Profanity

Profanity, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "an offensive word" or "offensive language". It is also called bad language, strong language, coarse language, foul language, bad words, vulgar language, lewd language, swearing, cursing, cussing, or using expletives. This use is a subset of a language's lexicon that is generally considered to be strongly impolite, rude or offensive. It can show a debasement of someone or something, or show intense emotion. Profanity in this sense takes the form of words or verbal expressions that fall into the category of formulaic language. In its older, more literal sense, the term "profanity" refers to "offensive words, or religious words", used in a way that shows the user does not respect "God or holy things", or behaviour showing similar disrespect. Etymology: The term "profane" originates from classical Latin "profanus", literally "before (outside) the temple". It carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with a secular purpose" as early as the 1450s CE. Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, considered sinful, and a direct violation of The Ten Commandments. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing. Profanities, in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity, are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults, which laughed and scoffed at the deity or deities. An example from Gargantua and Pantagruel is "Christ, look ye, its Mere de ... merde ... shit, Mother of God." In English, swear words and curse words tend to have Germanic, rather than Latin etymology. "Shit" has a Germanic root, as, probably, does "fuck". the more technical alternatives are often Latin in origin, such as "defecate" or "excrete", and "fornicate" or "copulate" respectively. Strong language is by no means a recent phenomenon. The Bible records instances, such as mention of men who "eat their own dung, and drink their own piss" in the Authorized King James Version of 1611's translation of Hebrew text of 2 Kings 18:27. Shakespeare is replete with vulgarisms, though many are no longer readily recognized. Research into swearing: Analyses of recorded conversations reveal that an average of roughly 80–90 words that a person speaks each day – 0.5% to 0.7% of all words – are swear words, with usage varying from 0% to 3.4%. In comparison, first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words. A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends, while Britons are more likely than Canadians and Americans to hear strangers swear during a conversation. Swearing performs certain psychological functions, and uses particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms; all these are avenues of research. Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, and may contribute to our understanding, notes New York Times author Natalie Angier. Angier also notes that swearing is a widespread but perhaps underappreciated anger management technique; that "Men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center". Keele University researchers Stephens, Atkins, and Kingston found that swearing relieves the effects of physical pain. Stephens said "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear". However, the overuse of swear words tends to diminish this effect. The Keele team won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for their research. A team of neurologists and psychologists at the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research suggested that swearing may help differentiate Alzheimer's disease from frontotemporal dementia. Neurologist Antonio Damasio noted that despite loss of language due to damage to the language areas of the brain, patients were still often able to swear. A group of researchers from Kno.e.sis Research Center, Wright State University studied why people swear in the online world by collecting tweets posted on Twitter. They found that cursing is associated with negative emotions such as sadness (21.83%) and anger (16.79%) thus showing people in the online world mainly use curse words to express their sadness and anger towards others. Perceived severity: The relative severity of various British profanities, as perceived by the public, was studied on behalf of the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, the ITC, the BBC, and the Advertising Standards Authority; the results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete expletives?". It listed the profanities in order of decreasing severity. A similar survey was carried out in 2009 by New Zealand's Broadcasting Standards Authority. The results were published in March 2010, in a report called "What Not to Swear". According to the Authority, the findings "measured how acceptable the public finds the use of swear words, blasphemies, and other expletives in broadcasting". Types of swearing by purpose- According to Steven Pinker there are five possible functions of swearing: -Abusive swearing -Cathartic swearing -Dysphemistic swearing -Emphatic swearing -Idiomatic swearing Broadcasting: In countries where it is illegal to broadcast profanity on radio or television, such as the United States, programs can be pre-recorded or a broadcast delay device can be used to screen for and delete profanity or other undesirable material before it is broadcast. Songs have to be cleared of profanity before they are broadcast on radio. Minced oaths: Minced oaths are euphemistic expressions made by altering or clipping profane words and expressions, to make them less objectionable. Although minced oaths are often acceptable in situations where profanity is not (including the radio), some people still consider them profanity. In 1941, a judge threatened a lawyer with contempt of court for using the word "darn".