I say taboo, Languagehat says "Bring it on!"

Languagehat has a characteristically wry post titled "Sluts, literally", where he quotes Matthew "Julio" Yglesias ([how long have you been sitting on that one? -- ed.]) as saying "pardon me for being such a fuddy-duddy here but I really don't think 'slut' is a word people should use". SC erroneously assumed this meant that Mr. Yglesias felt that the word was at some point on the scale of obscenity where it was past risqué and into unncessary foulness. Imagine, if you will, a thermometer with "heck" at the bottom, and some four-letter words (which will not be reprinted here) at the top. However, a check of the link indicates that, in fact, Mr. Yglesias' disapproval was not of the word, but of the social censure that the word connotes.

Languagehat disagrees with Mr. Yglesias' position, calling himself a "wild-eyed permissive logophile", and coming out against "the very concept of 'words that shouldn't be used'". SC half-agrees, but thinks that two issues are being conflated here:

1) whether or not an idea is so offensive that it shouldn't be mentioned, and

2) whether or not a word representing that idea is so offensive that it shouldn't be mentioned.

As regards issue #1, your host is vigorously opposed to campus speech codes, style guides militating for Newspeak while declaring widely accepted usages to be crimethink, and childish stunts like destroying the print runs of newspapers containing ideas that are disagreed with by the destroyers. If you don't like an idea, argue against it. But do so in a manner appropriate to the level you've been engaged at. If someone calls you by a foul epithet, a scholarly essay is a weak response. If someone editorializes against you, burning their paper is a barbaric response.

So that brings us to issue #2, the question of whether particular words are, or should be, taboo. This is a delicate, and largely political, subject. Any pronouncement on this point is subject to objections from people who claim to be the offended parties, claiming that if you're not among them, you can't understand them. SC rejects this sort of argument, not because people's experiences aren't different, but because it reduces argument to wholly subjective claims grounded in identity, where the most sensitive person gets to trump everyone else by virtue of claiming to be sensitive.

With those caveats aside, SC's view of the matter is that context is the determining factor, but that some words are simply inappropriate for polite usage. This isn't entirely out of step with Languagehat's view; he comments "Words, like anything else, should be used with caution, but every word has its place". In the case of identity-based epithets, SC doesn't think there is an appropriate use in any context. However, when some people claim to find bigotry in mention of those terms, SC thinks that they are likely to be acting in bad faith, and trying to control public discourse through guilt. It's harder for me to sympathize with Mr. Yglesias' claim that words condemning behavior ought to be censured; SC contends that as long as the behavior is voluntary, people ought to be prepared to defend their own actions. If a promiscuous woman is offended by being called a "slut", she might want to consider the possibility that taking offense is a sign that she herself finds something disreputable about her behavior. If not, she should be prepared to defend it clearly, or dismiss her accuser as unworthy of a response. Simply declaring opposition to your actions to be socially impermissible is not a serious rejoinder.

As regards impersonal speech which is nevertheless considered obscene -- the so-called "four-letter" words (even though at least one of them contains seven letters, and its short form, three) -- again, context rules. Your host's everyday, casual speech contains at least a sprinkling of them ([that's a friggin' understatement -- ed.]). However, this post, or perhaps more accurately, the last line of this one (which SC can only dream of having written), represents the limit of the language that he'll use here (or tolerate in comments). Arguing that all speech registers, with various levels of stylistic and lexical taboos, are oppressive and fraudulent (I am not attributing this argument to Languagehat) is in truth nothing more than a normative claim in favor of the least restrictive way of speaking. There's plenty of reason for making normative claims -- non-analytic philosophers wouldn't have jobs if this weren't so -- but SC doesn't regard the conventionality of a norm as an argument against it. Barring the presentation of a remarkable argument on behalf of obscenity in polite speech, Semantic Compositions will remain a site that would make your grandmother say "that's nice, dear" (such were the directions for appropriate dress routinely given by the conductor of SC's wind band in college).

Of course, your host's views on issue #2 do not apply in cases where the hearer is an idiot.

Comments

[language hat]

I myself would not often have occasion to use "slut" (mainly because I feel uncomfortable, as a man, using a word that's a gender-specific insult taking aim at behavior that I feel should not be socially stigmatized for one sex only), but I know women who use it cheerfully and often, and that's fine with me. And on the general issue of "bad language," as an eager consumer of books that use the worst their language has to offer (say, Henry Miller in English, Venedikt Erofeev in Russian), I believe strongly in its effectiveness in the right hands -- and, needless to say, in the iniquity of any attempts to restrain it by means of legislation.

That having been said, I too try to keep my blog relatively decent, just to avoid unwanted visits from cyber-hooligans. (Every so often I have to delete a comment from some, I'm guessing, 14-year-old with a burning desire to show off his gutter vocabulary and a lack of anything to say about the topic at hand.)

[Amy]

it doesnt say any thing about horrible words!