Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Pavel Peléšek
Artificial Taboo Words in Contemporary
English Fiction
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CsC.
2015 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, Csc. for her advice and patience. I also owe my gratitude to my room-mate Radim for waking me up every day to start writing and to my girlfriend Nikol, who waited patiently for me to finish. Table of Contents
1. Introduction...... 6 2. Theoretical Background...... 10 2.1 Taboo Language...... 10 2.2 Reasons for Creating New Taboo Words...... 12 2.2.1 Censorship...... 13 2.2.2 Plausibility...... 14 2.2.3 Artistic Effect...... 15 2.3 Means of Creating New Taboo Words...... 16 2.3.1 Coinage of new words...... 16 2.3.2 Semantic Change...... 16 2.3.3 Borrowing...... 17 2.4 Selected Works...... 18 2.4.1 Television Series and Films...... 19 1)Battlestar Galactica...... 19 2)Farscape...... 20 3)Red Dwarf...... 21 4)Mork & Mindy...... 22 5)Firefly...... 22 6)Stargate Atlantis...... 23 7)Blade Runner...... 23 2.4.2. Literature...... 24 1)Harry Potter...... 24 2)Discworld...... 25 3)The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...... 25 4)A Clockwork Orange...... 26 2.4.3 Video and Tabletop Games...... 26 1)Dragon Age...... 26 2)Shadowrun...... 27 3. Analysis of the Artificial Taboo Language in Selected Works of Fiction...... 28 3.1 Newly-coined Words and Semantic Change...... 29 1) Frak (Battlestar Galactica)...... 29 2) Felgercarb, feldergarb (Battlestar Galactica)...... 31 3) Frell (Farscape)...... 33 4) Dren (Farscape)...... 35 5) Smeg (Red Dwarf)...... 36 6) Shazbot (Mork & Mindy) ...... 38 7) Gorram (Firefly)...... 40 8) Rutting, humped (Firefly)...... 41 3.2 Words Alluding to the Fictional Universe...... 42 1) Mudblood (Harry Potter)...... 42 2) Muggle-lover, Blood traitor (Harry Potter)...... 43 3) Voldemort (Harry Potter)...... 43 4) Toaster (Battlestar Galactica)...... 45 5) Andraste (Dragon Age)...... 46 6) The Stone (Dragon Age)...... 48 7) Lawn Ornament (Discworld)...... 50 8) The Gap (Discworld) ...... 51 9) Zarquon (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)...... 52 3.3 Loanwords and Other Languages...... 54 1) Chinese (Firefly)...... 54 2) Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)...... 55 3) Japanese (Shadowrun)...... 57 4) Cityspeak (Blade Runner, Shadowrun)...... 58 5) Czech (Stargate Atlantis)...... 60 3.4 Words Merely for Artistic Effect...... 61 1) Belgium (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)...... 61 2) Effing stairs (Discworld)...... 63 4. Conclusion...... 65 5. Works Cited...... 70 6. Resumé...... 79 7. Resumé in Czech...... 80 1. Introduction
Offensive language has formed an inseparable part of human communication for as long as there was a language for the people to speak. It is used everyday by people to express contempt, to emphasise extraordinary facts, or simply as a stress relief. Even some of the oldest written texts are known to contain profanities, many belonging among religious texts, such as the Bible (2 Kings 18:27 ). And for as long as there has been the need for stories to be recorded, curses needed to be written down too.
But not all readers of such books, spectators of such plays and listeners to such stories have been comfortable with profanities spoken so freely and publicly. This is one of the main reasons for the establishment of the institution of censorship. It has had a steady amount of work on its hands ever since, including editing offensive words, omitting inappropriate passages and sometimes even prohibiting faulty books altogether.
Technological innovation and the appearance of new means of recording and reproducing human speech have also failed to avoid the use of coarse vocabulary, and its broad accessibility meant that more and more people would be exposed to these words and offended by the use of expressions they deemed inappropriate. This resulted in the creation of several organisations, committees and specialised authorities that supervise the use of acceptable language and prevent potentially improper phrases being uttered on live or recorded broadcasting and, if violated, asses the appropriate punishment or compensate for it by restricting its accessibility. Notable examples of these authorities could be the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, or the
Federal Communications Commission of the United States of America
The fines and restrictions issued by these agencies and broadcasting at a less favourable time of day in case of audiovisual media, and complications with publishing
6 in case of writers, brought some of the creators to seek alternative ways of maintaining the mood and spirit of the work without the use of taboo words. One of the popular ways to avoid repercussions is the use of words that are not considered offensive, but can still be perceived by the readers or audience as profane in their overall tone and context. These are particularly popular among science-fiction and fantasy authors, where they can be fitted into the distinct culture of their fictional worlds and races.
The motivation for focusing on this phenomenon is mostly based on the constant interest in the works that contain these artificial taboo words. The field in question also gave birth to a considerably low amount of academic texts, despite the ever-increasing popularity and numerous admirers of these pieces of fiction. Another purpose of this work is, therefore, to fill the void that still exists in this subject and thus offer a coherent view on the topic mentioned and on the broad spectrum of variants of fictional swear words that can be found in a large number of media written, filmed or programmed.
This thesis begins with a theoretical introduction into the field of study of taboo language by providing a definition of what exactly is considered to be a taboo word and swearing in general and what purpose it may serve, since expletives are used in various contexts and situations, ranging from the expressions of shock, disgust and pain to lightening of the mood, joking and simply as a habitual part of one's speech.
In chapter 2.2 the main reasons for an author to undergo the seemingly unnecessary effort to create an entirely new way of cursing will be described. One of the main reasons and probably the original one is the effort to regulate the use of expletives on public broadcasting undertaken by aforementioned commissions and its analogue enforced by book publishers. This threat of persecution creates a complication for the creators because many of their works depict situations in which the characters' real-
7 world counterparts would most likely use strong language. Many authors in this situation, mainly of science-fiction, opted to make use of the fact that their works occur in a fictional world that may have developed its own class of expletives and circumvent the regulations by creating words unaffected by official disapproval.
Another cause that may lead an author to the creation of his own taboo words is driven largely by the intention to simulate a society different from real-world ones. This semblance of credibility is achieved by using, apart from different imagery, names and history, also a specific vocabulary in certain situations, and one of these is often cursing.
The third possibility is mainly aesthetic and humorous. The author might choose to spite the censors who expressed their disapproval of his strong vocabulary or simply entertain his audience and readers by an unusual choice of words that are nevertheless related to taboo words either in form or in context. Their taboo connotation is, however, overshadowed by the entertaining purpose.
Chapter 2.3 will discuss the means an author may use to create his new words.
These contain a range of word formation processes aimed to either create a brand new word or to adapt existing ones to fit in the new environment using coinage and semantic change respectively. This is often done in a way that results in a word instinctively identifiable as a swear word by its audience and readers without being excessively offensive for example by creating one that resembles an existing expletive.
Another method involves using words from another language. Some stories are set in a world dominated by foreign language in a fashion similar to English today, with its words scattered in conversations all over the world. This offers an opportunity to curse both plausibly and harmlessly, without the need to fear an intervention of a respective authority.
8 Chapter 2.4 introduces the works that have been chosen as the representative samples of audiovisual media, literature and video game industry. These examples were selected because of their popularity and the resulting size of their audience, which is essential for further production of works created in series.
The analytical part will focus on these works and the profanities they contain.
