Kurt Vonnegut on Profanity

MY LAWYER, MUCH encouraged by the 2 lists I am making, and by the fact that I have never masturbated and like to clean house, asked me yesterday why it was that I never swore. He found me washing windows in this library, although nobody had ordered me to do that.
So I told him my maternal grandfather’s idea that obscenity and blasphemy gave most people permission not to listen respectfully to whatever was being said.
I repeated an old story Grandfather Wills had taught me, which was about a town where a cannon was fired at noon every day. One day the cannoneer was sick at the last minute and was too incapacitated to fire the cannon.
So at high noon there was silence.
All the people in the town jumped out of their skins when the sun reached its zenith. They asked each other in astonishment, “Good gravy! What was that?”
My lawyer wanted to know what that had to do with my not swearing.
I replied that in an era as foulmouthed as this one, “Good gravy” had the same power to startle as a cannon shot.

Do what now?

From all of us,





Fuck off.

This thread is much better now.

Cocaine is a helluva drug.
~Rick James

www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2011/10...rofanity-and-comedy/

I believe that Carlin was right, because "Gee Willikers" has never had a profound affect on anyone at any time in human history, yet if you go back and rewatch that lost episode of Leave It To Beaver, where Beaver proclaims "Wally, why are you such a fucking cesspool of hate and derision to me?" I can unreservedly guarantee that of the entire series, THAT SENTENCE is the one you'll always remember.

Profanity has several reasons - first and foremost is that it is an exclamation point where, grammatically, one cannot be put:

"I think you're a! liar, sir!"
"I think you're a dirty! liar, sir!"
"I think you're a fucking liar, sir!"

English has no way to emphasize a word in a sentence, really. There's not even a way to emphasize a particular syllable or word, other than using all capitals, which is also grammatically incorrect. Thus, adjectives are the way we emphasize an idea in a sentence. Yet, as shown above, you can't put an exclamation point on words mid/sentence, and some adjectives or even strings of adjectives do not fully encompass the emotion the writer is trying to elicit in the reader. Profanities do that - they, with absolute certainty, deliver an emotion in a reader that would otherwise go undelivered.

At best, most words in English that are spelled the same, or even a group of homonyms, can only mean a small handful of things. Yet, when someone says "Fuck" or any other number of words (Cunt, Shit, Bitch, Asshole) they can mean virtually anything or nothing all at the same time - they can be adjectives or nouns or many other word forms. They are quite unique in that their placement in a sentence or even in a paragraph changes their meanings. If I had to call them anything as a "type", I'd call them force multiplying nounjectives.

"You're a worthless fuck"
It always denotes a lack of value, which could've simply ended with "worthless" but the addition of the word at the end relates a far more viscerally understandable thought.
- if said in context of sex, it means you're not a good lover.
- if said in context of work, it means you're a poor worker.
-if said in context of an owner to a pet, it means that the animal lacks utility.

I could go on and on, but I don't believe that Vonnegut's theory works in a time where you cannot escape the usage of profanities. In reality, they are merely words, and only society has attached intrinsically harmful value to them.

Is "I laid with her until she screamed" or "I fucked her until she screamed" any different in its message, really? Does I "laid with her" mean that I just laid in bed? Does it mean I had sex? How about the other sentence? Does it mean we had sex, or that I somehow cheated her out of money? Neither has specific meaning unless used in context. But one is profane where another is biblical, or at a minimum, Shakespearean. So why is "fuck" more profane than "laid with" when they have multiple potential meanings but the salient one is identical?

It's insane. It's mind control.

If forum language were a game, profanity would be an overused theme, like zombies or Cthulhu.

cranberries wrote: If forum language were a game, profanity would be an overused theme, like zombies or Cthulhu.

Nah. Profanity are D6s. Ubiquitous, yet necessary.
Lol/omg/fomo/etc are the zombies and cthulhu of forum speak.

I love Vonnegut.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I could go on and on, but I don't believe that Vonnegut's theory works in a time where you cannot escape the usage of profanities. In reality, they are merely words, and only society has attached intrinsically harmful value to them.

The Vonnegut quote is not his personal philosophy, it's just an excerpt from one of his books, "Hocus Pocus," I believe. That quote is from the protagonist. Vonnegut swore as much in his writings as any other writer. If you've never read his works, I highly recommend it. He's one of the best American authors of the modern era. "Slaughterhouse 5" is one of my all-time favorite books.

Personally I've gone through periods of my life where I've never swore and other periods when pretty much every other word was an obscenity. Personally I prefer a happy medium. Like a spice or herb it can really flavor language, used too much and it can be overbearing. I've known really creative swearers who are inventive and hilarious in it's usage and other people who use the word "fuck" for all the meanings you described and more. It's a bit of a crutch and shows a lack of vocabulary.

Sentence enhanced!

metalface13 wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I could go on and on, but I don't believe that Vonnegut's theory works in a time where you cannot escape the usage of profanities. In reality, they are merely words, and only society has attached intrinsically harmful value to them.

The Vonnegut quote is not his personal philosophy, it's just an excerpt from one of his books, "Hocus Pocus," I believe. That quote is from the protagonist. Vonnegut swore as much in his writings as any other writer. If you've never read his works, I highly recommend it. He's one of the best American authors of the modern era. "Slaughterhouse 5" is one of my all-time favorite books.

I'm sitting here looking at my bookshelf, with Slaughterhouse 5, Welcome to the Monkey House, Cat's Cradle, and Like Shaking Hands With God.

I was wondering why on earth he would've said that....now it makes much more sense. I'll revise: HIS CHARACTER is wrong.

It's a bit of a crutch and shows a lack of vocabulary.

I fully believe that this is one of the more banal, overused explanations for cursing. Mark Twain, Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Clancy, John le Carré, Vonnegut....all command a very spectacular understanding of English, yet all (and oh so many more) contain profanities strewn throughout their writings. Now, one could argue that Shakespeare, the master of words, didn't swear directly, but instead spoke around obscenities with impeccably delivered lines that were more obscene and gratuitous in meaning than had he simply swore.

But still, one cannot, with a straight face, claim that all of the writers who have used profanity in their books, especially the most illustrious, such as Hemingway, lack a command of the nuances of English.

"Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another." - Herbert Marcuse

TL;DR: Fuck has power because the MAN doesn't want you to say it. Fuck THE MAN. ~P.R.

While I did not care for Slaughterhouse 5, I simply adore The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle.

I worked at a Wendy's when I was 19. The manager was a friendly biker fella who said "fuck" at the end of pretty much every sentence. Not for emphasis or anything; he basically used it as a verbalized period. An actual example:

Customer getting his food: "Can I have some salt and pepper?"
Friendly biker manager: "Salt and pepper shakers are on the table, fuck."

stormseeker75 wrote: While I did not care for Slaughterhouse 5, I simply adore The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle.

Two of my all-time favorite books. I've read all of Vonnegut, and there is definitely swearing in his books (heck, Breakfast of Champions gives the asterisk as a symbol for "asshole"), and I recall him using profanity in some interviews and conversations. I question the source of that original quote. Are we sure it wasn't Einstein or Lincoln who said that?

Being an Ex-Mormon for a year or so now, I'm just getting comfortable swearing again. There's a ridiculous brand of "near swearing" that Mormons engage in... Oh my heck. Flippin'. Dang. Fetch. I stuck with standards like heck and darn and such, but if you're deep in Utah, you'll hear a lot of those goofy ones.