Bad words the luggage of our past?
Offline So my 3 year old hears the word "Butt" today on T.V. and says to me "Oh, that's a bad word". FYI - she has heard worse but this was my queue to come here and post this question.
I know my wife and I tend to try and stem off bad language, myself more so than her. I assume that's because the Mormons I lived with were agaisnt this sort of thing, more than her family. We would set a jar out and have to put a quarter in the thing whenever we broke the rule, at the end of the month, whoever said the least bad words or none at all won the money. I never won of course but being that my first 12 years of my life were spent growing up around bikers, go figure.
Anyways this stuff seems to be coming in from all sides. Everyday my 3 and 5 year old seem to recognize or point out some new bad word or words, some of which aren't even bad at all, it's like they are looking for them, and I spend half the time trying to correct them. It just seems somewhat irrational to me how our society has been trained to react to this stuff, myself included.
This skulpting that's going on is very apparent in my kids, even beyond what influence I have on them but it is not limitted there. I remember sitting in a team meeting with 30 adults most of which have college degrees, we were at break, and we had an open discussion going on. I was talking about having to sterilize the "nipples" on my kids bottles when they were younger, and the people starting laughing and reacting like I was some kind of sicko for saying "nipple". I don't get it..
Being i'm no expert on this, i'm really just looking for some other opinions and perspectives on this subject to help me better rationalize what I see going on...
Is there a valid reason behind creating these liguistic taboos or is this just some societal luggage we have carried over from some early cultural dogma?
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
- Login to post comments
Usually it has to do with the subject being something that offends people - religion, sex, excretion or the associated body parts. Different cultures use different words more often - French are more likely to use religious cursing, Spanish sexual, and german excretory. I've seen wackos who thought saying something "sucks" was a bad word.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
I'm related to those wackos
.. I guess that's why I feel I'm not standing on stable grounds when trying to rationalize this subject.
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
Many of the words that have been deemed "bad words" come from the language of the Anglo-Saxons around the 11th and 10th centuries. When the Normans conquered the Saxons in 1066, much of Anglo-Saxon culture was considered inferior or vulgar. This included many of the words the A-S's used to describe bodily functions, which were replaced by the "more proper" Norman words. For example, 'piss' became 'urine', 'shit' became 'excrement', 'fuck' became 'fornicate' etc.
"The powerful have always created false images of the weak."
If you can find the penn and teller show on this you might want to watch it.
Really I don't see any difference between a word an its meaning. If someone is going to tell me to stop cussing I'll go into the details of the word each time I'd normally use them.
If you're worried about your kid explain the difference between a word and its meaning. Do people not want to hear a word or the meaning? All that is really needed for a child to understand is when its ok and not ok to use the words (so they, or mostly you, don't have to deal with bullshit).
As for the thing about people laughing at the word nipple I think that is just the by product of them censoring themselves for so long. Just image what could happen if someone had to use the "V" word. Oh noes human anatomy
To a point I'd say its left over from early cultural, but things have obviously gotten better. No laws saying you can't say words, well not too many... I remember from some place that in early america it wasn't ok to say the word breast even if you're talking about meat. I just wonderd what they called it. "Can you past the... um... the... dirty pillows part?"