They will be sorted into four categories based on the nature and origin of the artificial taboo words – newly-coined words and semantic changes, Words alluding to the fictional universe, loanwords and uses of other languages, and words merely for artistic effect. Each case will inform about the particularities of the universe that are relevant to the expletive in question. Each swear word will be described regarding its creation, the context in which it appears in the work and, if that is the case, what changes it underwent within the work and if it appeared anywhere else that its original franchise, as some cases gained considerable popularity among fans.
The fourth group is quite specific as it contains words used simply because the author intended to make a joke of them. It does not fit the criteria of other groups since it emphasises aesthetic function over offensive purpose to spite the editors and censors or to ridicule cultural stereotypes. The words would likely appear nonsensical out of context and without previous knowledge of the work's nature and its author's whims.
While the series, films, games and books have all gained substantial popularity and some have had articles written about their universes, the field of expletives remains comparatively understudied. The expectations by the end of this work, therefore, are that the reader will gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of the creation of fictional swear words, will be briefly and coherently informed of the many forms a swear word can take in a work of fiction and the variety of ways in which it can be born.
9 2. Theoretical Background
2.1 Taboo Language
Almost every culture all over the world has at least some topics that are unmentionable in polite conversation. According to Hughes and his book Political
Correctness the origin of the word taboo is in the Polynesian tribal term for a topic so sacred that it is unspeakable. However, the perception of the term changed as it was adopted into European vocabularies. No longer denoting strictly a religious unmentionability, the meaning was broadened into something that is simply inappropriate to utter in the presence of children, in public or on television (Hughes 43).
Jackson and Amvela even mention that certain dictionaries chose not to use the label “taboo” for obscenities that are not forbidden, but still “extremely offensive if spoken in most contexts” (162), opting instead for labels such as “vulgar” or “coarse slang”. In the same paragraph they then point out that “this is perhaps a recognition that such words, which would at one time have been almost unmentionable and even excluded from dictionaries, can now be found to a large extent in popular fiction and even in daily newspapers” (162).
The former also demonstrates that the term gradually broadened its meaning and is now used almost synonymously with indecent language, swearing and blasphemy. As
Jay declares in the beginning of his article, he “uses the terms taboo words or swear words interchangeably to describe the lexicon of offensive emotional language” (153), as does Christine Christie in her article “The Relevance of Taboo Language: An
Analysis of the Indexical Values of Swearwords”. Hughes further supports this statement by adding that it now refers to words that are unmentionable in polite
10 company, such as gross religious swear words, obscenities, racial insults, and terms like cripple and spastic”(43). This synonymity between taboo language and swear words will be used for the purpose of analysing the works of fiction in this thesis.
Apart from gradually softening its grip on the vocabulary, one more feature is typical of the taboo language – it is culture-specific. That means that the undesirable vocabulary differs from country to country, depending on the nation's history, traditions and prevalent beliefs. Hughes quotes Stuart Jeffries' interview with Deborah Cameron published in the issue of Guardian from July 12, 2006, where Cameron states that “In
Scandinavia the taboo words are to do with the devil. Here [in Britain] they're fuck or cunt.”(Hughes 43) The original article by Stuart Jeffries that published the interview continues with further examples:
“In Mediterranean cultures it has to do with the classic relationship that exists
between a son and his mother. Italians, for example, adore their mothers. One's
trespassing on a sacred relationship if one insults a man's mother." (Incidentally,
the devil taboo does not mean that mother insults are unknown in Scandinavian
countries: in Finland, for example, there is an expression ‘Äitisi nai poroja!’
which means ‘Your mother copulates with reindeer!’).”
This is another aspect of taboo language that will be taken into account for the analysis of the selected works. It will be used to assign the examples to the group of representatives of the particular fictional realities of the world the author created.
Timothy Jay in his article quotes The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language that defines a taboo as a “ban or inhibition resulting from social custom or aversion“ (Jay 153). Further in the paragraph he also states that the
11 restrictions in uttering are often set by authorities that are seen as arbiters of harmful speech, such as courts of law, religious leaders, educators, and mass media managers
(Jay 153). These figures are often those, who also establish and define repercussions for the breaking of the restriction that are further discussed in chapter 2.2.1.
2.2 Reasons for Creating New Taboo Words
Since taboo words often provoke distaste and are shunned in polite conversation, speakers naturally try to avoid offence and impoliteness by substituting words with neutral or sometimes even positive connotation, which are called euphemisms. As
Palmer says in his Semantics:
“People will change names in order to avoid such [negative] connotations, and
there is a natural process of change with taboo words […]. Because the word is
associated with a socially distasteful subject, it becomes distasteful itself, and
another word, a ‘euphemism’, takes its place. But the process is, of course,
unending, since it is essentially the object and not the word that is unpleasant.”
(Palmer 92)
Similar process is the one occurring in the works of fiction. The authors constantly replace swear words in their creations to accommodate for the changes in social connotations of certain words. But it is not only the social decency of a word that might bring the author to a different choice of expressions. The following chapters explain two predominant reasons to deviate from the usual vulgar vocabulary of the
English language.
12 2.2.1 Censorship
Even though the strictness of the taboo has faded over time, uttering certain words in public is still highly scorned and is usually considered as a sign of bad manners. Many authorities have, therefore, attempted to enforce proper and decent language by measuring out punishment for violating the rules of acceptable speech.
Such authorities are active predominately in affiliation with television broadcasting, such as the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, or the Federal
Communications Commission of the United States of America mentioned in Kaye and
Sapolsky's article “Taboo or not Taboo”. Literary works are subject to evaluation for purity of language as well, which is usually arranged by the publishers or by government-controlled institutions, but these are, according to Pinker, usually more concerned with ideas that contradict the government's ideology or support racial and xenophobic hostilities, than with strong language and cursing (326).
The most common form of repercussions is financial – the culprit is issued a fine to compensate for his offence, whether they are a particular person uttering foul words on television or radio while broadcasting live or the producers of the series for allowing profanities to be spoken in their episode and heard by the public. According to the study by Kaye and Sapolsky, the fine currently issued by the Federal Communications
Commission amounts to $325,000 (6). The other often-employed countermeasure is limited accessibility, either by placing the series into a later time slot in the night, instead of the prestigious prime-time evening slots (Kaye ans Sapolsky 24), or by assigning an age limit for the audience. The latter is commonly used with films and video games, even though certain highly-offensive books have been banned from publishing as well.
13 Since financial support is necessary for the continued production of a series or for funding subsequent work, as well as the popularity among the audience resulting in sufficient viewer ratings, many authors do what they can to avoid the consequences of using overly vulgar vocabulary. While some choose to omit profanity altogether or merely imply it by obscuring it with background noise or by only moving one's lips without making a sound (Kaye and Sapolsky 8,13), many others, mainly authors of science fiction and fantasy, choose to circumvent this prohibition creatively and create their own swear words.
2.2.2 Plausibility
As it was stated before, swearing forms an indispensable part of human language. Timothy Jay in his article states that among a number of participants in several researches of frequency of swearing the maximum amounted to 3.4% of everyday speech consisting of expletives (155). Jackson and Amvela also notice the high percentage of profanities in popular fiction (162). Precisely for this reason many writers and producers choose to rather use their own profanity than leave it out. Ashley
Montagu in The Anatomy of Swearing gives an example of Ben Jonson, an English playwright, who “himself disliked oaths and profanity, but as a conscientious monitor of his culture held up the mirror to his times and faithfully made his characters talk as he had heard them” (154).
