Cursing 101
Ever wonder where bad words come from? According to the Daily Utah Chronicle, the school paper of the University of Utah, a class called Bad Words and Taboo Terms teaches just that.
Described as “an introduction to linguistics as a whole”, the course examines expletives from around the world to chart the linguistics behind obscenities. It sounds pretty cool: Randall Eggert, a linguistics professor at the University, covers the whole spectrum of dirty words, from profanity to blasphemy, racial, ethnic and social slurs, and the significance of curse words all over the globe.
What’s really interesting about this course is the fact that it’s offered in Utah, the Mormon capital of the world. For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, swearing is right up there with drinking, drugging, and pre-marital heavy petting — i.e. not kosher. Perhaps you remember the 2005 story of Tyler Poulson, a Mormon teen who jumped from a moving truck to avoid hearing his buds talk nasty about some bitches.
But Eggert, while eager to appease the worries of critics (who’d most likely come in the form of devout parents), also seems ready to defend his cause: “I will never use any word that I wouldn’t use in a lecture,” he said. “I will mention (taboo terms) in quotation or example sentences, but this class is not censored.”
He goes on to assure the paper that he is not looking to offend students and urges those sensitive to potty-talk to consider not enrolling. While the class would obviously provide some titillation to profanity-deprived college kids, the topic is also a great look at the cross-pollination of anthropology of language studies.
For example, the Australian Guugu Yimidhirr tribe forbids any man to address his mother-in-law directly. Instead, he must use a set of inanimate objects — whatever’s lying around — as intermediaries.
Sounds pretty interesting. It’s also probably a pretty big step towards a more liberal academic discourse for the University of Utah.
