Another year of taboo avoidance
It's been almost a year since I assembled an
omnibus
posting (10/9/06) on taboo avoidance, and the mail has been piling
up alarmingly. And now that I've
posted
briefly on taboo avoidance and plain speaking in the
New York Times, it's time to look
at the rest of the media, blogs, and the like.
It's dangerous to try to discern general trends in these things, but my
impression is that while we might be living in "the Golden Age of taboo
avoidance" (as Ben Zimmer has put it to me), we're also seeing some
publications guardedly moving towards somewhat greater openness.
The result is, of course, confusion and inconsistency. And, in
the case of automatic asterisking/bleeping programs, downright
absurdity.
Here's a sampling of things that came to me over the past year that
haven't been blogged on here. It doesn't pretend to be a complete
survey of taboo avoidance (or use) during the year; it merely
illustrates a variety of approaches to the problem. (The examples
are grouped into rough categories for exposition; no serious analysis
is intended by this categorization.)
At this point, after two years on the Taboo Desk at LLP, I would like
to take a vacation from tracking taboo avoidance, so that I can attend
to some other topics.
1. Approaches to
use/avoidance.
Some publications generally go for avoidance. Some, like the
Guardian, the
New Yorker, and the
Economist are on record as using
words like
cunt and
fuck where they are newsworthy
(almost always in quotations). So you get the
Economist, back on 2.28/02, in
reporting a minor transport-ministry scandal, publishing the revelatory
quote:
"We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're
fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up
ever and we are all completely fucked."
Lane Greene, who relayed this to me on 7/4/06, noted that the
Guardian used
cunt considerably more often than
one might have expected, sometimes in the writer's own voice, as in
this
column by Peter Tatchell:
Swapping gossip with the girlfriend of
a man who was previously my long-term lover, we agree he was definitely
aroused by both the male and female form; equally delighted and
sexually voracious with a cock or a cunt.
Nevertheless, the impulse towards modesty, or presumed modesty, is
strong these days.
2. Circumlocution, paraphrase,
and allusion.
The
Wall Street Journal (like
the
New York Times) generally
avoids asterisks and the like, in favor of work-arounds, sometimes
elaborate and coy ones, as in
this
article (of 8/18/06) about the movie
Snakes on a Plane:
Also, the filmmakers added new scenes
to the film, including one where Mr. [Samuel L.] Jackson's character
delivers an exclamation similar to one a sound-alike had uttered in a
fan trailer. In it, Mr. Jackson repeatedly uses an Oedipal expletive to
describe both the snakes and the plane.
(Thanks to Jake Seliger. More
Snakes
on a Plane material from Ben Zimmer
here.)
Even more tortured is Leah Garchik's
The opening conversational line,
scrawled on the work, was the three-word declaration 'Men are
(donkey-apertures), ...
from her
San Francisco Chronicle
column
of 10/17/06 (pointer from Ned Deily). Figuring this one out is a
lot like solving a crossword puzzle -- and it doesn't really work in
British English.
Indirect allusion can get too indirect. Here's Gawker's
complaint
(passed on by Matthew Hutson on 10/10/06) about advice from a
Washington Post editor asking that
writers on the paper find ways to avoid "the N-word", which the editor
found "almost cutesy", recommending instead something like "a
well-known racial epithet":
Oh, but that's no fun -- putting it
like that could mean any racial epithet, and there are just so many to
choose from!
(Compare the
Times's
reporting in the
Isaiah
Washington affair, where the offending expression --
faggot -- was alluded to as "the
remark" and "the slur".)
Equally indirect is the avoidance of
jackass
on
Fox and Friends, as
reported by Jon Lighter on ADS-L 8/8/07:
In an oblique allusion to the MTV show Jackass, anchor Steve Doocy
remarked a few minutes ago that Johnny Knoxville hosted a show "with a
very inappropriate name." The name was not uttered.
In his 10/18/06 "On Language" column in the
Chicago Tribune, Nathan Bierma
found himself trying to explain IM chat slang without crossing over the
paper's language lines. It turned out that the people he
interviewed didn't always get the message:
ROTFLMAO: About one in three students
recognized this as "rolling on the floor laughing my [uh, arm] off"
(and they knew what replaces "arm"). A few only knew "ROTFL," and a few
only knew "LMAO."
WTH: About half identified this as "what the [heck]?" though several
said they prefer "WTF," ending with a different four-letter word.
Jane Acheson wrote on 10/24/06 to comment on the "hilariously
circumspect" approach the
Boston
Globe takes to dubious vocabulary, citing sport stories with
I don't give a [care].
