Profanity in Fantasy

[talyesin]

So lately I've had an epic (in the classic sense of huge, not the internet sense of awesome, though I have no doubt that it will be awesome also) fantasy trilogy, and I keep getting hung up on the issue of language. Not the write-it-in-English sort of language, but rather, the manner in which I will phrase sentences and in particular, dialogue

Comments

[miseri]

I'm with Jan on this one. What constitutes foul language depends a great deal on culture. "Tabernac'" wouldn't be a swear word in Quebec if we didn't have the religious hang-ups that we do; similarly, if you have a culture where sexuality has always been completely divorced from issues of privacy and intimacy, it's be unlikely that the F-word would be considered foul language there.

Some words have retained their status as profanity through the ages, but others have not. Nobody uses "Marry!" or "Zounds!" as expletives anymore, for example. The point here is, that while people have been using foul language throughout the ages, the actual words that were considered "foul language" may have changed.

And darn it to heck, word substitution is a time-honoured tradition in swearing. As long as the characters (well, the older ones, anyway) demonstrate that they know they're doing word substitutions, I see no problem with it.

[talyesin]

I don't dispute that profanity needs to be culture-specific. However, if a culture has a hangup about cleanliness, and "unclean" is their worst swear word, will it have the same impact on the reader as using, shall we say, the C-bomb?

As for word substitution, I was thinking more along the lines of Frell or Frak that darn or heck. Or else, something fantasy-sounding, like "by the Dark One's left nipple!" or something similar.

[sabledrake]

Beware of slangy/anachronistic things, too ... I don't remember who it was, but some author at some panel at some con remarked on an Arthurian story in which they used "okay" as in "Are you okay?" and that was just so jarringly wrong

[talyesin]

See, I'm not so fussed when it comes to things like "okay" because let's face it, no one's going to read a book where all the dialogue is in Ye Olde English (or at least, not take it seriously).

(On a related side note, one of the things that ALWAYS bugs me is when characters drink kaf or kawfe or caffeth or whatever find-and-replace thing the author did to make what is obviously coffee seem 'more fantastical'. Ugh.)

[ai731]

Agreed. The only time an author pulled that one off for me was when the standard non-alcoholic beverage available in taverns was "redberry juice" and the character regularly got teased for drinking that rather than ale. I really enjoyed it when the party would walk into a tavern and order "Three ales and one redberry".