This is accompanied by the fact that taboo language often mirrors the nuances of cultures in which they appear, as mentioned in chapter 2.1, resulting in a range of specific phrases related to the fictional world. Wanda Raiford also states in her article
“Race, Robots, and the Law” that “the show needs this word: it is an indispensable part
14 of the naturalistic tone the show strives to achieve” (106). Talbott's article presents a paraphrase of Glen A. Larson that “the [new] words fit in with his philosophy that while the show was about humans, it shouldn’t have an Earthly feel.” This reflects another reason to create artificial swear words, apart from following the model of real-world communication littered with expletives – setting the dialogues in the context of the corresponding cultural background of this imaginary universe and complementing the differences between their world and ours.
2.2.3 Artistic Effect
Sometimes the reasons behind the creation of a new member of the taboo language are the necessity of avoiding unpleasant and even potentially fatal persecution, sometimes the reason is purely aesthetic. In some cases the author decides to use a completely harmless word and use it as a profanity, other times a word that is originally profane is denied its vulgar connotation. These cases are usual in humorous fiction and are often intended as primarily jocular or to spite the censors by what the author of the comparative article “Differences between the US and UK editions of Douglas Adams'
‘Life, the Universe and Everything’”calls “The Most Gratuitous Use of Censorship in a
Popular Book.”
This motivation is mentioned in the analytical part as a category of its own because it does not primarily fit into any category of creation of new taboo words, even though it might demonstrate characteristics of allusions to the fictional world. The primary function of these expressions is purely aesthetic. They nevertheless deserve to be mentioned because the taboo features in them are clearly recognisable from their form or context.
15 2.3 Means of Creating New Taboo Words
There are several ways to introduce a new variety of taboo language. The following categories are the most often used word formation processes that have been used as criteria for organising the groups of taboo language representatives from the selected works. According to them the analytical part of this work is performed.
2.3.1 Coinage of new words
Jackson and Amvela describe coinages as words that have “no relationship whatsoever with any previously existing word” (51). This method is most often employed in creating individual swear words that copy the real-world expletives fuck and shit. The similarity in meaning is usually deducible from the context the word is uttered in, but spelling and pronunciation are also often imitated. These words regularly resemble their real-life counterparts by maintaining the single-syllable four-letter composition that Pinker ascribes to the vast majority of curses: “Imprecations tend to use sounds that are perceived as quick and harsh. They tend to be monosyllables or trochees, and contain short vowels and stop consonants, especially k and g” (339). This is further supported by Ashley Montagu, who claims that the “words universally considered most foul and most indecent words in the English language” all adhere to this structure (303).
2.3.2 Semantic Change
Bloomfield describes semantic change as process when “innovations […] change the lexical meaning rather than the grammatical function of a form” (425).
16 While more a concern of lexical semantics than a formation of new words, it is nevertheless listed here as a viable means of creation of new taboo words, because authors sometimes choose to take an existing word with a similar, neutral connotation and shift it into the realm of swear words. This change in connotation towards the dark side is classified by Bloomfield as degeneration (427). Saeed also mentions that words may undergo generalisation or narrowing, as was the case with the word taboo itself
(78). This case belongs to the former category as the term gains to its neutral meaning also a negative one, albeit only within the constraints of the work in question.
2.3.3 Borrowing
The following definition of the creation of loanwords is given in Jackson and
Amvela's book: “When speakers imitate a word from foreign language and, at least partly, adapt it in sound or grammar to their native language, the process is called
‘borrowing’, and the word thus borrowed is called a ‘loanword’ or a ‘borrowing’” (38).
Stockwell and Minkova stress out the importance of borrowing in languages as a means to “constantly renew themselves”, and further support it by stating that “more than 80 percent of the vocabulary used a thousand years ago has been replaced with words borrowed since the Norman Conquest” (46). In fiction loanwords are common in depictions of multicultural worlds as representatives of a sort of a pidgin originated from an English-speaking society that was largely influenced or taken over by another, equal or superior foreign-speaking party. This may be the case with emigration or immigration, countries taken over after military conflicts or for purposes of trade.
Sometimes entire phrases are borrowed in case they express the everyday reality to greater detail or in shorter utterance than the pre-existing English term.
17 2.4 Selected Works
An assortment of contemporary works of fiction has been selected as a corpus for this thesis. The selection includes literature as well as audiovisual media and games from the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Science fiction and fantasy have been chosen specifically because the phenomenon of creation of artificial vocabulary, both as full-fledged languages and only taboo words, is predominantly the domain of works of fiction that creates its own artificial world and universe. Since one of the criteria being taken into account is also the common knowledge of these artificial taboo words among the public, the renown of its original franchise is an important factor, and thanks to their easier accessibility the audiovisual media are gaining an advantage. Thanks to the increasing popularity of these media the selection contains also members of these groups.
Video games are included as well, despite the scorn they often receive from the side of academics for its presumed emphasis on entertainment value. Some select franchises, however, are accompanied by an extensive and elaborate background story that has received a wide critical acclaim and is likened to many books considered classical in their respective genres. Furthermore they contain excellent examples of fictional universes with a broad supply of curses alluding to the many extralinguistic particularities of the world they take place in.
The selection was based on three lists of artificial profanities popular among the fans – “Faux-fanity: Ranking Science Fiction Swearing From Shuck To Shazbot“ on the web page Giant Freakin Robot, the extensive list “Swear Words from Science Fiction” on the web page everything2, and the shorter list of notable contributions by Chris
Talbot in his article “What the Frak? Faux Curse Sweeps Geek Nation” on Today.com.
18 The information provided in the following paragraphs have been taken from the
International Movie Database (imdb.com) and the corresponding encyclopaedic web pages based on the portal Wikia.com with the addition of relevant details of the story based on personal experience with the series, film, books and games.
2.4.1 Television Series and Films
1) Battlestar Galactica
This science-fiction series takes place on board of a migrating fleet of ships that are fleeing from their home planets, the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, that were attacked by a mechanical army of sentient robots called the Cylons. These machines were once created as cheap work force, but gained awareness of their fate and rebelled. According to the International Movie Database the fleet is following an ancient prophecy speaking of a forgotten world, the peaceful paradise of Earth. The story revolves around the crew of the battleship Galactica, such as the charismatic Commander Adama, his Executive
Officer Tigh, and hotshot pilots Starbuck and Apollo, as they try to survive one encounter after another with the Cylons and various alien races they meet along the way.
The Battlestar Wiki states that the Original Series of Battlestar Galactica first aired on September 17, 1978 and was short-lived, spanning only twenty-one episodes for the first series and another ten episodes two years later, which were ended prematurely for being weakly-rated. The author of the encyclopaedia page's entry on profanity in the show points out that it was also aired on Sundays in a time frame that was usually reserved for family programmes and news, which resulted in the youth- friendly format and a limited frequency of harsh language.
19 The re-imagined series began its course as a three-hour miniseries in 2003 and became a full series a year later and was altered significantly. The new setting was much darker and grittier, as Wanda Raiford points out in her article (106), the fight for survival of an entire population becoming more apparent and urgent, thus resulting in a much higher frequency of vernacular language and especially profanities, which the
Battlestar Wiki claims were now used in much broader context and varieties than in the
Original Series.
