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[Bauglir]

Can expletives serving as interjections or generic nouns serve a purpose beyond meaningless filler in language?

I say yes. "I hate that fucking wrench" carries a difference in meaning from "I hate that wrench". A difference of degree is still a difference!

[LordSlowpoke]

I would like to establish my presence as a watcher of this thread.

[Lectorog]

Posting to watch for someone to say no and defend their point. Because the obvious answer is yes.

[Max White]

Generally, using vulgarity implies far more hatred to something than simply saying 'I hate X' Or possibly liking something, in the less-used sense of 'I fucking LOVE X!'

Now I feel this is more of a cultural thing really.
Down here in Australia profanity is often associated with more positive expressions. "Fucking beautiful" implies that things are working out in a desirable way. In a similar paradigm, phrases considered offensive elsewhere are often used as a term of endearment.

[Xantalos]

Verbal body language. That said, PTW.

[LordBucket]

Can expletives serving as interjections or generic nouns serve a purpose beyond meaningless filler in language?

*sigh*

My position in brief:

Yes, like Lectorog says, it obviously can. Most obvious example: it can serve as emotional emphasis. However, far more often it exists not for purpose, but as a result of trained thinking patterns. For example, in english we say "I am hungry." Hunger is phrased as something that the speaker "is." That's not universal. In some languages hunger is something that you have, rather than are. "I have hunger."

One might suggest that both expressions mean the same thing...but they don't. They're different ways of thinking about a thing.

In the case of people who habitually swear, their way of thinking...in my observation...is fundamentally different from the thinking of people who don't. Swearing generally involves a great deal of vagueness, and the people who swear, I think, think less clearly than people who don't.

If someone says "fuck you," try asking them what exactly they mean. Anger side,they'll probably have a difficult time describing exactly what they mean. They might mean they're angry. They might mean they don't like you. They might mean if you come any closer they're going to punch you. But all of those things are distinctly different from one another, and people who are in the habit of swearing very frequently don't think any more clearly or precisely than they speak.

This is made evident when people who habitually swear a lot attempt to not swear. Ask one of them to try it sometime. Generally they will attempt to replace swear words with other words...but then discover that they can't, because there either aren't any meaning to the words they're trying to replace, or their thinking is grossly simplified compared to the necessary construct required to actually convey a useful idea.

For example, if somebody says "Oh my god! What the fuck?" How do you express that idea without the swearing? Go ahead, try it. Not so easy, it is? Without context you cannot identify a single meaning. It could mean any of several things. For example, it could mean "I didn't expect this." Or it could mean "I find this unpleasant and disturbing,"

There's no word you can replace "fuck" with to generate either of those meanings. The thinking being used by the people who use an expression like this is well and truly distorted beyond simple word substitution.

Swearing isn't a problem. It's a symptom of a problem.

[Blargityblarg]

Can expletives serving as interjections or generic nouns serve a purpose beyond meaningless filler in language?

*sigh*

My position in brief:

Yes, like Lectorog says, it obviously can. Most obvious example: it can serve as emotional emphasis. However, far more often it exists not for purpose, but as a result of trained thinking patterns. For example, in english we say "I am hungry." Hunger is phrased as something that the speaker "is." That's not universal. In some languages hunger is something that you have, rather than are. "I have hunger."

One might suggest that both expressions mean the same thing...but they don't. They're different ways of thinking about a thing.

In the case of people who habitually swear, their way of thinking...in my observation...is fundamentally different from the thinking of people who don't. Swearing generally involves a great deal of vagueness, and the people who swear, I think, think less clearly than people who don't.

If someone says "fuck you," try asking them what exactly they mean. Anger side,they'll probably have a difficult time describing exactly what they mean. They might mean they're angry. They might mean they don't like you. They might mean if you come any closer they're going to punch you. But all of those things are distinctly different from one another, and people who are in the habit of swearing very frequently don't think any more clearly or precisely than they speak.

