The story about the incredible overreaction by the police who carried out a dawn raid on a 65 year old man who swore whilst dealing with a council official has been reported many times over the last few days. It’s certainly worthy of Private Eye’s satirical column detailing the imaginary Neasden Police. In my opinion he didn’t even swear at the official, he used the word fucking as an adjective using it to describe his home. I am now tempted to call the police every time I’m out in the town centre and hear similar language, what chance of a similar response by them?
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with swearing, I do it myself far too much but from a scientific point of view it strange how some words can evoke such a passion in people. Swear words have changed over the centuries too, I can’t see anyone getting upset over someone shouting od’s bodikins today but at one stage it may have had ladies fainting, it literally means God’s body; now you’ll only hear it on a cut-price costume drama. A more recent example of a so called minced oath is strewth, meaning God’s truth. The word zounds, meaning God’s wounds, was often omitted from early editions of Shakespeare’s Othello. The newspapers are also strange when reporting incidents such as the one above. Some of them reported the word in full, many write the first letter and then the requisite number of asterisks, I dithered about which version to use in this column and decided it would betray my scientific principles to use the latter form, despite the complaints I’ll no doubt get from family members... This bowdlerised form is somehow considered less offensive, it all seems rather odd to me; perhaps not – words have always had the power to raise emotion. If you’re interested in more there’s an interview with cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in this article from the Science Weekly podcast from the Guardian Unlimited. (As you might expect there’s some strong language…)
