The Swearing class

One of the great things about being an aspiring academic is that people think you have information that they don’t. This is somewhat true. And lately I’ve gotten the opportunity to design my own courses and present them to intelligent and nice people through the magic of UWA Extension.

The latest course of my own designing is a four-week unit called “Swearing: The Wild Side of Language”. I’ll be talking about taboo language — why people swear, what the worst words in English are, what swearing is like in other languages, and where swear words come from (besides Hell).

It’s an interesting topic, and not one that a budding linguist would shy from. Plus I don’t really like using filthy language, so my discomfort at saying (e.g.) ‘motherfucker’ out loud will no doubt be a source of mirth for the studentry.

Did you know that:

• the worst phrase in Russian is “Deliver yourself to the devil”?
• the f-word comes straight from Proto-Indo-European?
• 3,000 French people rioted at the premiere of a Beckett play that contained an obscenity?
• the King James Version of the Bible contains the word ‘fart’?

If you didn’t know all that, it’s because zero percent of these things are true. I just made them up. I’m going to actually have to do some research to bring up the fact ratio. But when I do, there will be factoids, history, and pragmatics aplenty.

And swearing. Oh, yes. There will be swearing.