Words: Ipsita Misra (She/her)
Swear words are one of those things that inextricably link us to our humanity, much the same as hunger, love, and art.
Fucking hell, you absolute arsehole!
Caught your attention there, didn’t I? Swear words. Where do I even start? Their presence is endless and far-reaching, existing in every language, culture, and demographic. Swear words are one of those things that inextricably link us to our humanity, much the same as hunger, love, and art. Many of them are based upon supposedly “private” areas of our bodies, such as the vagina (cunt, twat), or the penis (dick, cock), or about sex in general. Some are hilarious: a penis can even be referred to as a “blue-veined sausage”, or a “bed snake”. From comedic effect to offensive slurs, these swear words are used for expression ubiquitously.
Many swear words are centred around sexual acts, or body parts associated with sex, yet there are countless tabooed ways of describing bodily excrement (shit, turd, crap). There are also slurs towards repressed communities that trespass the boundaries of comedy and enter into the realm of offensive. All of these are considered vulgar, particularly in Western/European societies, and this notion of vulgarity is the parent of all swear words we know today.
A Google search will show that the word ‘vulgar’ originates from the Latin word ‘vulgaris’, which means common or ordinary. With time, it morphed into the definition of one who is not “well-bred”, or, in clearer terms, someone who does not hail from upper-class society, suggesting that only the wealthier parts of civilisation, such as the monarchy and nobility, had “pure blood”, whilst the rest of the population was viewed as inferior.
The taboo words of today first became popular during the Renaissance period. Colonialism ensured the broad scope of repressive tendencies towards natural habits such as sex or excretion, allowing it to reach corners of the world that were previously untouched by any ideas that suggested they were impure. Colonisation also mapped out a legion of new, discriminatory swear words targeted at, and significantly more offensive towards, people of any races, religions, and sexual orientations, regarded as “other,” upholding the notion of white supremacy.
It is easy to determine that the origins of most swear words were steeped in societal snobbery, a conditioned sense of what is pure versus what is impure, which comes directly from the hierarchy between the rich and the poor. What was generally considered ordinary, or normalcy for the poor, was regarded as vulgar and crass. Respectability was the propaganda of the rich. In today’s society, however, the veil of taboo surrounding vulgarity is gradually being pulled back. Profanity has become increasingly common in movies, and younger generations are taking a more liberal approach to addressing swear words – even saying ‘fuck’ has become normalised in some university classrooms.
Additionally, with political ideologies such as rejecting white supremacy or heteronormativity gaining ground, many offensive slurs are taking a backseat. Meanwhile, terminology surrounding things as normal as body parts and sexual intercourse is becoming less stigmatised. That’s why words such as ‘fuck’ and ‘dick’ don’t hold as much weight as they once did, although swear words describing non-male body parts still retain a degree of taboo due to patriarchal standards (or the lack thereof).
Considering swear words as shameful has an insidious problem – many social media platforms are openly intolerant of swear words, treating them as scandalous and shameful. In his article Navigating Algospeak on Social Media, Joe Kort discusses how repressing slang words about sexuality reinforces the idea that they are unspeakable. He writes about algorithmic censorship on social media, relating it to the censorship depicted in George Orwell’s 1984, where censorship was referred to as “newspeak,” and, in a similar fashion, terms the new world’s online self-censorship as “algospeak.”
It should not be deemed rebellious to use supposedly vulgar swear words when there are already enough offensive terms to degrade people who do not fit into idealised norms. While it is impressive that young people today are fighting back against this culture, our overall mindset still needs to change in order to truly build an equitable society, starting with dismantling offensive terms that are not swear words, normalising ideas of sex and sexuality, and decolonising our minds about ideas of puritanism. Our imperfections lie not in the natural expression we find in swearing, but in limiting this expression. The less we try to fit ourselves into idealised checkboxes, the more liberated society will be.
