typical, bogan
, jailbird Western Suburbs family, swearing has always been a normal part of my lexicon. I've noticed that my mates from around the west tend to swear a lot more than my mates from elsewhere. Interested to hear other anecdotes

[Bri MT]

I don't swear. I was once analysing an article for english language and I knew that in order to get my point across I had to write a swear word, and my pen hovered in the air for 10 seconds. Everyone in my friend group at school, an in my family, except for me swears. I think I just got used to not doing it and as some people find it offensive I never really saw the point of developing a habit which could negatively impact others' perceptions of me?
I may start swearing at some point, but I will definitely continue to avoid words which groups that are discriminated against consider to be offensive

Edit: I live in and grew up in the western suburbs

[sweetiepi]

I've noticed that my mates from around the west tend to swear a lot more than my mates from elsewhere.

Some of my friends get shocked when they hear my swear, I don't get why, especially as I'm obviously another Westsider lol
However I only really swear when something really gets on my nerves

[vox nihili]

What do you think about the whole thing Joseph41? Or knowing you have an interest in linguistics, can you add to the exploration of the D & C comparison in their forcefulness/offensiveness?

Just as a short but interesting aside on this, there are some languages in which they're reasonably equivalent.

In Serbian for instance, a lot of the swearing is based around the word pička, which effectively means cunt. It's nowhere near as offensive as it is in English and is probably near the same level as dick (kurac).
I really like this about Serbian tbh. Female genitals should be no more offensive than male.

My suspicion though is that in English cunt is more offensive than dick due to the way we view women in society. Women are expected to be less brash, less "disgusting" and, critically, less sexual. That it is so offensive is consistent with this ridiculous idea that women are all of those things. There's a lot in our language that supports that. The fact that we have so many words to describe the penis, yet only very few to describe the vagina. Contrast willy, dick, cock, johnson, old fella etc with, well, fanny? Even the word vagina itself seems more jarring than penis. As though it's less polite to talk about the former than the latter.

More evidence comes from our teams for female and male masturbation. Again, there's this denialism around the fact that women even have genitals and, shock horror, might chose to use them. Wank, pull, tug, fap...all words that can be used seriously without generating a laugh. How many words do women have?
I guess then the cherry on the top is the way the media treat genitals. Unless it's changed, the rules around censorship meant that vulvae had to be blurred, but penises not. Moreover, we tend to see the former in a sexualised context, and the latter doing "normal" things, like flapping about or urination (see: debate around representations of genitals in GoT).


tl;dr the divide between these terms probably represents our sexism.

[appleandbee]

In my opinion, swearing has less correlation with social /economic status in Australia compared to other places. There was a discussion about this within the university debating community, whether debaters that swore more, predominantly from low SES backgrounds, were adversely affected in judging outcomes as a result of the swearing. The general consensus was that this was more of a European thing than an Australian one, as most Australian debaters swear on similar levels (a fair bit) regardless of their background (the majority of them went to private/selective schools).

I still swear a fair bit, when I'm annoyed at something but considerably less compared to high school. Probably because, I started taking up positions that required me to not swear, and it manifests in your everyday life. I started swearing when I got to high school, a time where I was coming to various realisations of terrible things that happened and was going through a difficult time at home, with the police and the school. Going to a reasonably high SES public school, where about 50% of students came from a high SES bracket but around 20% that lived in the public housing estate close to the school who went through difficult things as well. Swearing almost became a way to reclaim your class and differences at that time. I never used the n****r word to categorise someone's race or f****t, but many people I socialised with did. As many people said, most things about from c***, or any gendered swear word is okay (I have said d*** a few times though). Even is s***, n****r, or f****t is reclaimed by various factions of the said identity group, it doesn't legitimised others to casually use the word (with may be very offensive to many people in those groups) or to use it against them (many conservatives have unfortunately tried to rationalise racism/ sexism through the groups' reclaim of those terms). I do use the word queer, because it's now used as a generalised term to refer to those groups, although I wouldn't have done so like 7 years ago.

As for females' swearing, I don't really think it's stigmatised amongst people in our generation. I do agree however, that there is a commonly held belief amongst people from older generations, that women shouldn't swear. Through my observations, people of colour and social movements of those groups (eg. Black Lives Matters) do cop a lot for swearing where they are unfairly criticised for being angry, aggressive and alienating people outside through their language. There's an expectation for people of those groups to play respectability politics.

[heids]

I just don't fuckin hold with these bloody motherfucking cunts who swear all the bloody time.  Fuck them.  Especially the motherfuckin (fatherfuckin?) females.

my parents would die if they saw that line I actually have a hard time saying that on a public forum but fuck da h8ers

Can genuinely not see the issue with swearing, given that it's a normal part of language, and not insulting.  I do dislike swearing to attack or insult others, or in violent anger.

[EEEEEEP]

I genuinely don't see an issue with swearing if it's not insulting, but I would almost immediately be fired if I ever did get caught doing it in the work place verbally .

