Strong language is common to most cultures, but what makes a word profane, and how does cursing vary from place to place?
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If everyday language is like the earthââ¬â¢s crust and the soil we garden our lives in, strong language is like volcanoes and geysers erupting through it from the mantle below. Our social traditions determine which parts of the crust are the thin points. Itââ¬â¢s not enough to feel strongly about something; it has to have a dominating societal power and control structure attached to it. Strong language often involves naming things you desire but arenââ¬â¢t supposed to desire; at the very least, it aims to upset power structures that may seem a bit too arbitrary.
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We tend to think of swear words as one entity, but they actually serve several distinct functions. Steven Pinker, in The Stuff of Thought, lists five different ways we can swear: ââ¬Ådescriptively (Letââ¬â¢s fuck), idiomatically (Itââ¬â¢s fucked up), abusively (Fuck youââ¬Â¦!), emphatically (This is fucking amazing), and cathartically (Fuck!!!).ââ¬Â None of these functions require swearwords. In Bikol (a language of the Philippines), thereââ¬â¢s a special anger vocabulary ââ¬â many words have alternative words that refer to just the same thing but also mean youââ¬â¢re angry. In Luganda (an African language), you can make a word insulting just by changing its noun class prefix ââ¬â from a class for persons to a class for certain kinds of objects, for instance. In Japanese, you can insult someone badly just by using an inappropriate form of ââ¬Ëyouââ¬â¢.
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Animals can be dirty too, and are used in many insults, but animals are not normally near the morality-based social control structures, so theyââ¬â¢re not usually what we think of as swear words ââ¬â except when they come from veiled references, as with Mandarin guëtóu (turtleââ¬â¢s head, standing in for penis). Likewise, mental deficiency is widely looked down on, but while insults the equivalent of ââ¬Ëidiotââ¬â¢ are common enough, itââ¬â¢s only in a culture such as Japanese that it makes one of the most popular ââ¬Ëbad wordsââ¬â¢ (baka). Social control structures differ somewhat from country to country, but they are, after all, developed by the same human animal on the same planet. Itââ¬â¢s the same magma bubbling up.
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http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/2015030...-the-world