2) Farscape
As is stated in the opening narration in each episode of the series, the protagonist of this science-fiction series, an astronaut John Crichton, is participating in a series of tests in his spacecraft in orbit around the planet Earth when he is caught by a wormhole that transports him into an unknown and distant region of space inhabited by strange life forms speaking even stranger languages. The International Movie Database summarises the storyline as a struggle to survive in his new surroundings with him eventually befriending the crew of the ship that picked him up on his arrival to the region of space, dubbed the Uncharted Territories, and helping them escape the merciless military regime that hunts them for their crimes.
While the concept of translation via nanotechnology introduced in the first episode takes care of the intergalactic language barrier in most of the communication, foul language is left intact and the series serves as an ample supply of artificial swear words. While most of them are used only once or twice, a small number of them has appeared throughout the course of the series and have become a sort of a catchphrase among the fans of the franchise. The Farscape Encyclopedia Project web page dates the
20 beginning of the series to March 19, 1999, then it ran for four series and after its abrupt cancellation in 2003 was concluded by a two-part film miniseries.
3) Red Dwarf
The International Movie Database presents this British science-fiction situation comedy that originally ran from 1988 to 1999 as dealing with the prospect of being the last human alive in the universe trying to get home. The show, however, presents it in a very comical way. The Tongue Tied web page describes the ensemble of this series consisting of Dave Lister, the last man alive, who survived three million years in stasis after a radiation leak kills the entire crew of the eponymous ship he serves on as the lowest-ranking technician, his dead superior Arnold Rimmer, now reanimated as a nitpicking hologram, Holly, the artificial intelligence of the ship's computer, Cat, the humanoid creature that evolved from the pregnant ordinary cat that was locked in the ship storage for those millions of years, and Kryten, a cleaning android that they recover from a shipwreck on a barren asteroid.
The series operates on the conflict of archetypes, mainly between the epitome of untidiness in Dave Lister and his pathologically systematic and cowardly superior
Rimmer, who is, according to the web page everything2.com, the receiver of the vast majority of curses in this series. Ten years after the original series ended the producers came back again to make another miniseries that was broadcast in April 2009 and three years later once more revived the concept for the tenth full series with the International
Movie Database claiming that further episodes are in production.
21 4) Mork & Mindy
The series that gave birth to the oldest newly-coined artificial expletive on the list, according to the International Movie Database, began its 91 episodes on the 14
September 1978, thus pre-dating the Original Series of Battlestar Galactica by three days. It featured a character of Mork that first appeared as a secondary role in the
American sitcom Happy Days but, according to the biography of Robin Williams, who played the role of this quirky alien, impressed the series' producer Garry Marshall so much that he arranged a series with this extraterrestrial as the protagonist. The web page everything2 claims this to have effectively started Robin Williams' stellar career in comedy.
The storyline, as seen by the International Movie Database, centres on the protagonist struggling to understand human behaviour, which often results in an embarrassing misunderstanding, but is assisted by his room mate and later girlfriend and wife Mindy. Each episode is concluded by Mork reporting his discoveries to his unseen supervisor Orson back on his home planet.
5) Firefly
The American combination of science fiction, western and Chinese culture presents a disparate cast of characters living as smugglers and scavengers on board of an old transport spaceship Serenity and, according to the International Movie Database's summary, doing what is necessary to survive in an unforgiving universe ruled by an oppressive all-controlling government.
The profiles of the protagonists, as listed on The Firefly and Serenity Database, include an opportunistic but loyal captain Malcolm Reynolds, his brave Second Officer
22 Zoë and her childish husband, the pilot Wash, the sophisticated courtesan Inara, the cheerful young mechanic Kaylee, a high-born doctor Simon, his mentally unstable sister
River, a selfish mercenary Jayne, and a mysterious preacher of God named Book.
The series was cancelled in 2003 by the distributors after only fourteen episodes, despite an everlasting fan support, which, according to The Firefly and Serenity
Database eventually swayed the distributors to allow one more film, Serenity, in 2005 to end the series.
6) Stargate Atlantis
The second series revolving around the circular artefact found in Egypt that allows interstellar travel started broadcasting on July 16, 2004 and has moved its setting to another galaxy, as compared to the original series, Stargate SG-1 that deals with adventures in the Milky Way galaxy. The Stargate Wiki web page defines its focus on the mythical race of the Ancients that helped spread life and civilisation throughout the known parts of the universe. An expedition is sent to the distant Pegasus Galaxy hoping to find the ancient city that sparked the myth of Atlantis known to the ancient Greeks, and later defend it against the old enemies that once drove off the mighty Ancient race – the Wraiths. Featuring a wide variety of actors from all over the world to simulate a multicultural environment, as listed on the International Movie Database, the numerous cast explores the unknown galaxy and tries to recover as much forgotten technology as possible to help them fight the new threat.
7) Blade Runner
This cyberpunk science-fiction film that the International Movie Database dates
23 to 1982 is set in a dark future where, as the introduction to the original script says, people managed to create life-like robots, called replicants, who are used as a workforce on dangerous planets. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, used to serve in a special police force as a Blade Runner, dedicated to terminating any replicants that return to Earth, have rebelled, or serve over their designated lifespan. He is forced to retake his duty when four replicants steal a spaceship and land on Earth in an attempt to find their creator. The world of this film is populated largely by a multicultural mass of low-class citizens that speak a peculiar mixture of languages described on the web page
BRmovie.com that reflects the various backgrounds of the characters and obscures their activities, not all of which are always legal.
2.4.2. Literature
1) Harry Potter
This popular series of young adult fiction by Joanne Rowling is set in a world where wizards live in isolation from ordinary humans that are called muggles in the books. It is this distinction between the wizards and non-wizards in the books that produce an atmosphere similar to racism, an environment ideal for the creation of insults and deprecations. The wizards have their own Ministry of Magic and the
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the young protagonist studies this skill. The peace is threatened by the resurrection of the evil wizard Voldemort that tried to kill the eponymous protagonist as an infant before the opening events of the first book occur, but an ancient magic prevented him from doing it and it cost him his life.
The Harry Potter Wiki describes the seven-book series that began publishing in 1997 as revolving around Harry Potter and his friends, the clumsy Ronald Weasley and the
24 book-smart Hermione Granger, as they study magic at the aforementioned school, only to end each school year in a conflict with the rising influence of the evil wizard.
2) Discworld
This extensive series of over forty volumes of social satire and humour by Terry
Pratchett's is set in the fantastic Discworld, described in the books as a flat world set on the backs of four elephants standing on top of a giant turtle that floats through space.
The characters change book from book, according to the series that are listed on the
Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki, but most of them have at least secondary roles in more than one story, such as the clumsy and unlucky wizard Rincewind, the tyrant of the city of Ankh-Morpork Havelock Vetinari, the witches Granny Weatherwax and
Nanny Ogg, or the corrected scoundrel Moist von Lipwig. The stories are rich with allusions to the real world social issues, such as racism, emancipation, and poverty, and a mixture of races and cultures, which gave birth to many racial and social insults between their members.
3) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This pentalogy of science-fiction comedy by Douglas Adams that the Hichhikers
Wiki states to have began in 1978 as a radio show and a year later turned into a series of novels, introduces the entire galaxy of fictional races and cultures, described in the books by the eponymous all-encompassing Hitchhiker's Guide that serves as an internal encyclopaedia, providing useful information on people, places, and habits and serving the author as a frequent source of “quotes” to explain the strange phenomena occurring there. The recurring characters, described also in the Hichhikers Wiki, include a hapless
25 inhabitant of London, Arthur Dent, his alien friend Ford Prefect who rescued him from the impending demolition of planet Earth, the President of Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and his girlfriend from Earth, Tricia McMillan.
