Some people are saying I wrote an “important
article” on a topic in sociolinguistics. The modesty for which I am so well
known prevents me from making this claim myself, but I can’t help what other
people are saying, right? To be specific, linguist Michael Adams, in his recent
book, In Praise of Profanity, wrote
this: “In an important article, ‘On Swearwords and Slang,’ Robert L. Moore
(2012) attempts to distinguish slang from profanity.”
Admittedly, the issues that linguists consider
important might be different from those that the linguistically benighted deem
worthy. Some people want to end world hunger, others want to distinguish slang
from swearwords. Chacun à son goût.
My interest in this topic was provoked when an
anonymous reviewer of an earlier article admonished me for putting slang and swearwords
into a single lexemic category. So, looking at these two kinds of words
closely, I was struck by the way they were so often linked but also by the fact
that they were clearly not exactly the same thing. So, I sought the help of a
number of Rollins students who dutifully filled out questionnaires asking them
to categorize some of the words and phrases found in expressions like these:
“Who boogerbooing?...Jig, I don’t have to. Talking
about me with a beat chick scoffing a hot dog! You must not of seen me…”
And, in a more poetical vein,
“He banked the six and seven cross-side
He took the motherfucking eight for a goddamn ride”
Based on what my students indicated, and backed up
by what a similar sample of Chinese responses from Beijing students showed, I
came to the conclusion that slang and swearwords are universal categories that
serve separate universal social/psychological functions. The latter is
prototypically used to express intense, often negative, emotion, while the
former is prototypically used to inspire an ethos of egalitarian informality. These
linguistic categories overlap in usage, largely because they share an emphasis
on informality and the expression of affect. But they are prototypically
separable and linked to specific design features of human sociality.
Anyway, it is nice to know that somebody has read
one’s work and approved of it. Also, it occurs to me that if I write another 10
or 20 “important” articles on swearwords, I could become an academic big shot
in linguistics; a kind of Jane Goodall of dirty words. If that happens, I
intend to assume a cool slangy nickname like Badass Bob. Actually better than a
slangy nickname would be a catch phrase. I’m open to suggestions, but right now
I’m toying with this one: “When you think of bullshit, think of me.”
Family Tree of Indo-European Languages
