One of the countless anecdotes regarding my hero, Samuel Johnson, is about a lady complimenting him for leaving out “bad, low and despicable words” when compiling his great 1755 dictionary.
“No, Madam, I hope I have not daubed my fingers,” he replied, as if including dirty words would actually soil his hands. But being Johnson, he had to add, “I find, however, that you have been looking for them.”
No crime there. While most adults don’t search for swears, we do notice them — that’s one reason they’re used, as intensifiers, to draw attention, language’s yellow highlighter. Consider a headline in Monday’s Sun-Times, “PRITZKER TELLS TRUMP TO ‘F- – – ALL THE WAY OFF’ IN VIRAL VIDEO.”
If only more people did that.
This might be a good moment to register my personal objection to those dashes. Who are they supposed to protect? If you know the word — and pretty much anyone who can read knows this one — you automatically fill it in yourself. Perhaps some would swoon to see those last three letters in print. But they’d get over it.
We could help them. Obscenity shocks, some folks, anyway, because it’s rare. If we used such words more, they would become less objectionable, the way gay people rehabilitated the slur “queer.” Gov. JB Pritzker can say the word, but the Sun-Times won’t print it undisguised — don’t blame me, I’d do so in a heartbeat. But as I sometimes tell readers: I follow our style; I don’t set it.
Not every institution is so inhibited. The University of Chicago has a stellar reputation, one not particularly associated with lewdness. Yet parents of prospective freshmen visiting the school were once treated to linguist Jason Riggle’s class on obscenity. With projected charts tracking the frequency of specific obscenities. In Rockefeller Chapel. No one complained. Nor did Pritzker’s word choice cause a stir.
“We’ve gotten more used to politicians intentionally breaking these rules to convey extra strong feelings,” Riggle said. “We totally expect that. It tends to convey authenticity because you’re breaking politeness norms — you can’t be held to them because you’re so upset.”
Swearing is an expected transgression.
“It’s not that unusual, but it is unusual — that’s kind of the whole point,” Riggle said.
The surprising part of this episode is how little “pearl clutching” there was afterward.
“I had to go looking for it,” Riggle said. “The fact that this didn’t cause more of an uproar is fascinating. That he was talking to teachers adds an extra meta level.”
The University of Chicago has a long history of frankly studying obscenity — well, as frankly as they could. In 1934, U. of C. professor Allen Walker Read published a 15-page academic paper called “An Obscenity Symbol” without ever specifying the word he defends, arguing it is not the natural physical act that makes such words objectionable, but our reaction: “Thus it is the existence of a ban or taboo that creates the obscenity where none existed before.”
Read reminds us that Americans are notorious prudes. Noah Webster chastised Johnson “for his work contains more of the lowest of all vulgar words than any other now extant,” and expunged the Bible of such foul terms as stink, dung and belly.
H.L. Mencken, who besides being an acerbic wit was also a serious scholar of language, agrees, associating increased use of “forbidden words” with major social upheaval.
“The American people, once the most prudish on earth, took to a certain defiant looseness of speech during the World War,” he writes in 1936. “Today words and phrases are encountered everywhere … that were reserved for use in the saloons and bagnios a generation ago.”
A crisis lowers our standards. “American punctiliousness has obviously faded, given that we’ve elected a thrice-married, potty-mouthed 34-time felon whose relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the most notorious pedophile of our time, is an open mystery to some, glaringly obvious to others.
Riggle points out that swearing is hardwired into the limbic system, practically a reflex.
“We are built to swear, literally,” he said, noting that people who have had massive strokes and can’t otherwise speak can still rattle off obscenities.
Even when our brains are dying, we can still cuss. Which might be a useful metaphor to better understand the governor of Illinois telling the president of the United States to “f – – – all the way off.” We could sniff at the word. Or step back and realize it’s a symptom of a political system that has suffered massive damage and is perhaps dying before our eyes. Pritzker is speaking out for the people of Illinois, against the shredding of American democracy and the abandonment of norms of humanity and law. It’s an obscene situation. Using obscenity when addressing it isn’t wrong; it’s almost required.