Throughout the course of the books they regularly find themselves on site of vast planetary catastrophes such as the demolition of the entire planet Earth, changing the course of history by travelling in time and restoring it again, all the while trying to find the exact question of Life, the Universe and Everything that has already been answered.
4) A Clockwork Orange
The dystopian vision of the future teen generation by Anthony Burgess published in 1962 is the oldest primary source of this work. It portrays a world of violence and social pathology, as seen by the books entry in the Fiction Database, where the Russian language was adopted by the violent gangs of teens that turned it into their argot. The protagonist and narrator, Alex, and his gang of droogs daily indulge in the use of stimulants and drugs and in the induced state drive around the country in stolen cars, assault people in shops and in their homes and participate in street brawls.
When he is finally captured at the end of the first part, Alex is put through a form of therapy designed to instil aversion to his former violent deeds. The Fiction Database's summary wonders, however, what the ultimate cost for “redeeming” the protagonist is going to be.
2.4.3 Video and Tabletop Games
1) Dragon Age
This fantasy saga with three role-playing games published so far takes place in a
26 vast fictional world of Thedas, not unlike those created by the renowned authors of fantasy such as Tolkien and Martin. The cultures portrayed there and described also on the Dragon Age Wiki come complete with their own religions, myths, and social structure. Each of the games takes place in a different region, with the protagonist respectively stopping an invasion of demons, sparking a war between mages and templars, and establishing an alliance to stop an evil mage of god-like ambitions. The games were accompanied by two volumes of encyclopaedic background information published in the books The World of Thedas that contains information also on the many religions and cultural particularities, such as swearing.
2) Shadowrun
This tabletop role-playing game mixes together features of cyberpunk science fiction and fantasy, containing both advanced technology and future setting, as well as the mythical races of fantasy literature, spirits, and magic that have returned to the world after many centuries. According to the background explained in Core Rulebooks, the world is run by mega-corporations with supreme power and everything is connected by the Matrix network, not unlike the Internet of today, albeit much expanded and ubiquitous (Brozek 21, 39). The player takes on a form of a Shadowrunner, a person hired to look for information and deliver them to the right hands.
Apart from the rulebooks explaining the basics required to play this pen-and- paper game, dozens of novels were written that take place in this universe that are listed on the Shadowrun Wiki web page as well as a small number of computer games simulating the role-playing element of the game and adding computer graphics where the original players had to rely on their own imaginations.
27 3. Analysis of the Artificial Taboo Language in Selected
Works of Fiction
This chapter will now focus on the particular words and phrases as they appear in the works of their origin. Each case of a taboo word or language is listed by its name and by the name of the franchise it originally comes from. Their background will be analysed based on their nature and formation, how they fit or don't fit into the categories of sexual, religious or excretion-themed swear words that Steven Pinker describes in the first and the seventh chapters of his book, The Stuff of Thought (18), and the category of race Geoffrey Hughes adds in his book Political Corectness (44). Several examples of text extracts and transcribed speech passages will also be provided showing the varieties of their use, the amount of which corresponds with the number of different categories of context in which the word appears, such as derogatory adjectives, sexual verbs, or interjections of shock or anger. The individual representatives of taboo language have been selected mainly because the work they appear in prominently uses only one artificial expletive, or a small number out of which only those occurring here have been used more than marginally. The examples in cases containing the use of foreign language have been limited to three specimens simply because listing the entire vocabulary of a particular language, even limited to the words used in the work in question, would not be economical. The examples that were taken from television series were based on transcripts published on the web pages sadgeezer.com for Battlestar
Galactica, transcripts.terrafirmascapers.com for Farscape, homepages.nildram.co.uk for
28 Red Dwarf, gateworld.net and stargate-sg1-solutions.com for Stargate Atlantis, firefly.shriftweb.org for Firefly, and springfieldspringfield.com for series used as examples of use outside of the original work. They can be found on the enclosed CD.
3.1 Newly-coined Words and Semantic Change
1) Frak (Battlestar Galactica)
The most popular artificial expletive among the fans of science-fiction culture according to Chris Talbott, comes from the Battlestar Galactica franchise and, as he quotes in his article, has been called “something truly amazing and subversive” by Lee
Goldberg, a renowned screenwriter for many television crime series. The Battlestar
Wiki web page and Sheidlower's entry in his book The F-Word (55) see Frak as a rough equivalent of the infamous fuck and, therefore, belongs to Pinker's category that represents sexual swear words (18). It has gone through a slight change of spelling and meaning through time. Its first appearance was in the Original Series of Battlestar
Galactica that aired in 1978. According to the official Writers Guide published by Chris
Pappas on his web Kobol.com, it was spelled “frack” at the time and its connotation was much milder than its later recreation in the 2003 Re-imagined Series. It was used much more sparsely and only as an interjection (Sheidlower 55), such as in episode 21 “The
Hand of God”, where the pilot Starbuck reacts to an enemy fighter passing by his cockpit by uttering “Oh... Frack!” According to the Battlestar Wiki it was also never directly associated with sexual content that fuck regularly denotes in real life and that frak in the Re-Imagined Series often does as well. It also never managed to attain public acclaim, a fact supported by Jeff Prucher's book Brave New Words (72), Chris Talbott in his article, and the contrast of only three entries in the dictionary of F-words by
29 Sheidlower, as compared to six with the re-imagined word (55).
It's second iteration from the Re-imagined Series was altered to even further resemble the F-word by removing the c from its spelling and thus turning the resulting
"frak" into a full-fledged four-letter word (Sheidlower 55). Since the overall atmosphere of the series has been shifted to a darker and more dramatic mood, as seen by Wanda
Raiford in her article “Race, Robots, and the Law”, the vocabulary also adapted to this change. Frak is uttered there much more often and in much coarser context than in the
Original Series, for this reason the Battlestar Wiki's entry for this word sees its use almost identical to its real-world counterpart.
Just as fuck appears in a wide variety of situations, frak also adopts many roles:
– denoting sexual relations: Kara Thrace, when she excuses her comrade's
questioned relationship: “I don't care who or what he fraks. He saved my ass
down there, all right? ” (2005, series 2 episode 9)
– curse or pejorative: Commander Helena Cain, defiant in the face of her
murderer: “Frak you!” (2006, series 2, episode 12)
– as a surprise: Kat, one of the fighter pilots, finding herself outnumbered:
“Ahhh! Frak me! They're all over us!” (2005, series 2, episode 11)
– expressing approval: Sue-Shaun, celebrating the successful mission:
“Frakkin'-A!” (2005, series 2, episode 4)
– even in compound words and as an infix: Cally Henderson asking for her
superior's attention: “Talk to me, mother-frakker!” (2005, series 2, episode 2)
Kara Thrace, threatening an enemy fighter: “I guaran-frakkin-tee you, I will
put you down this time for good.” (2006, series 2, episode 15)
30 The new Frak enjoys an unwavering popularity among the audience of the series, as evidenced by the wide variety of consumer products and memorabilia associated with it. But apart from clothes, mugs, and electronics, according to Chris
Talbott, the expletive found its way into common speech simply because it is a four- letter word with which “you can’t get in trouble [because] it’s a made-up word.” In his online article he quotes several other popular appearances of this swear word, including the comic strip featuring the unfortunate office worker Dilbert from December 8, 2006 and other television series such as The Office and Gossip Girl. Jesse Sheidlower also mentions that one of the journalists used the word in his article in 16 January's issue of
Calgary Herald describing the confusion watching another science-fiction series Lost left often in its audience (Sheidlower 55).
