Derivative uses of obscenity (C): expressions of strong feeling

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OFFENSE T O OTHER S



a wide range of emotions in addition to suffering and despair—anger, rage,

hate, disgust, desire, longing, frustration, fear, relief, joy, and surprise.

The superior expressiveness of profane and obscene epithets cannot be

denied. Consider "Holy shit!" as an exclamation of surprise. Not even

"wow!" or "I'll be damned!" can equal this ingenious compound of the

sacred and the repulsive. "Oh shit!" similarly is our most pungent and

economical expression of disappointment. "I don't give a shit" most emphatically expresses a kind of angry "indifference" or rejection. "Oh fuck

it!" uses the chief naughty word non-referentially as an expression of frustration, disgust, and dismay.

Graves' example of expressing pain and suffering by means of curses and

obscene epithets is an especially important one, however, for it reveals the

distinctive way in which tabooed words express various unpleasant emotions. The odd thing about certain obscene and profane exclamations is that

they are defenses against the very feeling that they express, thus giving

with one hand what they take away with the other. Obscene exclamation is

not a passive expression of suffering, as a mere moan or groan is, not a

pathetic plea for relief, but an active grappling with pain. The obscene

words used are the distinctive vocabulary of disrespect and defiance, of

conscious and deliberate taboo-violation. Using the tabooed word to give

vent to the pain is both to express the pain and to deny it at the same time,

a way of complaining about one's situation while still asserting control over

it.

It is worth repeating that the taboos that make obscene expressiveness

possible are word-taboos. In general one is forbidden to use "shit" or "fuck"

not because, or not only because, of what these words refer to, when they

refer to anything at all. When they are used in a non-referential exclamatory fashion as in "Oh shit!" or "Fuck it!," it is the word in and of itself that

is naughty. If one prints the exclamations leaving letters out of the naughty

words so that the reader knows perfectly well what word is intended, then

the taboo is not strictly violated. For many years only the first letter of a

"four letter word" could be printed, and it sufficed in the context, together

with three dashes, to suggest the intended obscene word in all its horror.

Why is "f— it!" less offensive than "fuck it!" and "oh s—!" less offensive

than "oh shit!" when the reader knows with certainty that the former are

but poor fitting disguises of the latter? Using the blank schema conveys to

the reader that it is really the four-letter word that is intended but since that

word is not actually printed, the taboo—rigid like all real taboos—remains

unviolated. 43

In examining the way in which tabooed words express feeling it will be

useful to compare, for any given feeling, how pro-linguistic noises like



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213



grunts, laughs, sighs, and groans, conventional non-obscene interjections

like "gee!," "wow!," and "ouch!," and obscene epithets like "oh shit!" and

"fuck it!" can be expressive. Consider first the feeling of sad regret or

disappointment at the occurrence of some event. Such a feeling can be

vented directly by a kind of cross between a sigh and a grunt which in the

context can be taken by an observer to be a spontaneous, even involuntary,

indication of disappointment—if not an "expression" then at least a revelation or "giving away" of what is experienced. The sounds that escape from

the "expresser" give natural vent to his feelings, but they are not part of any

language that he speaks. If he wishes to convey his feeling in language he

can assert that he has the feeling and go on to describe it, or he can use

those parts of speech that are called interjections (exclamations or ejaculations) to give direct vent to the feeling in a manner similar to that of the

"natural" pre-linguistic expression, without asserting or describing anything

at all. He may, for example, utter the English word "alas!" which is as

much a word in the language as "oops!" or "ouch!" or "wow!," although—

like them—it is not used to refer to anything. Interjections are not meaningless sounds; they have a definite job to do that is assigned by the conventions of a language, just as a referential term like "man" or "table" has a

task, though a quite different one, also assigned by the rules (definitions)

that report and govern usage. "Man" and "table" are used to refer to men

and tables respectively; that is what they mean. "Alas!" is not used to refer

to anything; rather it is used to express sadness and disappointment. Given

the conventions of English, it can no more be used to convey a feeling of

joyous merriment than "man" can be used to refer to cockroaches or "table"

to steam engines. The conventions that report and govern how given interjections work arc themselves definitions of a sort, stating what C. L. Stevenson called "the emotive meaning" of a word. "People groan in all languages," Stevenson reports, "but say 'ouch' only in English. In learning

French, one must learn to substitute 'helas' for 'alas,' but one may sigh just

as usual."44 What Stevenson says is true because "ouch" and "alas" are

words in English whose meaning is wholly emotive; "helas" is a word in

French that is an emotive synonym of "alas"; and sighs and groans, since

they "communicate naturally" without help from any linguistic conventions, are words in no language at all. 45