This is made evident when people who habitually swear a lot attempt to not swear. Ask one of them to try it sometime. Generally they will attempt to replace swear words with other words...but then discover that they can't, because there either aren't any meaning to the words they're trying to replace, or their thinking is grossly simplified compared to the necessary construct required to actually convey a useful idea.

For example, if somebody says "Oh my god! What the fuck?" How do you express that idea without the swearing? Go ahead, try it. Not so easy, it is? Without context you cannot identify a single meaning. It could mean any of several things. For example, it could mean "I didn't expect this." Or it could mean "I find this unpleasant and disturbing,"

There's no word you can replace "fuck" with to generate either of those meanings. The thinking being used by the people who use an expression like this is well and truly distorted beyond simple word substitution.

Swearing isn't a problem. It's a symptom of a problem.

I'd say that any specific use of the phrase 'fuck you' contains a pretty clear alternative meaning, generally easily gathered from context. I'll grant that a lone 'fuck you' by itself, without context could mean any number of things, but again, that's why context, body language, tone and even emoticons exist. A word that can mean many things does not mean any of those things less just because it has several meanings.

I also disagree that people who swear necessarily have any different a method of thinking than others; a person being asked not to swear has just been asked to speak whilst being mindful of several words suddenly being made taboo; being asked to make valid sentences without using any eight-letter words would be a similar challenge, and if someone's pausing to count letters in their head under that restriction, you'd hardly blame them. In addition, being unable to replace a word with a different word doesn't mean the original word is bad or indicative of a lower level of thought; merely that the English language's usually excellent capacity for redundancy has failed. This is even less valid a point when we consider, as in the case of not swearing, an enitre category of words-of-similar-meaning are forbidden; someone trying to sell you a kayak while denied the use of any words related to water-based travel was never going to sound particularly articulate.

The example asking us to consider 'oh my god, what the fuck' without context is particularly misleading because it's not an expression you're ever going to encounter without context; none of the words in the expression are adding any meaning without context, it's just a lengthy exclamation. Adding context, tone et cetera back in (i.e. the only way you're going to encounter such a phrase in the wild) and you've got all the meaning you need. Trying to judge the word 'fuck' based on its presence in such a sentence is like trying to judge how fast cheetahs are as a species by judging their team's performance in the All-Africa Multiple Amputee Wildlife Racing Extravaganza.*

*such an event does not exist; this is probably for the best

[Scelly9]

PTW

[anzki4]

Guess what the newest VSauce video talks about?

[Vector]

As someone who alternates between colorful language and academic speech quite fluently, LordBucket, I am disinclined to believe your argument that those who curse more think less clearly.

You, after all, are restricted to a vocabulary and nuance less rich than mine.

[Darkmere]

Yeah, just think how much more descriptive "wow!" is, than say, "holy shit!"

Ah... wait no without context those are the same. Or not, you can't tell because there's no context in either, but the second collection of sounds is deemed bad in some social constructs, for reasons that have always eluded me.

It's the same for nouns. "all that stuff" and "all that shit" could be anything from the pile of laundry to unkept election year promises to the payload of an infant's diaper.

[LordBucket]

I also disagree that people who swear necessarily have any different a method of thinking than others

Ask some people who swear constantly to translate themselves without swearing and get back to me. I've done it, and I've seen them stumble at expressions like "What the..." and look around bewildered trying to think of what to say next. And then come up with something like "What the fudge?"

Which also makes no sense.

The example asking us to consider 'oh my god, what the fuck' without context is particularly misleading because it's not an expression you're ever going to encounter without context;

Ok, then make up whatever context you like and construct a sentence with the same meaning in the form of <Oh my X, what the Y!> Replace X and Y with words used literally and have the sentence make sense. Pretty sure you won't have an easy time with that because the sentence structure itself doesn't really mean anything. If I say <Where is the X?> it doesn't matter if I replace X with "cat" or "dog" or any other noun, the sentence works as an inquiry for the location of X.

You might try something like "Oh my word! What the hell!" But again, this doesn't mean anything. "Word" has meaning and "hell" has meaning, but in this sentence you're not actually talking about words and you're not talking about hell. You may as well say "Oh my smurf, what the smurf!"

