How Profanity Shuts the Door

There really isn’t such a thing as luck. But if there was, I’d be having a rather long stretch of the bad version lately when it comes to reading.

Before I elaborate, I have to go on a rant. Perhaps it’s because I’m spoiled by literature where people—albeit created characters—tend to use language in a much more creative and distinguished manner. Perhaps I’ve read too many Victorian novels where puritanical censorship forced authors into that distinguished creativity. Perhaps I personally am prudish, unrealistic, and wishing to enforce a rigidity to language which is against the very nature of language itself. 

No matter the reason, I am sick of swearing.

Everywhere in spoken and written language there is vulgarity.  It’s hard not to speak a language one is immersed in. It sets one apart. Some people may think I am a “goody two-shoes.” Others may feel judged, as if because I don’t swear I think I am above those who do.

I love studying language. Reading is a world where words have power, power to weave together into parallel universes both fantastic and mundane. Novels create characters so real we can feel their pulses and towns tangible enough the reader might walk down the street and feel the cobblestones underfoot. Poetry makes it possible to look at the world through colored lenses, to understand existences and facets of humanity. Nonfiction informs, enlightens, and helps us remember beyond our lifetimes. 

None of which vulgarity helps much. 

I’ve not studied the linguistics of swearing. But it seems to me there are three categories: religious, physical, and relational. Religious invokes the name of God or the devil or the act of damnation. Physical refers to normal bodily functions as if they were something shameful.  Relational insults someone’s parentage. All of these involve misusing words, twisting them and mutilating them until the way they are used in profanity holds no resemblance to their original meaning. When people swear, they don’t remember the original meaning. If they did, I doubt they would use them, at least in the same contexts. 

It’s all rather sad, really.

So I can forgive people using them. The words are hollow, even if they are meant to be insulting.  I can forgive…all but one. There is one word that is in my mind so violent, so dirty, that it doesn’t matter whether people have forgotten what it means. I know what it means.  And an author, who should be a wordsmith and know the power of the words, should know what it means just as well.

When I read it in a book that is my one Deal Breaker. I don’t necessarily stop reading a book because it is dull or it has poor Style. But if I see that word, I shut the book and stop.  It’s like the Deplorable Word in C.S. Lewis' The Magician’s Apprentice. The White Witch speaks it and it brings and end to her world. An author writes this one word, and I shut the book, closing their otherwise carefully-crafted universe forever.   

And here I’ve come to my bad luck. The past several worlds I’ve tried to enter have been shut to me.   And that is a very sorrowful thing.