the eloquent delinquent

Where the $!&# does swearing come from?

There is a fascinating Nature podcast interview this week with the noted Harvard (formerly of MIT) cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker on the origins of modern swear words. Pinker, celebrated author of the influential book The Language Instinct (on my summer reading list this year) is an expert on what language reveals about human cognition and he is at his best when dissecting grammar, figures of speech, syntaxual formalisms and the like. He begins by remarking that the quintessential swearing idiom in the English language (f--- you!) has no universal meaning. Moreover, statements like ``close the f-ing door'' make no logical sense at all and we must ask how the f-word came to have such uses. Pinker argues that in every context in which the f-word is invoked, there exists a "religious antecedent". That is, in former times when religion held a more ubiquitously prominent role in society, it was conventional that items of little value that needed to be disparaged were damned by God (``close the God-damnned door''). Over time, as Western societies embraced liberal, secular traditions, the choice of religious associations began to lose poignancy and thus had to be replaced. Furthermore, synonyms like feecees (I use the incorrect spelling because of a censure worm running on the blog server) & sh-t were necessary to distinguish intended effect since the latter word has strong offensive connotations while the former word is strictly objective. Pinker's eloquence and seamless choice of pertinent examples help him convey his ideas with ease. Additionally, he discusses how language is suffused with particular world views that science has been forced to readdress. As an example, he points to the anthropic nature of language to instill ``beingness'' in cats which is counter to all known findings of evolution. I look forward to exploring more of his works in the near future.