Profanity – It’s nuanced

Mark Greathouse

(5/2021) Business, civic, and religious leader Spencer W. Kimball once said "Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly." Dang, but that’s near prophetic. Can profanity be nuanced? Just as a reminder, Merriam-Webster defines nuance as a subtle distinction or variation, a subtle quality, or sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings.

Yebat is actually the Russian word for our F-bomb. In Canton you might say puk gai. Mrdat works in Czechoslovakia. A German might say hau ab. But somehow multi-syllabic cussing doesn’t cut it. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, I need a word that explodes from my mouth in one hell-bent syllable that soothes my pain. "Ouch" really doesn’t cut it, but it’s nicer than the F-bomb and won’t offend anyone within hearing distance.

I recall witnessing a young coed deliver a profanity-laced poem to an assembly of local poets back in 2017. Her father was seated near me in the audience, and the expression of shock and then anger on his face revealed that there was no nuance in his mind. He took her aside after her performance and am sure he shared his disappointment with her. My free-verse poem, Yebat, was inspired by that incident as a response to the increasing tendency of young poets and some academics to insert profanity in their verse, as much for shock value as any display of artistic license. My poem goes as follows:

A profane cry on an amoral planet. Alas, stripped from Russian poet’s arts! Duma’s sacrifice to beauty preserve; Antithesis of the decadent West. Orwell’s Newspeak screams to censor all out, As emboldened Winston yearns to shout filth. Some would say lost language is lost culture; So it is that cultures fast disappear. ‘Tis said profanity hastens such loss; That linguistic beauty be short-lived. Words lost forever from long-gone cultures, We ask of morality in the loss. Why then, why does profanity endure? It’s suppression a grave peril to art, Despite the deep offense it often breeds. Vulgar snake tongues, forked good and bad, Best such artistry be left to hammered thumbs. Profanity cuts verse like a chainsaw, And heals not the writer’s desperate pain; Revealing the shadows of discontent, With life but a single breath across time. Dare the cursing poet expect to be adored, As a trap set for man’s lower order. For the poet seeks to achieve in poetry What the musician achieves in music. The sweet lilt of the poet’s artful phrase, Obscured in the bitter fruit of YEBAT! We teeter on the threshold of heaven, And life’s morality play lingers on.

Buried in references to Russia’s Duma legislative body which banned profanity in the arts and reference to George Orwell’s classic 1984, the poem laments the very message that Kimball sought to convey.

Is profanity so nuanced? Why is it acceptable to some and not to others? We have been enveloped by a culture wherein our morality in the form of the use of profanity is being exponentially compromised. We see it blatantly blasted across headlines in the media. Asterisks in print and beeps in broadcast are ever-more common. The TV miniseries Deadwood took the F-bomb to new heights. A flag flown at a home in Connecticut applied the F-bomb to President Biden. Books targeting teens are laced through and through with all manner of profanity. Our senses of morality are shredded on a daily basis by the profane speech and writings of politicians, entertainers, academics, artists, and news media. In social media, profanity casually hides under cover of the likes of WTF, MF, SOB, &c. Shock jocks don’t even shock any more thanks to the plethora of vulgarity spewed across media venues. Is there a middle ground? Should there be?

Take the word F***. The earliest written use dates back to 1310 in British court records. The word had wide probable cognates across other Germanic languages in Europe, such as German ficken (to F***); Dutch fokken (to breed); and dialectal Norwegian fukka (to copulate). F***. Anger? Appelation? Loathing? F*** you or what the F***. In the nuanced sense, if you find it offensive, then it’s offensive. But to some folks it apparently isn’t. Does that excuse its use? Need we all be subjected to profanity?

What do we do about it? Holy smoke! Any solution is likely to sound as though it’s coming from some Victorian prudes. Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV. That may seem clear enough, but determining what obscene, indecent and profane mean can be difficult, depending on who you talk to.

In the 1964 Supreme Court landmark case on obscenity and pornography, Justice Potter Stewart wrote: "I know it when I see it." FCC rules remain influenced by that case today, and complaints from the public about broadcasting objectionable content drive the enforcement of those rules.

Obscene content is not protected by the First Amendment. For content to be ruled obscene, it must meet a three-pronged test: (1) It must appeal to an average person's prurient interest; depict or describe sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value; (2) Indecent content portrays sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that is patently offensive but does not meet the three-prong test for obscenity; (3) Profane content includes "grossly offensive" language that is considered a public nuisance.

Broadcasting obscene content is prohibited by law 24X7. Indecent and profane content are prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. Because obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, it is prohibited on cable, satellite and broadcast TV and radio. However, the same rules for indecency and profanity do not apply to subscription cable, satellite TV and satellite radio.

Print media are an especially appropriate measure of the use of profanity. According to a study by Jean Twenge, et.al. in 2017, "We find a steady linear increase in the use of swear words, with books published in 2005-2008 twenty-eight times more likely to include swear words than books published in the early 1950s. Increases for individual swear words ranged from 4 to 678 times. These results suggest that American culture has become increasingly accepting of the expression of taboo words, consistent with higher cultural individualism." Accepting or numb?

Nuance, however so subtle, is especially in the mind of the beholder when it comes to use of profanity. Maybe this is a case whereby the Russian Duma got it right. Keeping profanity to yourself or among your like-minded associates rather than deliberately offending others seems a preferable course. It’s hardly nuanced, but then there’s nothing nuanced about F***. Perhaps, we need to more deeply examine the undergirding morality of profanity in our culture. Where goes morality, so goes profanity.

You might follow Ephesians 4:29, "No foul language is to come from your mouth…"

Just sayin’.

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