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| With thanks to Penguin Books for this image.. |
There was a time, maybe fifty
years ago, when English had a class of vocabulary known as “men’s language” as
opposed to “women’s language”. This men’s language was a group of swear words
and expressions which could only be uttered by men and then, usually, by men of
the lower orders. Polite society never used them and did not recognise their
existence, or would not admit to knowing them. I’m talking of course about the
infamous trio: f**k, c**t, t**t. Even
now, with them all covered in asterisks, I find it shameful to write them.
There are others, but these three are at the top of the tree and in ascending
order of horribleness. Women’s language doesn’t exist in this context; the
expression is used simply to countervail men’s language. Women’s language has
the value of all that is correct, acceptable and pleasant to hear. Well, that’s
how things were, Jane Austen-y I suppose.
The OED not only admits to
knowing about this trio, but gives full-blooded definitions and etymologies.
Even the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary shows them, with remarks like “taboo,
slang” and “offensive” somewhere in the definition. Fifty years ago, these
words would not have been published, anywhere, there would have been an instant
hue and cry. How many, today, remember the prosecution of Penguin Books under
the Obscene Publications Act for having published D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover? The trial was
held at the Old Bailey in 1960 and a unanimous verdict of not guilty was
returned. It was seen as a test case opposing modern progressive culture and
public morals and decency. Modern cultural expression won and so began the
Permissive Society. The result of this trial is the presence in dictionaries of
this trio. Today, almost any vocabulary is printable. Philip Larkin recalls
this case, with his inimitable “serious” humour, in his poem Annus Mirabilis:
“Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first L.P.”
And in This Be The Verse his famous first line: “They fuck you up, your
mum and dad.” would never have been published a dozen years earlier, but both
were published in High Windows in
1974.
Today, in the age of feminism and
equality of everything for everybody, these “men’s” words are now used by
everybody, men and women alike. Young women now share laddish behaviour and
violence, get drunk and fight outside pubs on a Saturday night; why shouldn’t
they use these words? They are now banal.
That being said, I should
recommend that they not be used by learners of English. In fact, I should
recommend that they not be used by anybody in normal, polite, conversation or
writing. When learners use them, it doesn’t ring true; there’s a conflict between
a lack of mastery of the language and the native-speaker ability associated
with these words. One final indication or test of fluency is the native-speaker
ability to insert f***king between an
adjective and its noun or between two nouns: “I hate the noise of a Harley f***king Davidson” or “not warm f***king beer!" This takes skill and it’s
not quite the same as “f***king warm
beer”, so be warned!
As I often say, standards only go
in one direction, downwards.