There's a time and place for everything.

[tashhhaaa]

I think I swear more when I'm trying to be casual or something idk. I can turn it off at work or around tutors but with people my age I tend to let a few fucks and shits slip even if they don't do so and I didn't really want to. Sometimes I inwardly cringe when I swear in front of some inner city or East side types at uni because I hardly hear them swear in a tute. Also I think that my swearing limits my vocab and makes me sound 'dumb' so I'm trying to stop since I'm tired of sounding better on paper

It's become a habit that I'm not proud of but I'm obviously not offended by any type of swearing. Tbh I struggle to understand how swear words like fuck and shit generate such emotive reactions from people since to me they aren't on the same scale as f****t, n****r etc

Grew up and live in the Northern suburbs & went to a lower middle class to middle class-ish private school where swearing wasn't a big deal, although definitely more common in the West side no one cares

I read somewhere that people who swear more are or appear to be more honest and down to earth, so there's that?

[Sine]

-extremely rarely swear irl it's just super unnatural for me and if I do it'll be really forced and feel really cringey/embarssing or it'll just be on the sporting field
-in text i'll sometimes use swear words (just to more easily get a point across) but mainly just the abbreviations

exception would be if swearing were to be in the lyrics of a good song LOL

[keltingmeith]

With regards to C and D I think it's likely the sound of the words. One thing people forget the word p***y, which is more like d**k in terms of crudity. Both describing similar parts of the body, but having different meanings (but both negative). So I tend to think it's not that one body part is more offensive than the other, or a word representing it is more offensive, but just that the sound of c*** is a lot harsher and hence is one of the more taboo terms.

That's a really interesting point - I'd actually completely forgotten about that third word. That does put a bit more perspective on the point, does normalise it a bit instead of the sexist undertones I always felt from it.

Also - does anyone else find it kind of ironic that most of us are saying that we're fine with swearing, and yet there's a lot of censoring still going on?

[Calebark]

Also - does anyone else find it kind of ironic that most of us are saying that we're fine with swearing, and yet there's a lot of censoring still going on?

Nah, it fits into what I normally do -- refrain from swearing (or reduce it) around certain people. And by 'certain people' I mean 'a public forum'

[elysepopplewell]

As for females' swearing, I don't really think it's stigmatised amongst people in our generation. I do agree however, that there is a commonly held belief amongst people from older generations, that women shouldn't swear. Through my observations, people of colour and social movements of those groups (eg. Black Lives Matters) do cop a lot for swearing where they are unfairly criticised for being angry, aggressive and alienating people outside through their language. There's an expectation for people of those groups to play respectability politics.

I like all that you've said. I've been wondering where these Victorian places are that people are mentioning, now I'm presuming it's recognising an SES difference. Looking at my broader area of living, I live in what would be considered middle class, but low SES in comparison to many places (particularly in certain pockets of my broader area, more than others). I don't think that swearing is any more or less prevalent, but I think if someone was to consider there to be a spike in swearing in our area - it would be with the association of reasonably low levels of tertiary education, and therefore tying swearing in with a lack of other verbal communication skills.

The bit of quoted from you, Coffee, is most interesting to me. "Tone policing" of oppressed or marginalised groups is something I've been looking into lately. The emotional labour associated with activism in these areas is too often met with tone policing (or in this case - swearing policing).

[Joseph41]

What do you think about the whole thing Joseph41? Or knowing you have an interest in linguistics, can you add to the exploration of the D & C comparison in their forcefulness/offensiveness?

Haven't read the entire thread. Pretty exhausted rn, so apologies for poor expression etc.

On particular swear words - there's some I will never use. I never use s**t, I think it comes from a deeply gendered and oppressive place and there's just no need. However, I do really enjoy observing Amber Rose's annual Slut Walk, which is all about reclaiming sexuality and channeling the word to be no longer an insult. Other racially or sexually charged derogatory words I won't use either.

I'm similar to this. Never use slut, never use cunt, never use nigger, and so on. I swear a lot, but I swear for emphasis and expression; these words, I feel, go beyond that. Why? Because as you've alluded to, they come from a place of discrimination. It's the same reason I hate the expression "that's so gay"; even if not specifically referring to the LGBTQIA+ community, gay is being used to describe something bad, and obviously those flow-on effects could be pretty severe. I don't give a fuck about words like fuck; I actually think it's a particularly useful, diverse word. I love it, tbh - one of my favourites. But when any language is founded on hatred or discrimination, I feel uncomfortable.

What really gets me bothered, is men saying "girls shouldn't swear" or "I don't like when girls swear."

Agree. Don't see how gender is relevant in the discussion. I'd imagine this is based on stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity - obviously not always reflected in reality.
Regarding dick, cunt and so on, semantic deterioration has occurred in conjunction with femaleness for a very, very long time. Generally, the "female version" of words is marked - the "male version" is considered neutral. For example, host (unmarked, male) and hostess (marked, female). There are consequences of this in isolation, but these are tangential, so I won't go into them here.

