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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I legitimately don't understand the odd obsession in the US with swearing.

Do you arbitrarily categorise words as "bad," then you ban such words in a lot of everyday circumstances, and therefore such words are made pointless.

Why even have swearing if it cannot be used? Elsewhere in the English speaking world, these are commonly used words with specific emotional attachments, in the US you "offend" people or get gasped at if you utter the forbidden phrases.

At least with certain racist phases I can understand the rational. Because you want to "discontinue" those words from existing. Not so with regular swearing.

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It's kind of a result of New England culture pervading the rest of the continent as the country grew. New England was founded by Separatists (starting with the Mayflower) and Puritans. Puritans wanted to "purify" the Church of England of perceived corruption. Seperatists had written off the church as a lost cause, which was treason subject to the death penalty.

A trickle of Separatists and Puritans settled New England from 1620 to 1630. Then from 1630 to 1650 many came over during a period called the Great Migration. Then the migration abruptly stopped (it stopped being uncomforatble to be a Puritan in England). So the culture stewed in its own very, very doctrinaire juices, and became homogeneous. Then it's ideas spread as the country expanded. Among those ideas is never using a word that is not written in the King James Bible, much less a swear word. Of course, there isn't a lot of logic to that choice of vocabular no matter how you analyze it, but there you are.

The Puritan church died out, but the no-drinking, no-dancing, no-card-playing version of the Congregational church survived quite nicely intact to my father's generation. (It is possible for it to wear off -- as my friends with whome I have played a game of Hearts over a few beers can attest. I'm a lousy dancer, though.)

> Why even have swearing if it cannot be used?

I think the point of having words which are not supposed to be said is to create a sense of risk around using those words. Because swear words are mostly considered taboo there is a social risk to using those words (your listeners might be offended) that helps to emphasize the importance of the issue to the speaker (that they're willing to take on risk because it's important).

For example it would be acceptable in a meeting to say:

"That is a bad idea."

But if you want to add in some social risk to emphasize your point you could say:

"That is a really fucking bad idea."

The latter statement would be considered rude and unprofessional in most work settings and, depending on the social environment, could even be grounds for termination.

> Do you arbitrarily categorise words as "bad," then you ban such words in a lot of everyday circumstances, and therefore such words are made pointless.

The other view is that without cultural pressure to restrict their use, swear words lose their gravity. Think about how many words we've gone though to express that something is very good -- we're currently on awesome.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/words

Cultures sometimes develop, believe it or not, without examining the rationality of a cultural norm. The short answer is 'that's the culture'.

Exactly. You could rewrite that for any cultural norm.

"I legitimately don't understand the odd obsession outside the US with banning guns. Do you arbitrarily categorize certain tools as 'bad,' then you ban such tools in a lot of everyday circumstances, and therefore such tools are made pointless."

It's even funnier, because in most countries hate speech is a criminal offense. The US has the least censoring of speech of any country I know of.

Well in the UK it was mostly a panic over he general strike in 1926 that started the restrictions on the right to self defence (derived from common law)

> because in most countries hate speech is a criminal offense.

Typically the standards are different from what seems to be called "hate speech" in the US. Though there are some odd laws around that should really just be removed.

I didn't think it was a big deal until I spent significant time around swearers and non-swearers. There is just an ugliness in swearing both in the harsh consonants that intrinsically reflect the ugliness of the words and the general attitudes surrounding the spewing of the words. I remember a non-swearer who shared with me the misperception she often felt was falsely accused on her. This surrounded her use of other words to express frustration or pain or anger or what have you that the underlying emotions of those softer words were curse oriented, just sugar coated or something to that extent. She told me that was a perennial confusion with her, that it just was not the case, her emotions did not reflect the harsh swearing attitudes/content. Pretty interesting thought, I used to think that internally they had all the rage/etc but just repressed it or whatever. I learned apparently cursing does reflect an internal state of one's heart that could very much be lacking entirely in others.

> There is just an ugliness in [...] the harsh consonants that intrinsically reflect the ugliness of the words

I won't comment on the rest of the post, but come on.

What is the ugliness in, say, "shit", that is not present in "shot" or "sheet"?

the logic here is "if curse then harsh", not "if harsh then curse", which raises an interesting question is there a soft curse word?

Come to think of it, it's like an emotional mapping to auditory expression, similar to this concept I heard about many years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

> the logic here is "if curse then harsh", not "if harsh then curse", which raises an interesting question is there a soft curse word?

I don't mean this to be insulting but rather to answer your question. I think the word "asshole" has relatively soft sounds.

hilarious, good find! Just a few minutes ago, I tried an experiment to make a softword spoken as a curse word. It was kind of hard, at first I imagined screaming "banana" as a curse, but it just came off silly. Then I wondered if the silliness was because banana's are kind of silly and I was blurring the mental concept into the attempt, then I said "monana" to try to make gibberish so I couldn't lean on existing concepts. Fun exercise.

I'd say soft curse words are the "clean" variants we've developed, like shoot, or fart. My Spanish roommate used to say miercoles, instead of the poop alternative.

> is there a soft curse word?

i believe the common parlance is "alternative curse words"

I was speaking of phonetically soft, but I see what you're getting at with the interpretation that dwesr2648 shares with the "clean variants". Come to think of it this actually brings to memory all those safe for TV dubs they'd substitute for curse words. Those must surely be a direct application of "alternative curse words". After work I'mma try to see if anyone made a YouTube mashup for dubbed curse substitutions. I always got a kick out of those as a teenager.

hilarious, a search suggestion for "alternative curse words" was this "alternative curse words for moms who swear". I love it :-p

Well, certainly not the phonetics.

This is something that you can't really generalize widely. People view words differently.

> I legitimately don't understand the odd obsession in the US with swearing.

It's largely classism. Some work environments shun people who swear to signal that they are part of a different social class that is more professional.

I think Fussell'd peg banning swearing to act higher class or more professional as a deeply middle class thing to do. Part of their trying-too-hard while missing-the-point tendencies. Avoiding out of fear of punishment would be more mid- and low-prole (high prole being too independent to care much about the whole matter).

Imposing it from above might be an attempt to force/encourage middle or low/mid prole attitudes in one's workers in general, and to make people with such attitudes feel elevated by the notion that "we're so much more professional now!"

More people should know about Paul Fussell's book.

I haven't yet seen an analysis that points out that a lot of middle class disgust with Trump is an aversion to his lower class signals. The gold bedecked Oval Office nearly made me laugh out loud because I knew what the response would be. As Fussell would say: money is not class.

His taste is so incredibly vulgar that all I can figure is it's actually marketing designed to appeal to proles, both in his role as an entertainer and to fleece nouveau riche proles with direct sales of products and real estate.

TIL I have an odd obsession with swearing. I never knew. I swear a lot so I'm glad you mentioned that, as an American, I don't like swearing.

(All joking aside, perhaps trying to generalize 300+ million people is too coarse of an approach :)

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