A third way of expressing disappointment is to use a word from the

obscene part of the English vocabulary and say "oh shit!" This would be to

express the feeling just as accurately as the word "alas!" would. No one

who understands English would misconstrue what was being said since this

idiom is understood to be a more forceful way of expressing what "alas!"

expresses. Because of the conventions that determine its "emotive meaning"



2 1 4 OFFENS



E TO OTHERS



it can no more express joyous merriment than "alas" or a deep sigh can. But

"Oh shit!" is much more emphatic than "alas!" because it exploits another

expressive mechanism. Since the word "shit" is tabooed, one is saying in

effect: "I am so keenly disappointed, that my violation of a word-taboo

seems a matter of very little importance. I don't even care whether I am

impolite and vulgar if that is the cost of giving this feeling proper expression." The existence of the word taboo is in this way necessary for the

intensified expression. If it were to weaken and disappear, "Oh shit!"

would become no more expressive than "alas!" and we should have to find

some new way of saying what "Oh shit!" says now.

In short, the expressiveness of obscene epithets has a double source. When

a person has obviously been frustrated by a turn of events and utters the

words "Oh shit!," everyone who understands English knows (i)that nothing

is being asserted or described; (2) feelings are being expressed; (3) those

feelings are negative ones drawn from a limited range of feelings that include

sad, frustrated, and enraged disappointment; (4) the feelings expressed cannot be those of glee, joy, etc. The speaker may be an actor in a play or a

deceitful con man telling an "emotive lie." He may not be experiencing

disappointment at all, but only feigning it. Nevertheless it is disappointment

that he expresses, and it cannot be otherwise given the conventions of the

English language. All of the above is to say that "Oh shit!" has an emotive

meaning in the same way "damn!", "alas!" and "good heavens!" do. But in

addition "shit" is tabooed; because of other conventions, perhaps better

called rules of etiquette than rules of language, it shocks, offends, rings a bell,

and calls attention to itself when uttered in inappropriate contexts. "Oh

shit!" then functions like "alas!" or "damn!" as an interjection for expressing

disappointment, but because of a word-taboo it becomes a maximally intensified "alas!," an "alas!" underlined in red. Similarly, "Oh, fuck it!," like

"curse it!," expresses a kind of frustration, disgust or dismay in voicing a

rejection of something. But because of the more stringent taboo it violates, it

becomes a maximally intensified "curse it!" or "the hell with it."

Emotive meanings are either laudatory, like "hurray!" and "terrific!,"

derogatory, like "boo!" and "alas!," or neutral, like "wow!," "gee!," and

"whew!," which express such feelings as surprise and excitement. Emotive

terms can express feelings, like "alas!" (sad disappointment) and "terrific!"

(excited joy), or attitudes such as "good!," "freedom," and "justice" (pro-attitudes) and "lousy!," "tyranny," and "unfair" (con-attitudes). There are

no "neutral attitudes," because an attitude is an essentially polar stance,

being for or against something, being in favor of or opposed to. Some

emotive words are purely emotive, like the interjections "hurray," "boo,"

"wow," "gee," "whew," "great," "alas," and so on. Stevenson calls the



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215



emotive meaning of such words "'independent emotive meaning" since the

interjections have no descriptive meaning that could be the source or basis

of the emotive meaning. On the other hand, most emotive words are more

complicated, having both descriptive components (which Stevenson often

calls "cognitive meaning") and emotive components. Thus the complex

word "democracy" means something like "government by the people

either directly by majority vote or through elected representatives." But in

addition to this descriptive meaning, the word "democracy" conventionally

expresses a laudatory emotive meaning, that is a favorable attitude toward

that which is referred to by the descriptive meaning. When the emotive

meaning of a word is dependent on antecedent attitudes toward the thing

designated by the word (as is true for the most part of "democracy")

Stevenson calls it dependent emotive meaning, and "to whatever extent emotive meaning is no t a function of descriptive meaning, but either persists

without the latter [as in interjections] or survives changes in it [because of

'inertia' or 'lag'], let us say that it is 'independent.' "46

The paradigmatic obscenities "shit" and "fuck" are words with both descriptive meanings (referring to feces, defecation, or coitus) and emotive

ones. The emotive meanings express either feelings or attitudes, depending

on the idioms of which they are a part. "Oh shit!" expresses angry disappointment (a feeling), but "that's a crock of shit!" expresses a con-attitude.

