Automatic asterisking
My mail box overflows with information about
taboo
language in the world of rock music, including several suggestions
that the odd awarding of asterisks in iTunes music store listings is
the result of a script that does the asterisking automatically, and
therefore can't block words that have significant non-taboo uses.
I resisted this idea at first -- it seemed so, well, stupid, scarcely
an effective way of protecting young minds from dangerous content --
but some research shows that this is almost surely so. Here's the
system, as it was working today:
1. The search software accepts a taboo word as input, and finds
everything with that word in it (yes, there are some occurrences that
escape asterisking, as I'll demonstrate below),
AND
everything with the asterisked version of the word in it. So a search
on
cock pulls up occurrences
of "cock" and also "c**k". The search ignores case ("dick" and
"Dick" are the same word), apostrophes, and hyphens. And deals
only with whole words, so
fuck
or
fucks won't get you the
band The Crucifucks. (Joe Salmons and Monica Macaulay, in their
1988/89
Maledicta piece
"Offensive rock band names: A linguistic taxonomy", awarded the prize
to Crucifucks. The band is still in print, I see.)
2. Asterisking preserves the number of letters in the word, and
the first and last letters. So:
f**k, f***s, f****d, f*****g, f****n,
f****n'
3. Asterisking affects the song titles and the album titles, and
with (so far as I can tell) perfect consistency -- but, bizarrely,
NEVER
affects the name of the artist(s). So we get:
Artists: Cock Robin, Cock &
Pussy, Goblin Cock, Cock Lorge. Artist: Big Cock. Album by
them: "C**k Rock". Song on this album: "Year of the C**k".
Artist: Anal Cunt. Artist: Mary's Cunt. Their song: "Mary's
C**t -- Pitbull Pete".
Artist: Holy Fuck. Album by them: "Holy F**k".
Artist: Crazy Penis. Artist: Penis Flytrap. Song by
them: "P***s Flytrap | Wait".
Artist: The Piss Drunks. Artist: Piss Ant. Album by them:
"P**s Off".
Artist: Nashville Pussy. Album by them: "Let Them Eat P***y".
Artist: Suck It To Ya. Album by Boris the Sprinkler:
"S**k". Song by Dude Offline: "You S**k, You Drank My Beer!"
No human intelligence is applied in any of this. "Piss" is
asterisked even when it doesn't refer to urine or urinating.
Non-fellatial "suck" is asterisked. "Balls" is not asterisked,
even in the song title "Blue Balls".
4. The obvious miscreants (and their variants) are asterisked;
these words count, in some people's minds anyway, as taboo vocabulary
across the board:
asshole, bitch, cocksucker, cunt, fuck,
motherfucker, nigga, nigger, piss, shit
Some items get on the list because a high percentage of their uses are
sexual:
ass, clit, cock, jism, masturbate, penis,
prick, pussy, slut, suck, tit(s), vagina, whore
On the other hand, words that have significant non-sexual uses aren't
asterisked:
balls, butt, dick, ho, hoe, jack (off),
jerk (off), nuts
Nor are a few words that must have seemed to the iTunes folks to be
technical or medical:
anal, anus, phallus, semen, testicles
There's a fine line here between these words that make it through the
filter and "masturbate", "penis", and "vagina", which don't. (Another bit of oddness is the fact that "rape" escapes the iTunes filter.)
One wonderful result of all of this is Lil' Kim's track listed in
iTunes as "S**k My Dick".
[Final disclaimer: I make no claim to completeness in these lists. Update 8/1/06: Though still scratching my head about a world in which "masturbate" is a dirty word, but "rape" is not, I've checked out some more vocabulary. A nice minimal pair: "blow job" is ok, because each word on its own is ok, but "blowjob" turns into "b*****b". "Bullshit" is, of course, out. "Turd" is out, but "crap", "poop", and "fart" are ok. And "fag" and "faggot" are out, but "gay". "queer", "homo", and "dyke" are ok.]
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at July 31, 2006 07:31 PM