2) Felgercarb, feldergarb (Battlestar Galactica)
Despite the popularity of frak and its earlier spelling frack from the original series, Battlestar Galactica has given birth to one more notable coinage used as a taboo word that Chris Talbott mentions in his article – felgercarb. The Battlestar Wiki encyclopaedia lists it as a rough equivalent of shit or crap Pappas' Writer's Guide adds the meaning “get to the point” as the real-world vulgar phrase “cut the crap” would be used. These characteristics place it in the category of Pinker's excremental expletives
(18). It is used exclusively in the Original Series but, as the Battlestar Wiki claims, more often than frack, a word that paradoxically gave rise to the immensely more popular frak later in the Re-Imagined Series. The Battlestar Wiki also adds that in the 1980's second series it is even used instead of frack completely. The Original Series' Writer's
31 Guide published by Pappas gives a different spelling, feldergarb, the original subtitles, however, always use the former spelling, which the user GoldCylon on the online forum
ByYourCommand.net ascribes to the authors considering the latter variation a change caused by dialect, or simply a result of an error by the editor of the Writer's Guide that
Pappas published.
The spelling maintains the initial “f-” consonant, as well as the hard r and g that
Pinker considers essential for swear words (339). It is, however much longer with the pronunciation of three syllables, making it a less effective curse than frack. The author of the article on the Battlestar Wiki encyclopedia as well as Chris Talbott speculate that this is intentional because the series was aired in a popular time slot on Sunday evenings, which put the series through stricter criteria on the purity of vocabulary than other broadcasting times that are not so frequently watched by families with children, as
Kaye and Sapolsky describe them (24). For this reason the creator Glen A. Larson is said by Talbott to have made use of the rather comical effect that using a long and complex curse can bring. Similar effect was taken advantage of in the later-mentioned shazbot from the sitcom Mork & Mindy, as is evidenced by the word's appearance mainly in comedy series, and by the author of the online list “Faux-fanity: Ranking
Science Fiction Swearing From Shuck To Shazbot”, who says that “it's fun to say.”
Since the original scripts were not published, with the exceptions of the final episode of the first series and a preliminary draft that did not contain any artificial taboo words yet, the following passages were taken from the later-produced subtitles for the series, and the script of the last episode.
– interjection: Lucifer, a Cylon delegate, mutters the expletive when a blatant
32 flattery appears to work on the representative of humanity, Gaius Baltar:
Lucifer: “Oh, feldergarb...” (1978, series 1, episode 9)
– derogatory noun: Starbuck to Apollo, after a successful landing with a
disabled ship: “See. . .we didn't need that electronic felgercarb, after all.”
(1978, series 1, episode 21)
– as in “get to the point”: two fighter pilots discussing the reasons to
volunteering for a dangerous mission: Cassiopeia: Did Apollo make you?
Starbuck: Yes...you certainly have a way of cutting through the felgercarb.
(1978, series 1, episode 1)
As it was mentioned above, the word is overly long to pass as a spontaneous and serious curse, but the phrase “cut through the feldergarb” or “felgercarb” has passed into limited knowledge among the fans and spread into the public media. The notable examples are the Philadelphia community forum PhillyTalk.com that has seen one of its members, Steve Bryant, use this phrase to appreciate other user's informative and witty responses, and Marjorie Fowler, who used this phrase on her blog Daily Free Take-out to commend a comedy-news reporter on his skills: “To me Jon Stewart's presentations of the news in The Daily Show feel like fresh air in the way he cuts through the feldergarb.”
3) Frell (Farscape)
Another coined word whose spelling and pronunciation is based on the word fuck is frell from the Australian/American science-fiction series Farscape. The word maintains the F-word's nature of one syllable, even though it lacks a hard consonant and therefore, as the author of the lis of “Faux-Fanity” on the web page
33 GiantFreakinRobot.com claims, the sound is not as striking as for example frak is. The author also states that Frell fulfils mostly similar and very flexible role, such as frak in
Battlestar Galactica. The Farscape Encyclopaedia Project supports this and adds that it was created for the same reason, to avoid censorship. The former similarity makes it also a part of the sexual class of taboo words that Pinker talks about (18). The fact that it is as versatile as fuck guarantees it, according to a quote by Tony McEnery cited in
Laura Spinney's article, a wide variety of use, such as “to express strong negative emotion, it can also be used positively or ironically […] or to give emphasis”. The
Farscape Encyclopaedia Project also describes its appearance in the series as almost any part of speech and in just as many types of situations as the real-world counterpart, and the examples taken from transcripts provided by transcripts.terrafirmascapers.com web page support it:
– sexual verb: John Crichton on what he would do with a freed prisoner:
"Taken her back to my ship. Frelled her. Made babies.” (2003, series 4,
episode 19)
– curse in exasperation: Rygel, when setting up an uncooperative
communication device: “Work, frell you, Work!” (2001, series 3, episode 2)
– pejorative: Aeryn Sun about the prospect of confessing her affection: “What
difference would it make? He's a frelling statue.” (2000, series 2, episode 13)
– expressing shock: a prince, when he finds his evil advisor getting rid of a
body: “What the frell is that?” (2000, series 2, episode 13)
Both Sheidlower and Prucher mention in their books several appearances of this
34 curse in media that are unrelated with the franchise, yet clearly fulfil the same role as in the series (Sheidlower 57, Prucher 68). One such occasion was to express disapproval with the unsatisfactory quality of contemporary Soap Operas on television in an article in issue 157 of TV Zone magazine: “If networks want to frell with the fans, then so be it!” another case pointed out was in the Horn Book Magazine, July/August 2003: “We worked our frelling tails of for a whole year.” to express the amount of hard work done by the journalists.
4) Dren (Farscape)
Another popular addition to the dictionary of fictional taboo language from the
TV series Farscape, and the second most-used alien word according to Jes Battis' book
Investigating Farscape, is dren (145). This expletive has a similar role as the real world word shit and according to the Farscape Encyclopaedia Project also denotes the same faecal content. In contrast to the other, sexual swear word, the form of dren does not retain any relation to the spelling of the word shit, as the author of the former list points out, except for being a four-letter word. Jes Battis mentions in his book that it is purely intended to sound as much as an alien swear word as possible, even though its meaning is easily deduced from the many instances it is used, both as an individual word and as a part of a compound (145).
– as a faecal noun: Ka D’Argo, not happy about his partner's appearance: “You
smell like dren. You look like dren.” (1999, series 1, episode 14)
– as a derogatory noun: a greedy scavenger expressing her distrust to her
contractor: “You know, I think - all this high-minded talk is a pile of dren.”