"Fuck," on the other hand, is more typically used in idioms that express

attitudes ("Fuck you" expresseses hostility, "all fucked up" expresses a kind

of opposition or rejection). The feelings and attitudes expressed by these

terms in all their uses are derogatory. A tricky problem is that of determining the extent to which the emotive meanings of obscene words are dependent or independent of their descriptive meanings. The scatological obscenities seem to differ sharply from the sexual ones in this respect. The

general attitude toward human waste products is extremely negative. Excrement is "filth"; it smells bad; it is disgusting (and even "disgustworthy").

Because of that universal attitude toward the thing designated by the word,

the emotive meaning is highly derogatory and the term becomes suitable for

metaphorical application to persons and things that are despised. Furthermore, because of the stringent taboo against making the sound or putting

the marks on paper, the speaker or writer can exploit the shock value of the

word to intensify the feeling expressed. By and large then, the emotive

meaning of "shit" is dependent on prevailing attitudes toward the word's

literal referent. The word "fuck," which is an even greater shocker, seems

to derive its derogatory expressiveness primarily from its role as taboobreaker, since sexual intercourse, the referent of its descriptive meaning, is

hardly the object of a universal contempt, disgust, or derogatory attitude.



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OFFENSE T O OTHER S



In its case, the word-taboo and the conventional sexual morality that lies

behind (far behind) it, alone account for its independent emotive meaning.

Sometimes the word "shit," of course, is used as a pure interjection

understood to have no descriptive meaning at all, but even in these cases, its

emotive meaning derives by association from general attitudes toward its

literal referent in other uses. iVIore commonly, "shit" is used metaphorically

in phrases that acquire their impact from a double source: transfer of emotive meaning from the literal to the figurative object an d exploitation of the

word-taboo for emphasis. Thus, "bull shit" is applied to pompous overblown rhetoric, and "chicken shit" to small-minded meanness in the application of rules, especially in a bureaucracy. The metaphor in each case is

striking: the large turds for the overblown exaggerations, the tiny droppings

for the small-mindedness, and excrement in each case for the worthless and

disgusting. But "bull excrement" and "chicken droppings" would use the

same metaphors with less effect. What they miss is the expression of toughmindedness and disrespect for convention that is expressed by all deliberate

taboo-violation. The word "shit" in this as well as all other uses helps the

speaker to put on the manner of toughness and disrespect for prevailing

pieties. He tells the world by such language that he is a no-nonsense person, a straight-shooter, free of sentimentality, impatient at evasive trumpery and cant.

Something like Stevenson's account of emotive meaning was borrowed by

the United States Supreme Court to bolster its decision in the fascinating

case of Cohen v. California.* 7 Paul Robert Cohen, it will be recalled (Chap.

u , §i), had been convicted for violating the Los Angeles municipal code's

prohibition of conduct that "maliciously and willfully disturbs the peace or

quiet of any neighborhood or person by offensive conduct." At the height

of the opposition to the Vietnamese War, Cohen spent some time in a

public corridor of the Los Angeles Municipal Court House, outside the

courtroom where other war resisters were being tried. His "offensive conduct" consisted entirely in his wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words

"Fuck the draft." One way of applying the offense principle to this case

would have led to an affirmation of Cohen's conviction. The Court might

have argued that Cohen's first amendment rights were not violated since he

was not convicted because of the substantive content of the message on his

jacket, but only because he used an inherently offensive word unnecessarily

in expressing that message. Captive observers had to see the word "fuck,"

which was bound to shock and offend most of them, and was thus bound to

be a minor nuisance (it might have argued) in the circumstances. The

content of Cohen's message, on the other hand, was simply "Down with

the draft," the sort of political opinion preeminently protected by the free-



OBSCENE WORD S AN D THEI R FUNCTIONS, I 21J



speech clause of the first amendment. If there had been two youths in the

corridor one of whose jackets was emblazoned with the words "Down with

the draft!" and the other with the words "Oh fuck!," only the latter could

be convicted under a statute that is consistent with the constitution. Cohen

was convicted for using an obscene word publicly, the argument concludes,

not for expressing his political opinions.

