For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude and Fun, by Rebecca Roache
Oxford University Press, 257 pp., $21.95
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English contains swear words with religious meanings such as Christ and damn, but they are widely viewed as milder than other forms of profanity. In some languages, swear words can evoke a greater sense of sacrilege. If you had just cut someone off in traffic in Montreal, for example, and heard them yell tabernak (tabernacle) or baptême (baptism), it would be a good sign they were pretty upset. Quebecois French is not the only language with harsh swear words that invoke religion. Italian and Hungarian contain phrases that respectively communicate “God is a pig” and “may God fuck you”. Other languages differ from English in employing disease-based profanities, such as the Dutch term kankerhoer (cancer-whore), or by offering creative ways of disrespecting someone’s relatives, especially their mother. Croatian has a pithy way of saying “May a dog fuck your mother”, while Spanish offers the possibility of informing someone “I shit in your mother’s milk”. In terms of comprehensiveness, it’s hard to beat the phrase in Mandarin that means “Fuck your ancestors to the 18th generation”.
Some accounts of swear words say their power to offend stems from what they denote or connote. The difference between these two kinds of sense is captured in the fact that one of English’s harshest swear words, cunt, denotes the same genitalia as vagina, yet the two terms connote different emotions and associations. One prominent defender of this type of view, the psychologist Steven Pinker, argues that when we hear a swear word, “we reflexively look it up in memory and respond to its meaning, including its connotation”. The result, according to Pinker, is that “an expletive kidnaps our attention and forces us to consider [something] unpleasant”. In her entertaining new book, For F*ck’s Sake, philosopher Rebecca Roache casts doubt on attempts to locate the offensive power of swearing in the words themselves. Rather than hunt for a secret offensive ingredient in what they mean, Roache plausibly suggests, we should look to the context of their use. Doing so reveals not only why they can cause offense, but foster comradery, release strong emotions, and perform other valuable functions.
Swearing’s offensiveness can’t be due to what the words denote, because often they don’t denote much of anything. Roache asks us to imagine being in a fancy restaurant where we overhear a waiter say “shit”, after dropping a fork. Even if we are offended, we probably won’t imagine him defecating. But such a disgusting image could easily come to mind if he came by our table and asked, “How’s your meal? I’m just going for a shit!” These cases show that swear words sometimes draw our attention to something unpleasant, but not always. Roache further argues that our emotional responses to swearing vary too much for their offensiveness to come from their connotations.
Roache’s preferred theory relies on the premise that words are subject to preferences regarding when they should or should not be used. Swear words are terms that have become subject to a widespread preference that they should be avoided, especially in formal contexts such as a typical funeral or job interview. Once the preference that a word not be used becomes widespread enough, it undergoes a process that Roache calls “offense escalation”, which transforms it into a term with the power to offend. Expletives have this function because most of us are aware of the default presumption against using them. When we go ahead and curse anyway in settings in which the presumption applies, our audience can reasonably take this to show our lack of consideration for, or even hostility towards, those we address, a message that is only amplified when we also express aggression or contempt through our tone of voice or body language.
Roache observes that when swear words do denote, they refer to topics that are taboo, such as sex, bodily functions, or religion. This goes some way to explaining why we have the particular swear words that we do. As she writes, “the ease with which one can cause offence by discussing taboo topics makes taboo words ripe for offence escalation”. But it would be a mistake to think that the taboo subjects that swear words refer to ultimately explains their offensiveness. Cunt and twat mean the same thing, but cunt is more offensive. “If we want to know why offence escalation has worked more powerfully on cunt than it has on twat, there may be no really satisfying explanation”, Roache writes. “Our conventions about swearing, like our other conventions, contain an element of arbitrariness”. What matters is the different preferences that have given rise to different etiquette regarding the use of both terms, such that one is treated as worse than the other, which competent speakers of English are assumed to know.
Pinker-style views struggle to explain swearing’s positive uses. It’s no accident, for example, that many of us are comfortable swearing around friends. Roache argues that the default presumption against swearing can be overridden, and so her context-based approach has no trouble acknowledging that swearing can bring us closer to others. As she puts it, “trusting another person to recognize when our impoliteness is done with love, and to react warmly to it, can be an effective way to build intimacy”. Similarly, the fact that cunt is used as a term of endearment in Scotland and elsewhere is not a problem for her, as different social preferences have generated a different norm of usage.
There is a robotic understanding of etiquette that sees it simply as a matter of following social rules. Roache illustrates the problem with this view by describing someone laying a table with an extensive array of silverware in order to humiliate a guest who is unfamiliar with formal dining. There may be an etiquette of silverware, but weaponizing it like this defeats the purpose of sensible etiquette norms, which is to show respect to others. Applied to swearing, a non-robotic approach requires recognizing that there can be occasions where it is not merely permissible, but wrong not to swear. If I socialize with a new group of sweary friends but stiffly avoid ever cursing around them, thereby ruining the relaxed mood whenever I show up, I’ve done something inappropriate.