35 (2001, series 3, episode 14)
– expressing everyone's lack of interest: Ka D'Argo: “No one on this planet
gives a dren about Chiana.” (2002, series 4, episode 9)
– as a part of a compound word: Chiana, dismissing accusations of complicity
with a criminal who attacked before the crew arrived: “And you dren-heads
are trying to blame that on us?” (2002, series 4, episode 9)
Apart from the aforementioned sexual and faecal swear words frell and dren, the author of the list of “Faux-Fanities” states that the series is renowned among its fans for a very creative vulgar vocabulary. An extensive list of similar terms can be found on the mentioned web page, as well as on the Farscape Encyclopedia Project under the entry
“Slang and terminology”. It contains references to male and female body parts in words mivonks and loomas, more terms for excrements like plok and gris, a religious term
Juka that is only invoked idiomatically to express shock and awe, derogatory nouns for prostitutes tralk and driblocks, adjectives and nouns insulting a person's intelligence fekkik, frodank, fahrbot and thoddo and a number of unidentified generic swear words and curses, such as drannit, dredgenaut, malik, nerfer, pewnkah, toeska and fa-pu-ta.
These other expressions were, however, used very scarcely, only once or twice throughout the course of the series and, according to the author of the above-mentioned list, have not become so popular among the community.
5) Smeg (Red Dwarf)
One of the more obscure profanities that have appeared on screen is the invention of the producers of the British sitcom Red Dwarf. Even though many theories
36 have appeared, including the truncation of the medical term smegma (a white substance created around human genitalia, composed of shed skin cells and skin secretion)
(Prucher 190) and the possibility that the authors saw a washing machine with the logo
SMEG, composed of the initials of the Italian appliance manufacturer Smalterie
Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla, creators of the series, as quoted on the web page everything2.com, have repeatedly denied those theories. In an interview published as a bonus material to the VHS tapes and DVDs the creators stated that they only “wanted to invent a futuristic curse word which had the right sort of consonant and vowel arrangement to make it sound like a genuine . . . curse word.”.
This reflects the fact that most of these newly-coined expletives are intentionally conceived as four-letter words that have a single syllable, a trait that Steven Pinker ascribes in part three of the seventh chapter to most imprecations (339). According to its definition on the Tongue Tied encyclopedia web page smeg is a very versatile swear word that replaces almost every profanity in the series. In the majority of its context it is analogous to shit, both individually and in compound words, but there are moments when it corresponds more to fuck, especially as a derogatory adjective in a gerund form
-ing. This makes it difficult to distinctly classify according to Pinker's (18) and Hughes'
(44) categories of swearing.
– as an interjection: Lister, when he sets fire to his jacket: “Smeggin' hell!”
(1991, series 4, episode 3)
– as a verb: Rimmer, trying to stop Lister from continuing an unpleasant
conversation: “Smeg off, dog food face!” (1988, series 2, episode 1)
– as a pejorative compound: Lister: “Now, how do we describe the gentleman
37 who's just been on the screen?” Kryten: “He's Mister . . . He's … a . . . smeg-
head!” (1991, series 4, episode 1)
– as an interjection, a derogatory adjective and a noun: Lister: “Oh smeg!
What the smegging smeg's he smegging done? He's smegging killed me!”
(1989, series 3, episode 4),
Kryten, learning how to swear from a film he saw: “Whaddya Got? Dinosaur
breath! Molecule mind! Smeg-for-brains!” (1988, series 2, episode 1)
– as an infix: Lister, on seeing a table set for a feast: “Great anniversary party,
Kryters - Curry World! Fan-smeggin'-tastic!” (1997, series 7, episode 6)
This particular swear word has gained a considerable support among fans of
British comedy. While not so widespread out of the ranks of its fans, as the author of the previously-mentioned list of “Faux-Fanities” alludes, it still enjoys substantial popularity, evidenced for example in a letter published in The Oakland Tribune, in which a reader asks the correspondent for help, since “whenever somebody is upset over the littlest smegging thing, they come to whine and moan about it.” It even found its way into a completely different science-fiction franchise, since Peter David used it in his novel Imzadi from the Star Trek universe to quote an ambassador joking about the similarity between his name and a musical instrument, saying it was about time “to learn to play the smegging thing.”(52).
6) Shazbot (Mork & Mindy)
One of the earliest artificial expletives that has become popular among the public is shazbot, according to the International Movie Database pre-dating the first
38 episode of 1978's Battlestar Galactica by three days. The main difference from the other profanities on the list is that it consists of two syllables instead of one and is spelled with eight letters. Thanks to this it can be perceived as rather humorous than serious, as the “Faux-Fanity” list hints by stating that it's “fun to say”. Despite this it is still recognisable as a curse thanks to the first and last sounds that correspond to shit.
According to the “Faux-Fanity” web page it is, however, used chiefly as an interjection, denoting shock, disappointment, anger or excitement, but not as any other part of speech. It does not, therefore, comply with any category of taboo words derived from excretion, religion, or sexuality that Steven Pinker mentions in his book, nor
Hughes' racial group. It does, however, fit into a separate classification Pinker introduces, of the five ways people swear, where it corresponds with the last category of cathartic swearing (Pinker 365).
– It is most prominently used in the opening scene in the beginning of every
episode of the series where the alien protagonist hits his head on the door
frame of his spacecraft and curses using the word shazbot.
Cain and Conley mention in their Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic
Languages that the expression has been in common knowledge for a certain time (132).
It has clearly inspired the term shazbatt appearing in the sixth Halloween episode of the animated series The Simpsons, where a pair of aliens utter it in disappointment after a car refuses to stop for them, while trying to hitchhike to civilisation (Treehouse of
Horror VI). It was also adopted in the sketch Coneheads that appeared as part of the
American entertainment show Saturday Night Live and in 1993 in their own film, as is
39 mentioned in the entry fort the word Shazbot on the web page everything2.com. This page also ascribes another notable occurrence of this interjection to the video game series Starsiege: Tribes where it was, according to the web encyclopedia Tribes Wiki, used as a general expletive in the form of a pre-programmed voice response ready for the players at the push of a button to react to all sorts of unpleasant surprises and situations that occurred in the game.
7) Gorram (Firefly)
While this science-fiction series is more popular for its use of foreign language to utter expletives, as is claimed by the web page everything2.com, one of its original swear words has managed to take hold in the common knowledge, even to the point of being mentioned in Jeff Prucher's The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction as a notable coinage (72). Gorram is a typical minced oath, according to the “Faux-Fanity” online list it is traceable to its predecessor god-damn. Just as the original curse it serves as both an interjection and a pejorative adjective belonging clearly into Pinker's group of religious profanities (18).
– A brothel keeper, complaining about an abusive landowner: “Rans Burgess
has money enough to build a city, a real community, [but] keeps people
living like this so he can play cowboy, be the one with the best toys. Turn
this moon into a gorram theme park.” (2003, episode 13)
– Jayne, tired of waiting for the captain to return to the ship: “Gorram it, let's
get us moving.” (2002, episode 2)
40 8) Rutting, humped (Firefly)
The short run of fourteen episodes of this science-fiction series has, according to the Firefly and Serenity Database, given birth to a number of creative ways to express one's contempt. Where the previously mentioned gorram served as an equivalent of the real-life god-damn, fuck has seen its share of substitutes as well, particularly from the synonyms for sexual intercourse in the animal kingdom – hump and rut. This places it in
Steven Pinker's category of vulgar allusions to sexual relations (18). Even though the words rut and hump are not newly-coined, merely derived by adding suffixes to their stems, their usage in this context is new and is a result of a degenerative semantic change from neutral to negative connotation, as defined by Bloomfield (427).
