So, something I've been curious about is the state of modern profanity. If you think about it, the really horrible words of yesteryear seem tame nowadays. They're still "bad," but they are increasingly common in polite conversation. Coming from the hinterlands, I still remember when tame words like "damn it" and "damnation" were substituted in cursing with "dagnabbit" and "'tarnation." I'm not sure about oversees, but I know that here, the British curse "bloody" is more humorous than vile. When I was 9, my mom tried to punish me for saying "sucks". Apparently, when she was growing up, that was a pretty bad word. She gave up when she found out that that word was ubiquitous on the elementary playground.
The origin of profanity, seems to me, to be wrapped up in religion and superstition. Notice that the two words we use to describe profanity in the vernacular are "cursing" (or "cussin'") and "swearing". Some mainstream media web article off of a site like MSN, an article that I have long since lost the link to, correctly elucidated the difference between the two categories: "Cursing" is attacking something, e.g. "Damn you!", or "Fuck off and die"; "Swearing" is an exclamation showing the severity of the circumstance, e.g. "by Jove!" or "Jesus Christ". In earlier times, it was believed that words had power to make things happen, and so cursing someone was expected (or hoped to) to actually produce results - so when somebody told you to "fuck off and die", the literally wished you dead, at least in the heat of the moment. So, it's somewhat excuseable that they'd fight you right back. Likewise, when somebody said "Jesus Christ, you'd forget head if it wasn't attached!" - or the equivalent god/spirit/natural force of the era - it was expected that you were actually trying to call the attention of the power in question to attend to the matter, which is generally very unlucky, as 1)omnipotent powers are in the position to hurt you and everyone around you, and 2) omnipotent powers don't like being summoned to deal with mundane shit. Obviously, with the increasing rationality and the decreasing commonness of animistic/paganistic/anthropomorphic-monotheistic thought, these intents are no longer at the forefront of the offensive party, but I find it fascinating how these two divisions still color the way people curse and swear.
Excepting ancient religious beliefs, you can still tell a lot about a society by how it swears. You can notice that Anglo culture was obsessed by anatomy by the fact that so many of the words we are supposed to use refer to bodily functions or even body parts themselves. You can also tell how obsessed England used to be by the fact that "bastard" was a fightin' word. Nowadays, the actual meaning of bastard feels so obscure as to not be noteworthy. When I was a kid and first found out what the "bastard" actually meant, the first thing a friend and I did was bond over the fact that we were both "bastards," since our fathers both left our mothers before we were born (though, I guess technically I wasn't illegitimate, 'cause my parents were still married at the time. Just barely). We didn't see it as a mark of shame so much as a fact of life, like one being born with brown eyes instead of blue. A blasé "Oh, sucks to be a bastard, what to do..." and then move on.
French swearing, particularly Quebecois swearing, really gives me a kick. Since this is an English article, I don't have any compunctions about writing French swear words down - it's not likely that I'll be taken to task by Google for that. I asked a coworker how to swear in Quebecois, and this is what he says: "Tabernac colis hostie cris de merde. It's like a combo system [in fighting games], you just keep adding words to build power." "Tabernac" is the Holy Tabernacle in the Bible, "colis" is the Holy Chalice (Grail), "hostie" I think is the Holy Ghost (Spirit), and "cris" is Christ. "Merde" just means "shit", and that's just there to finish the combo. It's a completely Catholic swearing system, a complete perversion of everything that is deemed holy. English has some of the same religious swearing tradition, but the fomerly powerful (especially in the country) words of "Jesus Christ!" "Christ's Sake!" "Hell" "Damn it!" are now relegated to meekness.
Russians apparently had elevated swearing to an artform, at least that's what I hear. Not speaking Russian myself, I have to go by what other people say, but from what I hear those people say, I really wish I did speak Russian. Some Russian general-turned-author during the Crimean War (Tolstoy?) was recorded as saying that it was essential for a Russian officer to know how to swear properly. From asking around with Russian friends, the art of swearing has really gone down hill since the the 19th century, but it's still quite elegant and refined compared to American English:
(From the website: http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Russian)
"Ne ssi v kompot, tam povor nogi moet"
Lit: "Don't piss in the bowl of punch, the cook is washing his legs in it." Meaning, "Don't chicken out."