Roache matter-of-factly spells out swear words rather than employing f*** and the like. This is in keeping with her discussion of the use-mention distinction. If I say that in George Carlin’s comedy routine, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits were the seven words you couldn’t say on 1970s television, I mention swear words without using them. Mentioning allows us to draw attention to aspects of our shared vocabulary with clarity and precision, a practice that, in the case of profanity, comes with less risk of causing offense than actually hurling the terms at someone.
Roache cautions that just mentioning taboo words can sometimes be offensive. She gives the example of someone saying, in the heat of argument, “I’m tempted to call you an arrogant prick, but since I want to keep this polite, I won’t.” The speaker mentions an insulting phrase while also indicating that they hold the disrespectful attitude that typically motivates its use. This however is an unusual case, and Roache argues that we should generally treat the mere mention of swear words differently than their use.
Roache contrasts swear words with racial and other slurs. Swearing and slurring are both taboo uses of language that often express disrespect. But slurs are not offensive because they’ve undergone offense escalation. To be sure, many people are rightly offended by their use. But white people once considered it acceptable to use the n-word in polite society, and Roache argues that it was wrong to do so even then, before there was a widespread recognition among whites that it should not be used. What makes using slurs as terms of abuse wrong is the contempt they express for members of particular groups. For this reason, Roache argues, it is wrong for racists to use slurs even in private, when only other racists are around.
Many words that originated as slurs (Quaker, suffragette, Tory) have been so successfully reclaimed by the groups they targeted that anyone can now use them without giving offense. Roache suggests that queer is heading in this direction. It can still be used as an insult, but even straight people can use it neutrally, as when referring to queer studies. Roache argues that we should hope to see something similar happen to swear words, such as cocksucker and (in North America) cunt, that naturally reinforce sexism and homophobia. One strategy she endorses is to model ways of using these terms without prejudice, similar to how working-class Scots already use cunt. Yet even though she sees the value of repurposing slurs, and distinguishes use from mention, there is one slur that even Roache cannot bring herself to utter.
Roache discusses a Stanford University law professor, Michael McConnell, who in 2020 was condemned by students and his Dean for reading aloud a quotation containing nigger in class. Roache notes that black people can now use the word inoffensively. But she points out that she, like McConnell, is white, and that this explains her practice of never spelling out the n-word. “The emotional response it provokes in black people”, she writes, “does not distinguish between quotation and non-quotation, or between use and mention”. This view, however, faces two problems.
The first is that black public opinion on mentioning slurs is not monolithic. In fact, prominent African-American intellectuals, such as the linguist John McWhorter and the law professor Randall Kennedy, have argued that a strict norm against non-black speakers even mentioning nigger, whether in the classroom or elsewhere, is counterproductive. After McConnell made headlines, Kennedy published a law-review article that argued that such a norm subtly demeans the students it ostensibly protects, by sending the message that they are mentally fragile. “We aren’t aware of any studies that purport to demonstrate that simply hearing the word actually causes ‘trauma,’ damages ‘mental health,’ or causes ‘emotional exhaustion,’” Kennedy and a co-author wrote. When it comes to black students studying to become lawyers, Kennedy asked, “would a party in a case where the word is part of the facts really want to hire an advocate with such an increased risk of professional disability?”
The second problem with Roache’s fearful stance toward the n-word is that the deeper principles of her account support a different view. She argues that using slurs is offensive because doing so expresses an attitude of contempt. But given that we typically mention slurs without conveying disrespect, mentioning any slur, including the n-word, should be treated more leniently than using it. By suggesting mere mentions of the n-word by white people are always offensive, Roache goes a bit wobbly, splitting the difference between her view and Pinker’s. Context still matters insofar as the race of speaker and listener matter, but something like a secret ingredient is activated so long as the hearer is black and the speaker is not. It seems more in keeping with what Roache says about the offensiveness of slurs and the use-mention distinction to think that the power of slurs to function as weapons resides not in their mere utterance, but the total context of their expression. Recognizing this still allows us to condemn all uses of the n-word by speakers who are not black as supremely offensive.
Roache cautions that in mentioning slurs against groups to which we do not belong we should not overdo it, which is good advice. Otherwise, we risk the impression that we are only uttering them because we take pleasure in doing so. This is typical of the thoughtful and fresh insights Roache offers on nearly everything she addresses, from how broadcast guidelines should handle swearing to the way offensive language allows us to keep others in check without resorting to violence. Well-written, witty and wise, For F*ck’s Sake shows what philosophy can be.
Andy Lamey teaches philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and is the author, most recently, of The Canadian Mind: Essays on Writers and Thinkers (Sutherland House).
