"In Premodern times, the most offensive http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifwords were excommunicatory in nature. ... In Modern times, which is where many people still live, words that cause most offense affront our personal and private sensibilities. ... In our Post-modern times, as the voices of the margin dwellers and powerless have been given consideration and brought to the center, it is exclusionary language that causes most offence."
I'm actually still thinking about whether I agree; I tend to think that the more productive analysis is still the sociolinguistic one about power and solidarity (and could relate to seminal sociolinguistic work on pronouns of solidarity and power in French etc), which could play into the pomo idea Andrew offers, but would need some tweaking or reworking, I think. I quite like his ethics of speech that he lays out. I think that I would add a biblical model which might be helpful and, I guess, supports my own approach: sometimes we should use the verbal equivalent of Jesus' turning over the tables in the temple. For that to work, though, we would need to be people who don't overuse such words so that they lose their impact. My kids know I'm really cross if I 'swear', for example, because I rarely do. I keep certain words for high impact. Like Andrew, I try to be aware of my audience, and sometimes that means taking account of generational mores and sometimes it might mean realising that some hearers make certain kinds of judgements if they don't hear certain kinds of words (there is a solidarity function in some contexts) ... Can we really be all things to all people even in our speech? Some people find putting aside their own sensibilities for the sake of the other too much. But then we do also have to consider the personal and existential auhenticity of such speech acts.
You might want to refer back to some of my earlier comments. Of course, I tend to home in on the linguistic dimensions. Who gives a ... about profanity, theology of profanity, more on profanity.
TallSkinnyKiwi: Offensive language: I Think My Mother Taught Me: See also a helpful post on Julie Clawson's One hand clapping blog.
2 comments:
Somehow, I feel that like me, you ought to be commenting on Big Brother is this line of thinking.
I thought about it Doug. Cos I liked what you said. Actually, I think that it might be worth pushing the thinking even further: if the issue is offence caused in BB, isn't that a blunt instrument which could apply also to 'conventional' profanity... ?
But it does reinforce my analysis based on solidarity and power.
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