Profanity in fiction

[armaina]

I've been thinking a lot on language lately again, figure I aught to what with it being a pretty important aspect of any society. So as I was listening to the radio, I was thinking about the aspects regarding word censorship, the standard in which some words are deemed so harsh they must be altered, removed or bleeped if presented on certain public

Comments

[lantairvlea]

I second some of dev's thoughts. If you don't feel something belongs in a culture leave it out. Just because almost all recorded Human cultures use it doesn't mean that your entirely non-human culture would because, let's face it, we're all Human and perhaps that is one of our traits as a species (one we can overcome, but there nonetheless).

The overarching trends appear to split up into groups: slang for the sex act and genitals, religious cursing (names of deities/prophets, swearing by holy things, devils, unholy places/things, etc.), racial slurs (all boil down to suggesting inferiority of the race), bodily functions/potty words, suggesting stupidity/animalistic traits, gender slurs.

I personally think most people don't really understand what they're saying when they use taboo/curse words, especially if you insert the meaning of the word in there "you sexual intercoursing female dog, I'll sexual intercoursing beat the sexual intercoursing feces out of your condemned to hell sexual intercoursing face." Of course that would take far too long to say and while it still sounds angry it doesn't quite have the same impact as the blunt slang, which I think is another common strain, curse words tend to be short. I don't think I can come up with any that are more than two syllables long, even among racial slurs.

I think it's figuring out what the culture would find unsavory and building from there. Do they hold anything, place, or being particularly sacred or particularly unholy?

By the way, I rather enjoy reading these musings.