Words and Their Meaning

Over the last several days I have given some thought to words and how we assign a value to them.  Specifically how we define swear words or words that are offensive.  George Carlin does a great and classic piece on the 7 words you cannot say on TV.  He also is good at pointing out our own hypocrisy when it comes to making rules about what you can or cannot say.  The video clip is below.  If you are easily offended don’t click on play.

Living here in Morridor there are several other words that are swear words for no other reason that they are assigned that weight.  My favorite Utah swear word is “Stupid”.  I have seen the swift retribution of mothers to their children who use this word toward their siblings.  The reaction is the same as is if they had used the “mother of all swear words”.

My second favorite swear word is “God” .  The way I understand this rule: If you use “God” in any context except a direct conversation with God then it is a swear word.  Here is where we have to engage in mental gymnastics to justify using the word in a manner that it is not offensive.  You can say “thank God”  because apparently this is an aside conversation with god.  You can say, “this is why God Invented”,  because apparently you are giving this ambiguous person credit in some sort of aside wink and nod. You obviously say  "pray to God” and request his guidance because you are talking to god.  However as soon as you say “Oh My God!”  you are taking “the Lord’s name in vain!?!?”  Now I thought gods name was Yahweh or Elohim if you subscribe to the Judeo-Christian texts.  God is a title!... kind of like Dr. or Mr. or PHD. or MA is it not?

If you are a word like damn you are automatically a swear word because of your association with the infamous word god.  Damn in Utah and its other form Dammit  are immediately censored as gateway swear words.  It starts with a damn and then progresses to a god damn and before long you will be saying Stupid!  Absurd?  Yes!

There is a reason we have developed language as humans.  That reason is because we needed a way to communicate ideas.  While some words in our language have terse meanings and they are abrupt and jarring when uttered… some times they are appropriate to the situation or to the context.  Our abhorrence  to using them sometimes gets in the way of ability to communicate.  I worked with a nice lady who rarely would use any of the “7 Words You Can’t Say of TV”.  She would say that sometimes there is no other word that is powerful enough to communicate the idea.  That is why we see content on TV, in the movies, and in our other forms of literary expression using language that is colored, textured, and multidimensional.

This phenomenon is not limited to the use of swear words. We avoid using words that are appropriate in many contexts and are the proper descriptors  to be offered.  In my last post I noted how Doug Wright could not say the words Oral, Anal, or Vaginal Sex on his radio program.  Why?  They were the appropriate descriptors.  Additionally, we fail to teach our children to use words that describe their body parts like penis or vagina.  Instead we treat them as dirty words and in our inability to to get over our 5th grade reaction we inhibit their ability to communicate with their physicians or healthcare providers.  We also inhibit their ability to have a healthy view of their bodies and in our effort to diffuse our own discomfort with the word we actually do harm to our children.  Our reaction to words ultimately taints the real value that word as in our rich language.

I am not an advocate of using course language in all settings.  I correct my children when they use language that is shocking or inappropriate for the situation but in Utah and in other fundamental communities in the United States; I think we have taken it too far.  I am not sure why?  I suspect that it is in part because of religious piety, in part because of political correctness and in part because we think that June and Ward Cleaver were normal representations of the American Family.  To take away the texture of our language is to relegate us an artificial “Pleasantville” existence that is not representative of the American or Human experience.  Dammit! Even Disney knows that!