Language and its naughty bits.

To carry on dwise's thoughts, it always used to be said by 'nice' parents to their children that only very badly brought up, uneducated people swore. In other words the lower class.'Mouth like a sailor' was common - crudeness was expected amongst working men, it was a sign of manliness. A similar dismissive was used against lower class working women - 'mouth like a fishwife'. The working class are common and crude. My mum would say that a man without a tie was 'dressed like a collier.'Speaking nicely was a way to point out that you had social ambitions.These days, there's much less notice taken of swearing and the classes are more homogenised, although I'd still say that it's a social marker.The real taboo words now are about social discrimination. The word 'nigger' is now totally taboo (unless you are black - and then only in certian circumstances.).I'm watching the word 'gay' turn into a mocking jibe now, applied by heterosexuals to other heterosexuals. If may yet turn into a nasty accusation, like the word 'jew' did at one point in our history.

Yeah you can add some of those to the list, but the list would still be preponderantly made up of the excretory and reproductive allusions, that as you say are now just as often employed by upper as well as lower classes, so advanced and enlightened we have become, and in any case you aren't offering any kind of explanation for why we have taboo words either. Let me guess that the social discrimination words often equate to the basic class of words anyway. "Dirt" and "filth" are how they are generally characterized, right? Come on, give us a good evolutionist ramble about why homo sapiens developed taboos against filth and dirt, genital functions, whoredoms and so on.

I don't necessarily agree that there are universally taboo words. The sailors and fishwives of the world use the 'taboo' words as normal, everyday, language.They are taboo only in that they are found offensive by different classes of people. The educated classes run the media, so the words are not considered polite by them. A word is just a word after all, in this case the words are being used to differentiate class. As the classes evaporate, the language merges too.

No, they don't, they use them as insults and putdowns, expressions of disgust and disdain, which is part of what makes them taboo to other classes. They use them partly BECAUSE they are taboo, perhaps it gives them a sense of being above whatever they are putting down.OR -- here's another thought -- perhaps it expresses a sort of self-contempt.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes they do.A factory worker will look out of the window and say as a matter of fact statement"Oh bollocks, it's fucking raining again' or 'pass me that fucking spanner, jesus fucking christ, it's hot in here.'The taboo words are part of their language and have a universal usefulness - they can just as easily be used in a neutral or joking way as in a threatening or abusive way.It used to be said that the working classes spoke like that because they lacked vocabulary - it's possibly partly true but I think it more likely that it's just the language of their group.We all speak the language of our groups - it's a social and professional identifier. Professional jargon is a classical example and there's not more laughable than hearing an ambitious junior executive come out with management babble. It's all to mark us in the social setting and pecking orders of society. We change our language to match the groups we find ourselves in and be accepted by them. Work in a glass factory for a year and you'd be swearing like the best if them.That's why only a black guy can call someone a nigger - it's in-group speak. The hideous and, in my view deeply offensive term, 'bitch' is now common amongst a particular group of people. Once it was a fairly low key insult, now it's an another in-group term.

We have the taboo words that come from bodily functions that are considered dirty for the obvious reason that they're considered dirty.But we also have taboo words based around discrimination - nigger, coon, Jew, gay, gyppo. And no doubt many others depending on your culture and place in history.Then we have another category based on blasphemy and religious belief. These were supposed to be the very worst because they could get you killed and also dammed.Nowadays, they seem to be mostly exclamatory. "Damn" But they could also be extremely aggressive; "damn you" actually literally meant that once upon a time.[ABE] Remember the fuss about "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"? It would be utterly unremarkable now as it's totally lost it's meaning and therefore its shock value.A word still used in some parts of the UK is "s'truth" is an abbreviation of "God's Truth. The abbreviation was just about acceptable, whilst the full version, when used as an exclamation, was not. "God's Blood was another."Bloody Hell" - was once very offensive, now it's considered a low grade swear word.Edited by Tangle, : Afterthought

I'm sure there are Spanish speakers here, which would be more interesting since it's a large language like English. On my own side the presence of curse or taboo words is something I strongly associate with English, Gaelic only has reproachful stock phrases and they are completely unrelated to sex and bodily functions. There are no euphemisms for this concepts.This has led to a few embarrassing/funny situations with my mother, who is less aware of certain English language taboos than I am. Once told by an America tourist that she wouldn't be able to go swimming because of "troubles down there", my mam innocently asked "Oh, is it your arse or cunt?"Would an American school really ring the parents for the child saying fuck?

OK, those are good points, you've expanded the list.

Make no mistake about it, Faith, you're not.

In English there is taboo language and there is taboo language. Simple taboo words/phrases are avoided in polite speech, such as croak for 'die'. But other taboo words/phrases, specifically expletives, are not only typically considered more vulgar, they also have special grammatical rules no other words in the language have.I'm sure you've all heard of prefixes and suffixes, but what about infixes? These affixes actually bore their way into the middle of the word and make their modifications to it from there. There are languages that use infixing for all sorts of mundane grammatical tasks, but in English, the class of infixes is open only to full-word/phrase expletives: Now, before eyes roll and folks start passing this off as just another instance of people trying to swear as much as possible, take note of the fact that expletive infixing is rule-governed. Expletives cannot be infixed just anywhere into the word, and some words resist expletive infixing because they do not conform to the rules: Regardless of social class, expletives occupy a special place in the English language. It's true that a word is just a word after all; however, some words are different than others.JonEdited by Jon, : No reason given.

Depending on the circumstances, yes.

It would largely depend on the individual school and isn't something you could narrow down to something an American school would do. My sons grade school, for example, most likely would call me and say something. An extremely liberal school in, let's say California, likely wouldn't, so long as the kid didn't use it habitually (I assume).

Oh! I guess here if they roared "FUCK!" during class then they would get in trouble, something like a note being put in their journal for their parents to sign and acknowledge. However moderate cursing in class wasn't that uncommon when I was a teenager and certainly you could say anything in the halls, e.t.c. I guess it's not seen as offensive here.P.S. I'm not saying we are "more logical" or anything, there are things which are offensive in Ireland that an American would probably find silly. It's just that cursing isn't really one of the offensive things.

This is the article that caused me to finally create the topic: Student says f-word outside of class, college nearly ruins his career. Now, mind you, I won't even pretend to think this is the whole story or even a legitimate article, but it sounds wholly plausible as something that would happen.

I was thinking of younger school children.When I was in highschool (a teenager), my teachers even swore occasionally. Not too much is made of it at that age, unless it gets out of hand.