The Yankees don't [inhale excessively].
in them (the second of which took her some time to interpret). I
noted that you get rather a lot of hits for {"don't give a [care]"} and
{"don't [inhale excessively]"}.
Even more obscure allusion: Jon Lighter reported on ADS-L 11/1/06 that
Fox and Friends had just rebuked
Barbra Streisand for using "the firetruck word" in public. Jon
noted that Google has cites back to 1999. The expression goes
back to the
Turtle Club question,
"What word begins with the letter F and ends with CK?"
Also on ADS-L, Barry Popik (11/9/06) quoted a 1960
Dallas Morning News article about a
Texas stew known variously as "son-of-a-blankety-blank stew", "S.O.B.
stew", and "Gentleman-from Odessa" or "Gent-from-Odessa stew".
The writer, Frank X. Tolbert, explained that the first two of these
names used "an unfriendly term in which it
is implied that the man receiving the insult has canine ancestry on the
distaff side", and cited an informant explaining that the last two
derived from the reputation of the town of Odessa:
The town had something of a reputation
for hell-raising. People from Sweetwater to El Paso generally agreed
that what passed for a gentleman in Odessa would be the equivalent of
what was called a son-of-a-blankety-blank in more civilized prairie
towns.
3. Euphemisms and technical vocabulary.
Note Bierma's report of
hell
as "[heck]", above.
In a startling development,
effing
(originally a kind of euphemistic abbreviation) is now regarded in some
quarters as intemperate language. From a 10/26/06 House of
Commons
debate
(pointer from Dery Earnshaw)
Mr. Osborne: If he cannot accept that,
surely the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is right:
the Chancellor will make an "effing awful" Prime Minister?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman withdraw that remark? We
must have temperate language in this House. I do not care what is said
outside.
Mr. Osborne: I of course unreservedly withdraw the quote from the
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Assorted inventive euphemisms of the
freakin'
etc. type:
UncleJam89 wants you to funkin' read
tonight. (Jon Lighter, ADS-L 2/24/07, from an eBay site)
This is fargin war! (Scot LaFaive, ADS-L 2/24/07, from the movie Johnny Dangerously)
Technical terminology functions as a substitute in an AP
story of
12/13/06 that Eric Jusino pointed me to in the Central Utah
Daily Herald
A Washington State University assistant
professor who used a vulgar racial term during a heated political
dispute with Republican students was "immature" and "thoughtless," but
his actions did not constitute discrimination, a new university report
concludes.
... During the dispute, [Dan] Ryder said [John] Streamas, an assistant
professor of comparative ethnic studies, called him a "white (solid
waste)-bag."
College Republicans demanded that Streamas be fired. University
President V. Lane Rawlins said Streamas would be reprimanded, but not
fired.
For the verb, rather than the noun, here's a quote from a
This Modern World cartoon by Tom
Tomorrow, which I saw in the
Funny
Times of 2/07; TT is reviewing the events of 2006:
Sept. 24: N.I.E. acknowledges that Iraq
war has increased threat of terrorism.
The report also notes that the Pope is Catholic and bears defecate in
the woods.
Then in February came the grerat
hoohaa
episode, in which this nursery word (or one of many variants:
hoo-ha,
hoo-hoo,
ha-ha, etc.) is used to refer to
the vagina. The appearance of "The Hoohaa Monologues" on the
marquee of a Florida theater was
noted
in the
NYT :
What's in a Name? Controversy
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: February 12, 2007
Under ordinary circumstances, the opening of "The Hoohaa Monologues" on
Thursday at the Atlantic Theaters in Atlantic Beach, Fla., near
Jacksonville, would not attract much attention. But "The Hoohaa
Monologues" by any other name is Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning,
internationally performed play, "The Vagina Monologues."
Last week, after a complaint from a passing driver who became upset
because her niece had seen "vagina" on the theater marquee, Bryce
Pfanenstiel of the Atlantic said, "We decided we would just use child
slang for it," News4Jax.com reported. Down came "The Vagina
Monologues." Up went "The Hoohaa Monologues."
But two days later, on Thursday, in response to a demand from the
organizers of the production, the original title was restored. The
organizers are a group of Florida Coastal School of Law students who
insisted that the original title be displayed because they had rights
to the play only if they refused any censorship.
"Vagina is the essence of a woman," said an organizer, Elissa Saavedra,
"and if you're going to suppress the name, then you're suppressing us
as women." All proceeds are to go to charity.