Such deterioration is probably best noted in linguistic pairs that once were level in terms of prestige or whatever. Something like lady - lord. The former isn't exactly prestigious these days. In fact, as noted here, you can have things like a cleaning lady. But would you ever have a cleaning lord? No, certainly not. The "female" iteration here has deteriorated; the "male" version has not. There are many similar examples.

Even something like hussy 'an impudent or immoral girl or woman'. From where did that derive? It was a contraction of housewife - again, obvious semantic deterioration.

With that in mind, I don't find it surprising that cunt at the moment seems to be one of the most potent words. But even cunt isn't as potent as it once was. This is to be expected. Typically, swear words are those that have the ability to shock or offend - they have potency other words don't. Of course, these words change over time, largely based on taboos of the time. "Swear words" back in the day were largely religious; over time, they've become more sexual; presently, a lot of swear words are based on "-ist language" (sexist, racist, homophobic and so on). In the future, who knows? It'll be centred on future taboos.

This sort of phenomenon is known as the swearing treadmill; a similar thing exists with euphemism. When we use swear words more and more, they become commonplace. And as a result, they lose some of their potency. Words like bloody and crap used to be very taboo. Are they now? Nah, not really. That moved on to shit ("the s word"), then fuck ("the f word"), and now cunt ("the c word"). Cunt will soon be replaced, though, because it's becoming more and more common in everyday language. Soon we'll see it more on the media and, over time, it'll diminish in potency.

This article here by my academic hero (linguist Kate Burridge) is a great read if you're interested. If you can't be fucked, here are some relevant excerpts:

Cunt has a good pedigree with related forms in Old Norse kunta, Old Frisian and Middle Low German kunte, and Middle Dutch conte. Surprisingly it’s not attested in Old English, except in place names like cuntan heale (literally, “cunt hollow”).

By Middle English the word is making regular public appearances. Early medical texts have descriptions like "wymmen the necke of the bladdre is schort, & is maad fast to the cunte”.

Included among the 4,000 vulgarisms in Captain Frances Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (first published in 1785) is the entry c**t, with the telling definition “a nasty word for a nasty thing”.

Cunt had well and truly fallen into the semantic abyss, and it took innocent bystanders with it. The old word for “rabbit” coney (rhyming with honey) dropped out of use because (as one lexicographer delicately put it) it took on “inappropriate anatomical significance”. In some places it lingered longer because of a clever vowel change (think of Coney Island).

I’m sure taboo association is one of the reasons King Cnut’s name transformed to Canute – people in the 18th century could transpose the letters of Cnut, just as we transpose the letters of FCUK.

When blasphemous and religiously profane language was no longer considered offensive (at least by a majority of speakers), more physically and sexually based expressions filled the gap.

Cunt was among the earliest of such terms to be pressed into maledictory service in the second half of the 19th century. Its taboo quality enabled speakers to let off steam, abuse, offend – and express mateship and endearment (the more affectionate the feeling, the more abusive the language; for example “wookey is a gem, love that cunt”).

Emotional expressions lose their sting with frequent use, but it is also that sex and bodily functions are no longer tabooed as they were in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Free-to-air television now frequently includes words such as fuck and cunt, and their social acceptance explains why courts now typically dismiss obscene language charges.

So the force of cunt has weakened considerably. The recent addition of derived forms cunty, cuntish, cunted, cunting to the Oxford English Dictionary barely raised an eyebrow. But the word still provides that bonus layer of emotional intensity and added capacity to offend.

Of the taboo terms for bodily functions, sex and private parts (now there’s a nice euphemism), cunt remains the most disturbing and the most powerful, which is a fall-out of the strength of the original taboos.

And here you’ll find revealing asymmetries. As my colleague Keith Allan pointed out in his account of bawdy part terms, there’s a vast difference in wounding capacity between expressions of abuse invoking male and female sex organs. Prick means “stupid, contemptible”, whereas cunt means “nasty, malicious, despicable”.

Males can be abused by prick and dick but females rarely, if ever (how does “She’s a prick” strike you?). On the other hand, cunt and its gentler counterparts twat and prat freely apply to both males and females.

It’s a familiar story — general terms for women are insulting when used of men – for example, calling a man a “girl”, “old woman” or “sissy” – but there’s no real abuse if male-associated words are used of women.

Anyway, I swear a lot - probably an increasing amount, because I find it useful. I don't believe there to be any negative correlation with intelligence. I don't see how "I've had a fucking shit day" is inherently worse (or better) than "I've had an absolutely terrible day". The structure of the sentence is the same; some of the words have just been replaced with alternatives.

My English Language teacher showed me this video back in the day. It summarises my thoughts on the word fuck pretty nicely. Content warning: swearing.

P.S. I fucking love linguistics.

[K888]

^ Potentially my favourite post on AN. I learnt a lot from that, Nick!