Justice Harlan, speaking for the five man majority of the Court, rejected

that approach. In the first place, he argued that Cohen v. California was not

an "invasion of privacy case," which is apparently the way one says in

jurisprudential lingo that the "reasonable avoidability" standard for the application of the offense principle has not been satisfied—"Observers could

effectively avoid further bombardment of their sensibilities simply by averting their eyes". Secondly and more interestingly, Justice Harlan argued

that to express what Cohen wanted to express, and what he had a first

amendment right to express, it wa s necessary for him to employ the word

"fuck." "Down with the draft" says something different from "Fuck the

draft," and only the latter says what Cohen intended to convey. Marian's

reasons might well have come from Stevenson:

Much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys

not only ideas capable of relatively precise detached explication, but otherwise

inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen for their emotive as well as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the

Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has

little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may

often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be

communicated.4*



Cohen, Justice Harlan concluded, had no alternative to the language of

obscenity for accurately expressing to the public "the depth of his feelings

against the Vietnam War and the draft."49 Only a stringent word-taboo can

confer on a word a shock value that makes it an adequate vehicle for the

expression of the deepest negative feelings.



H

Obscene Words and their

Functions, II



z. Derivative uses o f obscenity (D): invective an d provocation

Another basic form of language usage, distinguishable from but not altogether unrelated to those we have already considered, is invective or personal vituperation. Invective has various uses—expressive intensification,

badinage, calumny, insult, challenge, and provocation, among them. For

many of these uses obscene words can advance the purposes of the speaker,

but in many cases they are inessential, and sometimes downright self-defeating. Our aim in this section is to sort out these various connections, but

we shall begin by noting the relation between some of the commonest styles

of invective and even older forms of malediction.

It is but a small step from cursing and swearing (the latter being a kind of

hypothetical self-addressed curse) to sheer vituperation, or undisguised,

straightforward, categorical name-calling. Burgess Johnson traces this development succinctly:

A man may tell his enemy to go to the dogs, to live in their kennels and fight

with them for offal, and he is uttering an ancient curse. "May you go" is the

enacting clause. Or he wishes him to become a dog, which is also a curse,

invoking more of ancient magic. But when he says his enemy i s a dog, that is

name-calling; and it too follows precedents established behind the mists of

early time.1



Name-calling in time became one of the most highly developed linguistic

arts, though its basic forms and the other kinds of basic insults are usually

218



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9



artless enough. Johnson divides primitive insults into four very general

categories. (My own classification will differ from his by consolidating some

of his categories and adding others.) According to Johnson, primitives likened their enemies to lower animals; their appearances or characteristics

were described in unflattering terms; they were accused (with no suggestion

whatever that the accuser had substantiating evidence) of shameful acts;

their ancestors (especially parents) were likewise abused. Name-calling in

all these modes, of course, survives in our civilized time. Obviously only a

small percentage of insults in these categories involve the use of obscene or

naughty words either essentially or accidentally. "You are a pig" is not

obscene; neither is "Your mind is a garbage heap." The "shameful acts"

whose imputations define Johnson's third category of insult are, on the

other hand, almost entirely sexual in character and charged to enemies in

thoroughly indelicate language. Similarly, one's ancestry is questioned by

insults to one's mother's honor, or such traditional epithets as "son of a

bitch" and "bastard," originally conventional vehicles for accusing someone's mother of sexual infidelity.

Johnson's list omits at least one traditional category: the charge that one is

a sexual or excretory organ, expressed in vulgar terminology. It is insulting

enough to be called an animal, like a horse. It is even more insulting,

though insulting in the same way, to be called part of a body like an "ass."

And to call another part of an animal's body, like a horse's ass, is to

combine the worst of both worlds to very good effect. Edward Sagarin

interprets this familiar category of obscene insult as expressing contempt for

all things biological, but again he misses the mark. Men call other men

"pricks" not because they are transferring to their enemies the contemptuous or shameful attitudes they feel toward their own sex organs, but rather

because it insults a person to be likened to a depersonalized organ, vital and

demanding, yet utterly brainless. "Prick" is a term of contempt reserved for

mindless fools. It functions in much the same way as the animal-insults

"donkey," or "turkey." When it refers literally to the penis it can even be an

affectionate term, as can "dog" when it is used literally to refer to a dog, but

when applied metaphorically it is an insult, implying peremptory mindlessness like that of a yipping puppy demanding attention.

Tabooed words can lend color and vivacity to vituperation as they can to

oaths, curses, exclamations, avowals, and jokes. It is a dull insult, for

example, to call a person stupid, but it is an insult with a flair to say that

"he has his head up his ass." It is especially effective to use obscene vulgarities in reenforcing combinations, stringing together tabooed idioms with no

rhyme or reason except to build up a kind of venemous momentum, maximally exploiting the shock value of each new tabooed phrase as it builds