Trust requires some risk
A primary value of the dotSucks platform is that the use of the word cuts through the incredible amount of noise we hear everyday. That’s not just our view, but the view of the people who are using a dotSucks domain to express a point-of-view and rally others to it. This is the fuel for sites like www.logging.sucks, www.theinternet.sucks and www.aircanada.sucks. Every day, we see more and more evidence that what used to be considered profanity becoming a point-of-view. This is especially true for those trying to reach a younger, more inclusive, more mobile audience. Every day, we are learning the value of taking a little risk. Last Tuesday was just such a day. In reading an article in Canada’s leading news magazine McLean’s, I was introduced to Indiana University Professor of English Michael Adams. Here is what caught my eye: “Profanity is socially useful because it is socially risky.” He added: “We need linguistic boundaries to transgress in order to register objection, pain and social solidarity, and it’s precisely the transgression, not the words, that matters.” It was clear I needed to talk to Professor Adams. He had just published a new book, “In Praise of Profanity,” an outgrowth of his work as a historian of English. He noted, as do we, that “profanity is expressive speech” and a “sign of familiarity.” For anyone seeking to reach that wider audience, it may be that taking a risk might not be taking much of a risk at all. Not only does “trust require some risk” but Professor Adams noted that while once “profanity might have been forbidden and shocking, it may still be shocking, but not forbidden.” Perhaps it might be that casual business dress introduced in the ’90s might have just been a precursor (pun intended) to more casual business language. Professor Adams, who looked first at slang (he called it a “poetic language”) soon after turned his attention to profanity. As if one were the gateway to the other. Profanity began, he said, as a way to defame God, both directly and eventually in more sanitized versions. I had no idea, for example, that one of my favorite exclamation points, “Geez, Louise,” is just a cleaned up version of such defamation. But soon, profanity became less about the deity and more about the ins-and-outs (nod, nod, wink, wink to all my fellow Monty Python fans) bodily functions. I am sure you can think of one or two that qualify. Of keen interest to me is Adams’ take on the origin of “sucks.” Neither defamation nor excrement, Professor Adams assures it originated in the 19th Century, either as “sucks wind” (debilitating, at the least) or “sucks eggs” (a task of some difficulty). Ultimately, for those of us who seek to use language to teach, advocate, seduce or motivate, profanity may not be vulgar at all. Especially as the demographic of those we seek to reach changes. As Professor Adams wrote in his book: “Were I younger, I might not think to examine the problems of vulgarity at all.” That’s because, I think, profanity is no longer a problem, it may, in fact, be part of the solution.
