And I don't mean World Trade Federation. This post has two stories. The primary is this essay that Dustbury pointed out from The Times of India. It was just so wonderful I felt compelled to steal it so I could share it with you. The second part is the guy in the picture above. We'll come back to him later. Who he is is pretty much irrelevant to the subject of the essay, but the two are tied together.
The ‘F’ word is the most versatile word in the language – Part I
A disciple once asked Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho) what the guru felt about the word “f**k”. Without batting an eyelid, the sensuous sage replied that it was the most beautiful, expressive and versatile word in the English language. It could be used as a noun, or as a verb, both transitive and intransitive. Suffixed with “about”, it meant to play around or dally. Followed by “off” it was an injunction to go away. It could be used as a participial adjective to connote exhaustion. Or as a simple adjective expressing scorn or contempt, or, on the other hand, great approbation. It could be utilised both as an adverb or adjective to denote a superlative, or as an expression indicative of surprise, consternation, delight, wonder, anger, disgust, dismay, elation and discovery. It could also be used as a purely meaningless qualification, merely for the heck of it.
Rajneesh’s mini-sermon on the mount, so to speak, was widely reported and avidly discussed by people who felt he was either an effing genius or an effing fake. But do we really need the services of a godman, true or false, to spell out an obvious fact of life for us? And the fact is that in an age when the English language boasts a comprehensive and cogent vocabulary of some 1,80,000 words, about thrice that of Shakespeare’s time, when the principles of mathematics have been employed to analyse the form and function of language, when fourth generation computers chatter away to each other in electronic dialects and satellite telecommunication has swamped the ether with a sea of verbal and visual messages, in order to express some of our most profound feelings so many of us still rely on a worn-out, rudimentary word which sounds like a foot being pulled out of squelchy mud. Why do we so abuse language?
In a recent issue of Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression, Dr Reinhold Aman, a Bavarian with a Ph.D. in medieval languages and America’s foremost “cursologist”, has suggested a reason. Noting that swearing is a form of displacement behaviour, like the ritualised aggression found in the animal kingdom (the raising of hackles, baring of teeth, drumming of the chest) which obviates recourse to actual violence, Dr Aman approvingly quotes Freud who said that the first human being to hurl a curse instead of a weapon was the founder of civilisation. In which case modern technological civilisation has got a screw loose, quite literally, and is in danger of self-destructing through an overkill of expletives undeleted.
A philologist has suggested that the reason why English-speaking people use sexual epithets so much, even on occasions when these are ludicrously inappropriate, is because of the neuter gender, “it”, which creates a deep verbal repression requiring the catharsis of sexually charged language. He is said to have hit upon this theory when he came across two men struggling to change a flat tyre and overheard them employing adjectives for the jack, the spare wheel and the road which, if taken literally, would stymie both the imaginative and physical resources of the most adept of sexual athletes. How could inanimate objects, and inconveniently formed ones at that, generate such venereal vituperation? The reason, he felt, must lie in the fact that the speakers suffered from a profound verbal frustration arising out of using a basically sexless language. He went on to say that in languages like French, which ascribed masculine and feminine genders to objects, there was less of a need for such sexual safety valves.
Ingenious as it is, this theory does not explain the ubiquitous use of sexually charged language. Though Hindi, for example, dutifully provides masculine and feminine genders for everything from the cradle (masculine) to the grave (feminine), it is capable of highly evocative invective. Punjabi and Haryanvi are even more so, as anyone who has exchanged words with a Delhi bus driver – or a former Deputy Prime Minister whose permanent form of address was “BC” – knows to his cost. The pathological syndrome called coprolalia which involves obsessive use of obscene language is a cosmopolitan affliction.
The root meaning of obscene is “off scene” and provides a clue to “bad” language, which in the western world is not restricted to sexual and genital references but also includes excreta and excretive functions. The French “merde” is as commonly used to signify disgust as the American “crap”. The nursery discipline of potty-training associates bodily excretions with feelings of revulsion, shame and guilt. In early childhood, deliberate incontinence is often seen as a sign of revolt. In later years this rebellious “making a mess” is symbolised by the use of a “naughty” or “dirty” word, the association with physical hygiene being maintained by the traditional kindergarten punishment of having your mouth washed with soap if you use bad words.
ALSO READ: The ‘F’ is the most versatile word in the language – II
jug.suraiya@timesgroup.com
It is a wonderful piece of writing AND it's from India, which makes it doubly wonderful. So much of what comes out of India is overinflated with redundant superlatives extolling the virtues and shortcomings of the subject at lengths that would put a sloth to sleep. I hope you catch my drift.
Anyway, I wanted a picture for my post, so I looked up the guy that was quoted in the first line of the essay. That's a picture of him at the top. Here's another:
Now do you know him? Here's another:
Yes, it's our very own Oregon Swami, the one who was booted out of the country for fomenting revolution or murder or mayhem or something, back in the 1980's.
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