Mind your language

I have always wondered about language, It is a fascinating subject overall but my favourite part has to be the swearwords. Who exactly judges what constitutes a swearword and who ranks the severity of them?

Let me start at the top. The king of swearwords, the ultimate profanity, the word ‘Cunt’. What, semantically, is so bad about it? It is literally four letters in a certain order that describes the female genitalia. It has no extra denotative value than the word pussy or twat or vagina but is seen as more offensive. It must be the connotations but it puzzles me where these connotations come from. In America it is the worst thing you can call a woman and in Britain it seems to be aimed, rather impolitely at men.

Making love and fucking denote exactly the same thing but in our minds making love is much more sensual and, well, loving than fucking. Which conjures up images of reverse cowgirl and dirty talk. It is the same with other, non vulgar words. Would you rather be slim or scrawny? Confident or Cock-sure? Opinionated or Argumentative? I must add here that fuck is a much more taboo word than rape, why is this when rape is obviously more taboo than rough consensual sex. It is a puzzling thought.

I have often pondered why pretty much all swearwords in the English language have something to do with bodily fluids or sex. ‘Piss, Shit, Arse, Bloody, Fuck, Cocksucker, Prick, Twat’
I think it may have something to do with the assault on the hearer’s senses and mind when they are forced to hear the words. Take Shit as an example. When somebody says it to someone it is effectively forcing him or her to think of a steaming turd, which is obviously not pretty. I suppose in a way it is invading their personal thoughts. This is one idea I have that may have made the words taboo. Another possibility is the fact that these bodily fluids have connotations of disease. It is probably no coincidence that Shit is a worse word than Piss because feces carries more germs than urine. Fart is more acceptable than Piss as people, watersports enthusiasts excluded, would rather be farted on than pissed on. I find it interesting that we have no swearword for vomit; maybe it just hasn’t caught on. Chunder, Spew and barffed are all words we could find in a child’s Beano comic.

Have you ever thought it strange that Eskimos (or the politically correct term for them) have 12 words for snow? Well look at how many the English have for feces. Ill give you twelve right of the bat (Shit, Dung, Crap, Poo, Turd, excrement, defecation, bowel movement, scat, manure, doo-doo, number 2) and for good measure it has been estimated that we English speakers have 800 expressions for sex and 2000 for a lady of the night.

I want to get back to prominence of the ‘C-word’. You would think that, and spare me any sexist backlash, because historically it is men that swear more, that the vagina would evoke positive connotations rather than negative ones. Then again, as Steven Pinker wrote ‘you have to think what the connotations were before toilet paper, tampons, regular bathing and anti-fungal drugs’

You would never call your child, or anyone’s child a little cunt. (I hope) But on a semiotic level we call them much worse. For example I called a student of mine a little sod. Which is fine and would barely raise any eyebrows. On closer inspection the word ‘Sod’ comes from sodomise. I was basically calling a twelve year old ‘a little anal sex lover’ It is the same with other milder swearwords (Bugger-Buggery, Pillac-Prick, Scumbag- Condom)

Any thoughts on this will be appreciated as I cant get my fucking head around it.