Ben Zimmer was the first to post this on ADS-L, and then other posters
reported occurrences of one or another variant on the TV show
Ellen; in the movie
Boys on the Side; in the Pussycat
Dolls' song "Beep"; on
South Park;
on
Grey's Anatomy; and from
their own childhoods. Eventually, people became to report other,
non-vaginal, uses: the
MAD Magazine
interjection (of astonishment or triumph)
hoo-hah, and the noun meaning
'fuss, to-do', in particular.
4. "[expletive]" and related
locutions.
Beep seems to be in fashion these days. Susan Harrelson
wrote me on 10/21/06 to report a competition between asterisking and
(automatic)
beep:
People posting on the IMDB message
boards, even experienced users who know that taboo words will be
rendered as "*beep*," may be surprised to discover the following:
F*cking = *beep*
F**king = F**king
I know I was.
But
bleep lives on, as in
this
Variety story
of 10/26/06 (passed on by Victor Steinbok) about NBC vs. the Dixie
Chicks:
The national spot shows a clip of Bush
authorizing troops to fight in Iraq, then cuts to a clip of Maines'
comment. Next is a clip of the president saying publicly that the Dixie
Chicks shouldn't have their feelings hurt if people don't want to buy
their records anymore. The final frame shows Maines saying that Bush is
a "real dumb (bleep)."
And then there's the audio bleep, turning up in
extraordinary places. Here's a
report
from the
Telegraph of
1/27/07:
'Bleep' bless you ma'am: censor goes
too far
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 2:05am GMT 27/01/2007
An over-zealous censor bleeped out all references to God when editing
an in-flight version of the Oscar-nominated film The Queen.
The operator had been told to remove all profanities when preparing a
version for several commercial airlines.
When one of the characters addresses the Queen, played by Helen Mirren,
passengers aboard certain Delta and Air New Zealand flights heard:
"(Bleep) bless you, ma'am" rather than "God".
Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, which supplied the
airlines, said the removal of God in seven instances was a mistake by
an employee who had taken his instructions too literally. The films
have been replaced with unedited copies.
(From Ben Zimmer; longer story
here.
Australian version of the
story
reported by Matthew Duggan.).
Automated
BLEEP insertion
(see the discussion of automated asterisking below) has reached new
depths. As Ben Zimmer posted to the ADS-L on 8/11/07:
The sports blog Deadspin has often
ridiculed the censorship of user comments on ESPN.com, e.g. (
link)
(
link).
Earlier today there was a post about similar censorship on
FoxSports.com, where "BLEEP" is inserted in place of offending words: (
link)
Referencing censored bits here: (
link)
"The San Francisco Giants trade pitchers Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano,
and BLEEP Bonser to Twins for A.J. Pierzynski." [censoring "Boof"
Bonser]
"They were tradinBLEEP oung player who had put up some nice numbers,
but wasn't projected to be a star..." [censoring the letters "g a y" in
"tradinG A Young player"]
Chris Waigl then discovered that
On the Foxsports page, the "BLEEP"s are
hyperlinks which lead to a page entitled "About Censoring":
FOXSports.com encourages our users to
express themselves on their blogs, story comments, or message boards.
We don't want to slow down your game when you're dishing on your
favorite teams and players.
At the same time, we recognize that not everyone out there loves a
potty mouth. So if there's an obvious bad word on a blog, story
comment, or message board post, we'll try to censor it.
Feeling brave, mature, and adult-ish? Or just want to get in touch with
your inner sailor? You can choose to have FOX Sports do nothing, and
leave all those R-rated words alone. If you do, you may see some coarse
language from time to time in the community. Don't say we didn't warn
you!
*Would you like FOXSports.com to automatically censor content you view?*
Below this are two buttons. I clicked "No, don't censor" and now get
the unbleeped pages.
Leaving aside the inane rules for censored strings, which are far from
catching only "obvious bad words", even if you believe in such a thing,
there are two remarkable things about this:
- They unapologetically call it "censorship"
- They offer "censorship" as a customer service feature
An extreme version of the "[expletive]" strategy is just to use empty
square brackets, as in these excerpts from the
redacted
transcript of a taped conversation between Bob Woodward and Richard
Armitage, in evidence at the Scooter Libby trial:
WOODWARD: ...What's Scowcroft up to?
ARMITAGE: [ ] Scowcroft is looking
into
the yellowcake thing.
... We've got our documents on it. We're clean as a
[ ]
whistle.
There's a lot more, but you get the drift. (Pointer from Ben
Zimmer, 2/13/07. There's also
redacted
audio.)
A related usage (total omission) was reported by Scot LaFaive on ADS-L
2/24/07, re "the horse you rode in on":
I did a search of Google Books and
Google for antedates but couldn't find any. I did find two interesting
notes on the phrase. For one, it seems that the phrase "fuck/screw you
and the horse you rode in on" is often clipped to "and the horse you
rode in on," allowing for it to be used in proper company.
