[4403] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: selling someone else's soul :-)
adwright@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (adwright@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Mar 8 03:36:11 1994
tiuzzol writes:
- Much of society agrees that "fuck" and "shit," aside from having the actual
- meanings of "to have sex" and "excrement," have strong emotions behind them.
The words themselves do not have strong emotions behind them. That's absurd.
Rather, that the words are often used to convey strong emotion, usually
because there is a taboo on these words, and the user knows how pungent they
can be to some people. Though, to say the words are always used in this way,
is idiotic. It's slang. It crops up in certain people's speech more than
others, for various reasons (or nonreasons).
- If I say "fucking dog" in a certain tone, I don't just mean that the dog is
- having sex with the bitch next door, I am putting the dog down. I am being
- rude to it. And I use "fucking" because I *want* to be rude to it.
Fine, you're being rude to the dog. That's your prerogative. But, I'd wager
to say that the dog could relate more to a physical action than a "fucking".
Though ... perhaps you can train the dog to react to the word, perhaps by
whining and rubbing its nose into the ground.
- Now, if you go using the word "fucking" and intend absolutely no rudeness
- towards the nouns it modifies, then you are using a different meaning of
- the word "fucking" than I understand, and in order to be rude to the dog
- in your presence, I have to now find another word that has a rude context
You'd have to search far and wide, buddy.
- to you to imply that I do not like this dog.
Why don't you just tell me that you don't like the fucking dog?
- If all the world threw aside the accepted meanings of words the way
- you wish to encourage us to do, then none of us would understand
- each other.
But it's not accepted meanings we're talking about here! You're talking about
emotional stigmas, which have nothing to do with any meaning or lack of
meaning, of these words! And moreover, which are not uniform (by a long
shot!) throughout society.
- [...] we must be able to assume that "fucking" implies anger, and that
- [ignore the prev. line]
-
- [...] we must be able to assume that "fucking" implies anger and rudeness,
But my point is that there IS no "rudeness". No absolute rudeness, anyway.
Rudeness is all relative, and it is an internal reaction to something, to
consider it "rude". I contend that all you should assume that my "fucking"
implies is anger, and that calling it "rude" does not de facto make it an
allmighty "rude" thing, just that you think it may be rude. But, you're
wrong: it's not rude.
- so that we can understand that the post contains anger, and that
- you really aren't just positively delighted with the department of
- defense.
Bravo! You gleaned my first post's sole intent at last!
And that's all there is to it.
All this taboo shit's in your own mind.
