The F word? - Luke

Luke Kirchner

The F word?

     What is the thing we call swearing? Well in the article, the author, a linguist, often refers to "F*ck You!" as a point of research and understanding of linguistics. She goes on to explain how this phrase is quite mysterious and calls back to a question, Is F*ck really a verb? While the article does point to a few conclusions, such as there are multiple ways to use the word, and that is some instances, it is a verb. I thought was pretty interesting because of the many ways it can be interpreted. I decided to do some of my own research, while also taking a deep dive into the article. Not much of a swearer myself, I decided to start incorporating this word into other phrases to see if it would work. Something such as "F*ck communism" works, but could be interpreted as sexual innuendo if another example was used. Another interesting discovery was that some consider f*cking an adjective. This could work in some cases buts let's experiment: f*cking vs playing. For example, "Turn off that radio that is playing" works, but "Turn off that radio that is f*cking" does not (Unless that radio is a little strange...).   

     While the article was actually complex for a word like f*ck, I still tried to dig deeper to gain an understanding of why this word is often used not in its original meaning. The way it's used seems to be not a product of linguistics, but rather society. Society has morphed the "disapproving" f*ck meaning to basically be a swear words, and a swear word only. Looking at other ways, it can be infixed into a phrase, such as "fan-f*cking-tastic". At this point, the meaning changes to an exaggeration. This is called expletive infixation and has been debated and talked about by scholars for years. In conclusion, it seems like the syntax of swear words have both been changing but also hasn't really progressed among different languages. From just a word like f*ck, people have changed it's meaning and uses many times. It's quite un-f*cking-believable!

http://the-toast.net/2014/12/09/linguist-explains-syntax-f-word/
http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Expletive_infixation
http://journals.equinoxpub.com/SS/article/view/18396/18137

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