DRULIAS: There are no such thing as bad words

There was a time when each of us first discovered a bad word, and wondered at the idea that there was something we just couldn’t say. It was incredible to see the sheer power a single word had, the way adults would cringe when it reached their ears. Up until that point, there was no limit to the possibilities of articulating thought, but this was a word we could actually be punished for saying. For a while, we wouldn’t even know what the words meant, let alone wonder why they were bad; they just were. But we were wrong.

There are no such things as bad words.

Words cannot be bad. They can be taboo, but they themselves cannot be bad. Fashions of society are always changing, and the list of words that are “bad” is no exception. There are many words that you can say today that you couldn’t say in the past. For example, one of the many reasons James Joyce’s “Dubliners” took almost 10 years to be published was because so many publishers objected to the frequent use of the word “bloody.” If you say the word today is has almost no effect, but at the time, it was considered an obscenity.

There are also words you can’t say now that you used to be able to say, like the word “retarded.” From the Latin word “retardo,” meaning slow, the term “mental retardation” was used in the mid twentieth-century to refer to delayed transmission of information in the brain, most specifically due to lack of glial cells. However, the word is no longer acceptable when used to mean something slow, delayed, or any other use of the word — regardless of whether it is derogative — even if you are referring something that has absolutely nothing to do with the brain. People from the early 20th century would think this was weird in the same way we think it’s weird that the term “bloody” used to be so offensive you couldn’t publish it.

There are even words today that you can say in some places but not in others. For instance, “knob” is a dirty word in the United Kingdom, but in the United States it’s just something you hold onto to open a door. In the United Kingdom the word “fag” is just a colloquialism for a cigarette, but in the United States it’s one of the most offensive slur for homosexuality. Clearly it isn’t the words themselves that are bad, but something else.

If the argument against “bad” words is that the idea behind them is bad, that would make sense for certain words, such as racial slurs, but not others such as “f**k,” “a**” and “c**t,” which are not bad things at all. In fact, there are other words for those things that are not obscene. And if it’s the idea that’s bad, shouldn’t words like “murder,” “rape” and “genocide” be considered obscene instead? These words describe actually terrible things, but a word like “f**k,” which describes something that is so altogether nice, I can’t even write here.

So why does this matter?

All inhibition of communication is bad. Cooperation is the only way toward progress, and communication is the only way to work together; therefore any limitation to communication limits progress.

This even applies to hate speech, because it brings awareness to a problem. For instance, when someone says something hateful, people observe this and can respond to it (the recent Boston counter-rallies are evidence of this), but when people think something is too taboo to talk about, those ideas fester behind closed doors and people forget that others think them. There is definitely a difference between hate speech and obscene words, but the concept of uninhibited communication leading to progress is the same.

There are obviously scenarios in which cursing is not ideal, not because the words themselves are bad, but because the ideas behind them are things you wouldn’t say in a particular situation. For instance, in the same way that you wouldn’t talk about genocide around a child, I don’t think you should say the word “f**k” in front of one. You shouldn’t call someone an “a**hole” in front of a child either, because the context you use it in would most likely be an angry and hateful. You also shouldn’t use these words in a business meeting, because it would be unprofessional to talk about copulation or feces in such a scenario too. However, simply using these words is not morally wrong, as things that are morally wrong are always morally wrong and do not change due to societal tastes.

If you choose not to use words that are taboo, that’s fine. I myself choose not to use them in many scenarios, simply because I don’t want to. Furthermore, although I know there’s nothing wrong with them, many other people don’t feel that way. Why shock people for no reason? But I do not fool myself into thinking that the word “s**t” is any more vulgar than the very scientific word “feces,” because they describe exactly the same thing, and I certainly don’t think refraining from using it makes me better than anyone else.