5. "The x-word".
Check out Geoff Pullum's wonderful
rant
of 2/2/07 on the use of "the x-word" (for various values of x) on the
NPR
Talk of the Nation show.
6. Asterisks and other avoidance
characters.
Chris Waigl wrote about a conspicuous use of
piss on television, reported
without avoidance in the
Guardian
News Blog of 8/25/06:
Weather presenter Joanne Malin has hit
the headlines for describing conditions in the way the rest of us do
when, live on Central TV, she said it was "pissing it down".
but asterisked in the
Daily Mirror
article that same day:
TV NEWSGIRL Joanne Malin feared a
downpour of complaints after accidentally blurting out that it was
"p***ing it down" during a weather report.
But rather than a storm of protests, hundreds of viewers emailed to say
they had not seen anything so funny for ages.
Chris (e-mail of 8/28/06) observed that the British tabloids (like the
Daily Mirror) print
a surprisingly large amount of
asterisked taboo words. Many are used gratuitously. Which fits: the
asterisks draw even more attention to them, and serve the purpose of
titillating the prudish reader. (I once spent 5 min just figuring out
that an instance of "b******" stood, most likely, for "bastard".
Without the asterisks, the word wouldn't have caught my attention at
all.)
Here's an astonishing
asterisking
from Townhall.com columnist Kathleen Parker on 9/6/06 (hat tip to
Victor Steinbok) -- astonishing because it defends the use of strong
language while failing to reproduce that language:
The five-year anniversary of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks has produced a peculiar concern--whether rescuers
used proper language in the midst of mind-numbing horror and chaos.
Apparently, firefighters were prompted to use profanity, a fact that
some Americans now find too offensive for prime time... Usually, I'm in
favor of strict enforcement of decency standards... However, there's a
clear difference between gratuitous profanity contrived by
unimaginative writers and the spontaneous language of real-life
horror... Can anyone really imagine seeing what those firefighters
saw--first one plane, then another--and saying, 'Goodness gracious,
what rare deed is this?' When 'What the ---' more accurately captures
the moment?
Another one from Chris Waigl, from a
Guardian
blog:
Tom may be gloomy, but Bono is a pr@ck.
That's the difference.
Posted by Pete23 on October 17, 2006 03:05 PM.
Oh Bono, you stupid prack!
And one passed on by Ben Zimmer (8/22/07), from
TheHill.com
(8/21), with reference to Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska:
"This will shut that f---er up," [Sen.
Tom Coburn's communications director John] Hart stated in an Aug. 1
e-mail sent from his Senate account to several of his colleagues. "I
can't wait to send an In Case You Missed It to Nebraska press that will
be forwarded to a--face."
Then there's automated asterisking, which I wrote about here in 2006:
here,
here.
here,
and
here.
On 8/8/07 on ADS-L, Wilson Gray re-discovered the wonders of automatic
asterisking on iTunes, citing the tune "El P***ycat". Joel Shaver
followed up (8/11) with an oddity from the Pandora
website:
Longtime fans who were mystified by
Chris Thile's experimental 2004 solo release Deceiver may c**k their
collective heads in dismay, but those who appreciate the group's
searing ,musicianship, orgasmic harmonies, and genre-bending
arrangements will no doubt wear out their copies of Why Should the Fire
Die? within the first month of ownership. ( ~ James Christopher
Monger, All Music Guide)
Some were dubious that this should be taken seriously, but Chris Waigl
pointed to the identical asterisking on (parts of) the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds site that I
posted
about a while back.
7. Finally" say it with a look.
Matthew Stuckwisch (10/31/06) passed on some dialogue from the TV show
Everybody Hates Chris the week
before:
ROCHELLE: Hello Louise, how ya doin'?
LOUISE: Keep your nasty little nappy-headed son away from my
grand-daughter. That's how I'm doing.
CHRIS AS NARRATOR: That look means all seven of the words you can't say
on television. (pause) Because this is a family show, all she can
say is this...
ROCHELLE: Excuse me?
The show has often played on the idea of a single expression
representing a complex sentence, and even once featured an entire
conversation (interpreted by Chris as Narrator) in facial expressionese.
The expression in question is known as "cut-eye". See, for
example, John R. Rickford and Angela E. Rickford, "Cut-Eye" and
"Suck-Teeth": African Words and Gestures in New World Guise (
Journal of American Folklore 1976),
reprinted in John Rickford's
African
American Vernacular English (Blackwell, 1999).
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at August 25, 2007 04:54 PM