Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303190255
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 22 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
LET'S TAKE A FEW `BAD' WORDS OFF THE LIST, DAD-GUMMIT
1. "Dad-gum snow!"2. "Gawl-durn snow!"
3. "Geez, look at this snow!"
4. "Shoot, what a snow!"
5. "Drat this snow!"
6. "Criminy, where's the shovel?"
The proper expression depended on the stage of last week's snowfall.
Numbers 3 and 4 were popular during the snowfall - expressions of marvel, maybe even delight. Numbers 2 and 5 might have been reserved for the second hour of shoveling the mountain of snow blocking the driveway.
Well, let's be honest. A lot of us used some other words in similar expressions. "Bad" words.
We were taught by a parent or a teacher or a minister that there were some words we just don't use. At least, not in public.
When I was a kid, even the word "pee" was vaguely naughty. It sounded too much like that other, verboten "p" word that referred to the same bodily function. "Pee-pee" was OK, I guess because it was so juvenile it just sounded harmless.
It was the same kind of thinking that makes it all right to use the expressions at the top of this column, but not the "bad" words from which portions of them were derived.
I recently heard a sermon in which a minister urged his congregation not to use any "bad" words. He did specify some of the phrases above as only thinly veiled versions of truly "bad" words, which he didn't find it necessary to specify.
As is usually the case, the minister cited a passage from the New Testament in which Jesus apparently contradicts the Jewish ban on "unclean" foods. What goes into people's mouths cannot defile them, he said, only what comes out of their mouths can.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is quoted as explaining that he's not talking about words but about "evil intentions . . . fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly" that come out of a person from "the heart."
The litany doesn't include what we euphemistically call expletives, but that's what an awful lot of preachers tell their congregations Jesus meant.
Those preachers and others fail to make any distinctions between vulgarity and blasphemy, obscenity and profanity.
Granted, the lines are sometimes confusing, but I contend that vulgarity (common or unrefined speech) and obscenity (speech offensive to prevailing notions of decency) are fundamentally different from profanity and blasphemy, which involve contempt or disrespect for God and the sacred. Certainly, all of those are different from cursing, which involves the invocation of evil on someone else.
What bothers me is that so many occupants of pulpits don't understand the difference.
Clergy may rightfully chastise their congregations for profane or blasphemous speech, or from uttering curses on others. Adherence to a system of religious belief usually requires respect for its tenets and the deity. Otherwise, why bother signing up?
On the other hand, much that we consider vulgar or obscene is a matter of fashion - like "pee" - and clergy and parents ought to see when fashions are changing. Certainly any middle-school student is up on the latest.
This is where I get in trouble. I suggested at the dinner table recently that I would have no great objections if one of my daughters (ages 15 and 9) were to use the "s-word" - which, you can see, I can't use here.
My wife, the teacher, was not amused. And, so far, the children have had the good sense not to use the word around their mother or around neighbors, who - I explained to them - might object to it.
I still contend it is harmless. Like most vulgarities, it's not vicious; it describes a bodily function every human being is familiar with; it perfectly describes some emotions; and it's easy to say.
There are numerous other words that nobody should feel guilty about using. They mostly describe body parts and bodily functions, a continuing Victorianism we can't seem to shake.
I know there are arguments against using such words: They make the speaker sound ignorant; they demonstrate a personal weakness in people who cannot restrain their emotions; they are offensive to some listeners; they are sometimes used to provoke others to anger.
All of those may be true, and certainly I would counsel care with all our communication, as I did with my daughters.
But that care extends far beyond the use of a few "bad" words.
How many of us have known people who wouldn't dirty their lips with the "s-word," but have no trouble spreading the latest gossip about a co-worker? How many know people who wouldn't dream of using the "f-word," but would never accept a person of another race as a member of their religious congregation?
Who is defiled?
We can utter a curse, but only the most superstitious of us believe that mortals can actually damn each other with words.
We certainly can hurt each other in this life, though.
We need more clerics to remind us that it's not the expletive when the hammer hits the thumb that we need to worry about. It's how we hammer each other with our actions and our words that causes the real damage.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper. He has on occasion used "bad words."