The thinking that constructed "Oh my X what the Y!" is incredibly vague. A great deal (not all, but lots) of swearing is this way. For example:

"This sucks balls." --> "This X balls." --> How do you replace X and have it make sense?

"This sucks balls." basically means "This is unpleasant." Replace unpleasant: This is annoying. This is displeasing. This is frustrating. This is unwanted. All of these sentences make sense and would be reasonable statements in this context. The thinking that created the "This is X" sentence structure is functional. The thinking that created the "this sucks balls" sentence structure isn't.

Let's try another one:

"Fuck you." --> "X you." --> How do you replace X and have it make sense?

"Fuck you" could possibly mean any of several different things...but I'm going to take a guess and go with "I'm angry with you." So, "I'm X with you," replace X. We can do that. I'm annoyed with you. I'm frustrated with you. I'm displeased with you. Etc. Again, this sentence structure works. "Fuck you" doesn't work without the swearing.

People who swear tend to make sentences that don't make sense, and are dependent on meaningless filler words like smurf. Smurf you. This smurfing smurfs. What the smurf.

It's dumb when smurfs do it. It's dumb when grown adults do it too.

[LordBucket]

Yeah, just think how much more descriptive "wow!" is, than say, "holy shit!"

Relevant example, but doesn't contradict my position. The original post that spawned this discussion was complaining about people who

routinely engage in conversations consisting almost entirely of swearing, meaningless filler words and idioms.

Really, my original complaint was about poor signal to noise ratio in verbal communication. Swearing is just a subset of this that the bay12 crowd really wanted to latch on to and defend for some reason.

the second collection of sounds is deemed bad in some social constructs, for reasons that have always eluded me.

IF I TYPE IN ALL CAPS THAT ANNOYS SOME PEOPLE. THEY'LL TELL ME TO STOP YELLING, RIGHT? BUT, OH...YOU SAY, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH TYPING IN ALL CAPS. AFTER ALL, IF YOU GREW UP YOUR ENTIRE LIFE TYPING IN ALL CAPS YOU'D BE USED TO IT AND IT WOULD SEEM TOTALLY NORMAL. CLEARLY THE PEOPLE WHO DISLIKE IT ARE JUST DUMB.



More to the point, it's not "just sounds." Some people are more literal minded than others. Personally I grew up in a household where words were used for their dictionary meanings. So talking to people who insist on using fuck and shit in every sentence is extremely off-putting. When you say "i left my crap in the car" you might hear "crap" and think "your personal belongings. Me? I think brown smelly shit coming out of your asshole. Because that's what that word was used to mean for 18 years of my life growing up, and it's still what it means among my own personal social circles. Some people swear casually. Some people don't. And to the people who don't, we tend to think of what those words actually mean rather than some metaphor that you might think about when you say it. Do you understand how "I left my brown smelly shit that came from my asshole in my car" might be a bit peculiar to hear someone say? That's what you sound like to me when you swear.


THOSE PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE ALL CAPS MUST JUST BE DUMB. IT'S JUST A COLLECTION OF LETTERS DEEMED BAD BY SOME SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS FOR REASONS THAT HAVE ALWAYS ELUDED ME.

Do you get it now?

[anzki4]

Guess what the newest VSauce video talks about?

Relevant video is relevant.

[scrdest]

LB, you are trying to do a one-word substitution here, and it simply doesn't work.

First off, expletives are emotional conduits - negative or positive, doesn't matter. Since we aren't octopi or chameleons, we cannot modify our body color to convey strong emotions. If you remove them and try to substitute something more tame, the result sounds wrong, it sounds neutered and flat.

It's not only expletives that work like that - the classical example is 'evil' vs. 'doubleplusungood'.

Second, some expressions featuring expletives are more handy. WTF is far punchier and has wider meaning than 'That confuses me'.

So, it's not 'noise'. A sentence that conveys no pure information but does contain emotional baggage is still a useful construct for communication.

Swearing is just a subset of this that the bay12 crowd really wanted to latch on to and defend for some reason.

Do you realize how this sentence makes you sound?