Language Log

I'm glad I'm not in the business of setting rules for the use of taboo language in film or broadcasting. I'd be tearing out my bleeping hair trying to articulate some non-abitrary, empirically defensible set of standards.

The difficulties are highlighted in a blog post for The Telegraph by Brendan O'Neill (5/25/2012). Evidently, the British Board of Film Classification is going for nuance, trying to distinguish between degrees of offensiveness of the word c**t. O'Neill writes:

If, as in Ken Loach's new movie The Angels' Share, the characters in a film say that word in an "aggressive" fashion, then the film will be stamped with an 18 certificate. But if they were to utter the c-word in a "non-aggressive" fashion, then the film could be granted a more lenient, box office-friendly 15 certificate. So Loach, whose new film is based in Glasgow, where the c-word abounds, has been forced to excise the more aggressive uses of the word in order for his film to be a 15. He is rightly annoyed that he has effectively been forced to censor "a word that goes back to Chaucer's time".

Bloomberg reports (rather delicately) that the name of France's new prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, is causing a bit of problem when it is transliterated into Arabic: "When spoken, his family name is colloquial Arabic in many countries for the third-person singular possessive form of the male sex organ." France's foreign ministry has nipped this problem in the bud, however, by issuing a statement with a recommended transliteration that will prevent people from reading Ayrault's name in Arabic as "(his) dick."

Posted on my blog last month, an inventory of postings (on LLog and my blog) on the way the New York Times deals with taboo vocabulary, here.

Three items since then:

BZ, 4/16/12: The first “asshole” in the Times? (link)

AZBlog, 4/29/12: Annals of French taboo avoidance (link)

and today: AZBlog, 5/7/12: Reporting the profane (link)

The marginally linguistic topic of freedom of linguistic expression occasionally occupies me here on Language Log, as you probably know. And you may be aware that my instincts tend toward the libertarian end of the spectrum, and the defense of the First Amendment. Possibly you are also aware that there really isn't anything I despise and abhor more than racism. So the recent case of Liam Stacey here in the UK puts my principles in tension. He has been jailed for exercising what you might describe (incorrectly, I think) as his free speech rights on Twitter, having apparently forgotten that the UK does not have any analog of America's First Amendment. I'll review the facts of the case, including the language that he used. But do not read on unless you are prepared to see some seriously offensive linguistic material.

In "Larkin v. the Gray Lady," Mark Liberman credits a Language Log reader with pointing out that "the NYT printed asshole for the first time a couple of weeks ago" ("Race, Tragedy and Outrage Collide After a Shot in Florida", 4/1/2012):

Mr. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that this “suspicious guy” was in his late teens, with something in his hands. He asked how long it would be before an officer arrived, because “these assholes, they always get away.”

But this wasn't, in fact, the first time that asshole graced the pages of the Times. That verbal transgression was pioneered, like so many others, by Richard Nixon in the Watergate tapes.

Michiko Kakutani, "A Master of Verse Spreads Bad Cheer", NYT 4/9/2012:

Many American readers know Larkin chiefly from his more darkly funny lines: “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(Which was rather late for me) —/Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban/And the Beatles’ first LP” (from “Annus Mirabilis”). Or: They mess you up, “your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do./ They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you” (from “This Be The Verse”).

Indiana's News Center reports that a student, Austin Carroll, has been expelled from Garrett High School for posting this tweet on his own Twitter account:

Fuck is one of those fucking words you can fucking put anywhere in a fucking sentence and it still fucking makes sense.

The school says he posted from a school computer; he says he did it from home and it's none of their business.

What saddens me is that Austin was making a linguistic observation, and it's basically almost true. This may be a budding linguist, and he's been kicked out of his high school for a syntactic observation.

The latest sad story of trammeled speech in the UK comes from Northamptonshire, where there is a furniture company called The Sofa King. For years their advertisements and their vans have borne a legend stating that their prices are "Sofa King Low". But not any more: having escaped when they were reported to the police in 2004 (the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn't act), they have now met their come-uppance: their slogan has been branded offensive by the Advertising Standards Authority. I hope you can see why.

At about 6:38 a.m. today Jak Beula, chairman of a community trust, was talking on BBC Radio 4's "Today" program about Smethwick, a town in the Midlands of England, where there were famous incidents of racism in the 1960s, leading to an important visit by Malcolm X nine days before his assassination in New York. Beula wanted to explain about a disgracefully racist election leaflet that was going around at the time, aimed at discrediting the Labour Party. He knew that because he was on the BBC he was under a constraint (which Language Log does not impose on itself): he must not utter the word nigger. So he struggled to walk round what he had to say without ever uttering that word. And the result was a total disaster of mis-speech.

Three linguistic offenses in the UK to report on this week: an injudicious noun choice, a highly illegal false assertion, and an obscene racist epithet. The latter two have led to criminal charges.

In other language news today (Language Log tries to bring you all the important linguistic news of the day), an Australian snack food company has won the right to trademark the name Nuckin Futs for a nutty snack to be sold to adults in bars.

[This is a guest post by Bob Ladd.]

Following the wreck of the Costa Concordia last weekend (one Italian comic suggested it should be renamed Costa Codardia, where codardia means "cowardice"), I've been temporarily taken on as a correspondent by Language Log's Italian desk in order to report on a few linguistic aspects of the already notorious telephone call between the Coast Guard captain De Falco and the ship's much criticized captain Schettino.

This bit of social commentary comes from the Latino Rebels website. Like many brilliant ads, its impact is multiplied by the fact that, even after you've had the Aha! instant of "getting it", your mind continues to unspool a series of relevant inferences.

I bet if you sat down and started listing them, you could easily reel off a good dozen or so.