"Smekh smekhom, a pizda kverkhu mekhom."
Lit. "You may laugh until you cry, but your pussy is topped with fur", Meaning "That's not fucking funny!"
"Mne vsyo ostopeezdelo."
Lit. "I feel like I've fucked 100 Cunts", Meaning "I'm sick of it all."
"Paltsem delanniy"
Lit. "Conceived by a finger" Meaning "Moron"
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So, with profanity being heard with increasing abandon on all of the media sources, does this mean that American Culture is become more crude and vile? Possibly. But, personally, I just think that those words are becoming less meaningful. In a modern society where sodomy (or to our more colorful British friends, "buggery") is seen less as sin against god and more of just an experimental phase in college; where a woman is encouraged to come to terms with her vagina; and where shit is as compost or manure and no longer as liquid evil (amorphous solid?), the power of anatomical terms to shock and offend seems to be waning. Nowadays, when somebody shouts "Cocksucker!", a reply of "Yeah, did it last night. What of it?" is not unconceivable. When a shock word becomes irrelevant, it becomes dead.
Plus, there is the power of "Euphemistic Drift," where words on the border of comfortability will gradually shift meaning over time, with normal words becoming dirty, and dirty words becoming tame. The word "whore" originally meant "beloved" - it is cognate (i.e. formed from the same original word) is also in English as the word "care." At somepoint in Anglo-German linguistic history, the word meaning harlot* became too racy, and people started subistuting the word for "love" instead. This came to us as "whore", which in all likelihood packs the same punch as the Germanic original that it replaced, so that now if you wish to talk about a "whore" in polite society, you use the word "prostitute" that replaced whore in the 17th century, which comes from a Latin construction meaning "to show your wares." Except in modern society, we don't use the word "prostitute" when talking to one, that's still too raw - we use the word "escort." Eventually, "escort" will become too racy, and a substitute will be invented.
(* Harlot has an interesting history itself - originally meaning vagabond, dictionary.com gives evidence that makes me think that it was originally applied to women through effeminate circus-jesters and jugglers; since then, it lost all association with men and transience, although it kept its low-born aspect)
The same principle works backwards, with swear words being overused and replaced with new words that are more powerfull. This suggests, is that if you want to find the heart of modern profanity, look for the words that still hurt, the words that pack a punch so heavy that people will fight, even kill over them. Look for the words that deal with the controversial, raw topics that modern society is obsessed about.
This was a topic that I was curious about for a couple of years - "What will be the new swear words when the current crop wears out?" - when I heard and interview of Russell Simmons by Howard Stern. That conversation opened my eyes because Russell Simmons correctly identified the "n-word" as a swear word (notice that I am actually scared to use it, as opposed to "shit" which makes its third appearance in this article). This conversation opened my eyes because the modern swear words (nigger, honkie, spic, chink, etc - wow, that gave me the chills just writing them) deal with race relations, or they deal with sexual orientation (faggot, dyke). So that tells us what modern America is currently obsessed about - Racism and Homosexuality. And in a way, this makes sense, because both of these issues are modern. It's only recently that discrimination has been deemed a bad thing, and so now the terms that are inherited that deal with denigrating and dehumaniztion other people have a special fire to them, because they are recognized as words that shouldn't be used anymore.
I postulate (and in my bid for immortality, this shall be called the "Gonzales Postulate" :Þ) that the words that a culture uses to swear, curse, or otherwise be profane, are the words that tell exactly how a recognizes and is grapples with its contemporary issues; These words show how that culture will progress and mature, given time for it process and come to terms with these issues.
J.K. Rowling really knew her shit when she made the most devasting swear word in her Harry Potter series be "Mudblood."
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