The web page everything2.com states that hump in the series is used as humped in its participle form with the -ed suffix in place of being fucked or screwed, as an
English speaker might say in a situation of distress. Rutting in turn, as the page mentions, replaces the ubiquitous derogatory gerund form fucking, one that is often employed by angry speakers to emphasise certain negative, or rarely even positive qualities of an object.
– Jayne, cautious about a patrol ship searching for something near them: “If
they're here for the salvage, we're humped.” Zoe: “If they find us at all we're
humped!” ( 2002, Episode 1)
– Jayne, explaining who is going to be in charge when the captain leaves: “You
know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you
with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here.” (2002, Episode 2)
41 3.2 Words Alluding to the Fictional Universe
1) Mudblood (Harry Potter)
According to the second book of the series, one of the harshest ways to insult a person in the wizard world of Joanne Rowling is to call them a mudblood (Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets 115). An expression composed of the words mud and blood denotes someone as being of impure lineage, not born to a family of mage parents, a trait that is believed by many pure-blood wizards portrayed in the book to be a sign of inferior skill in magic and, in the seventh book, even subversive and anti-social tendencies that are to be punished by imprisonment (Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows 250). Since it is a very specific noun it is not used in the books in any other situations and as different parts of speech than a derogatory noun directly expressing contempt for the receiver's bloodline, thus fitting into Hughes's category of the matters of race (44). This reason, and the fact that it is a very strong word used primarily by the series' villains, are likely the main causes of its limited spread into popular language, as there are considerably less mages to be insulted in the real life.
The smug look on Malfoy's face flickered. "No one asked your opinion, you
filthy Mudblood," he spat.
Harry knew at once that Malfoy had said something really bad because there
was an instant uproar at his words
(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 112)
42 2) Muggle-lover, Blood traitor (Harry Potter)
These two terms are presented throughout the series of books as another result of the supremacist, pure-blood wizards' idea of themselves being superior to other,
“impure” wizards, let alone non-wizards, in Joanne Rowling's fantasy books called muggles. This leads to an extreme dislike of those wizards who openly associate with ordinary humans or, according to the Harry Potter Wiki, even merely disregard the prejudices against them that the proud pure-blood wizards share. These epithets are not as clearly associated with the real-world racism as mudblood is, but are nevertheless reserved for sympathisers of the undesirable people that the racist term denotes.
– Blaise Zabini, discussing the beauty of an undesirable schoolmate: “I
wouldn't touch a filthy blood traitor like her whatever she looked like.”
(Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 150)
– Draco Malfoy reminding the protagonist of his poor choice of friends: “I told
you not to hang around with riffraff like this! Too late now, Potter! They'll be
the first to go, now the Dark Lord's back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers
first!” (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 729)
3) Voldemort (Harry Potter)
The ultimate taboo of the world of wizards and witches by Joanne Rowling is the name of the strongest and most evil of wizards of the time. In the books it is so feared by the characters that very few people dare to even pronounce it out loud, save for some of those who stand against him, since “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself” (Philosopher's Stone 216). While never explicitly used as a curse, it is still
43 considered taboo in the original meaning of the word that Hughes describes in his book
Political Correctness, denoting a particular unspeakable reality that exists in this franchise (43).
The characters in the book shun the name as a true taboo word and, as Palmer describes in his Semantics, use instead the cryptic euphemisms “He-who-must-not-be- named” and “You-know-who,” even his henchmen preferred to address him as “The
Dark Lord” (92).
Later in the series, in the seventh book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the antagonists even take advantage of the above-mentioned fact that only their enemies speak the word out loud, and devise a spell that signals the location of anyone uttering the name Voldemort to track the members of the wizard resistance, forcing even their most defiant opponents to seek alternatives or face repercussions. This is not dissimilar to the processes of censorship and avoiding reprehension for breaking the taboo in the attempts to uphold spoken decency in public media by authorities monitoring the broadcasting, such as those Kaye and Sapolski speak about in their article Taboo or not
Taboo.
In the books only three of the most audacious characters that appear there ever dared use his name in other than in reverence or defiance. The Weasley Twins, Fred and
George, according to the Harry Potter Wiki renowned for their pranks and jokes, left school to set up a shop with humorous items, toys and sweets of all imaginable tastes and effects. One of their products was a play on the euphemism “You-Know-Who” called “U-No-Poo”: sweets that caused the person who ate them to suffer from a lasting constipation. It was even accompanied by an advertising slogan:
44 – “WHY ARE YOU WORRYING ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHO?
YOU SHOULD BE WORRYING ABOUT U-NO-POO
THE CONSTIPATION SENSATION THAT'S GRIPPING THE NATION!”
(Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince 116)
The second instance of intentional and insulting breaking of the taboo was by
Peeves, the school's poltergeist. In contrary to the Weasley twins' only ridiculing the euphemistic substitute, he was the only one who directly assaulted the evil wizard's name throughout the course of the books, although he dared to do so only after
Voldemort's death. He did it by nicknaming him and disparaging his demise in a song celebrating the victory of the good against the evil:
– “We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one, And Voldy’s gone mouldy,
so now let’s have fun!” (Deathly Hallows 597)
4) Toaster (Battlestar Galactica)
The plot of the science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica, as summarised by the
Battlestar Wiki, is centred on a vagrant fleet of fugitives who were driven into the unknown depth of space by an attack from the Cylons, the robots that were once designed to make their life easier by fighting for them in wars and working as slaves. As it is stated in the opening narration to each episode, they gradually evolved and later rebelled against their oppressive creators and tried to destroy them all. These mortal enemies of the human protagonists have had the hatred against them materialized in the form of a pejorative term toaster that serves as a racial epithet mocking their mechanical origin.
45 One of the new premises of the 2004 Re-Imagined Series is the evolution of
Cylons into a form that is largely biological and almost indiscernible from humans. This is likened by Roz Kaveney and Jennifer Stoy to the atmosphere on not knowing who and where the enemy might be after the terrorist attacks of the 11 September 2001. One of the purposes the word serves, according to their book Battlestar Galactica:
Investigating Flesh, Spirit, and Steel, is to rationalize the hatred of the crew by degrading the Cylons to mere soulless machines that can be destroyed without remorse.
(111) When one of the members of the crew is accused of being an anthropomorphic machine in disguise, an argument begins that is thick with racism:
– C ally: “But I've known the Chief for years. He's no toaster!”
Baltar: “He was involved with Lieutenant Valerii, who most certainly is a
toaster.”
Six: “That word is racist. I don't like it.”
Cally: “Sure, he showed some bad judgement getting involved with her, but
that doesn't mean he's a toaster! You've got to help him.”
Six: “Say something, Gaius. Tell her you won't have racial epithets used in
your presence.”
(2005, series 2, episode 4)
5) Andraste (Dragon Age)
One of the numerous similarities between the fictional religion of the Dragon
Age video game world and Christianity is the presence of a human mediator between the deity and the people and a messiah figure, as seen by the web page everything2.com.
46 Where Christianity has Jesus Christ, the son of God on Earth, Dragon Age has a woman,
Andraste, the spiritual wife of The Maker, who was betrayed and burned at a stake for heresy. And just as the name of Jesus is used in the real world in a great number swears of multiple varieties and contexts, so is the name of Andraste one of the most ubiquitous blasphemous curses in the fictional world, as evidenced by a fictional note from Hardal, a surface merchant dwarf, to an apprentice adjusting to life outside that is published in the guide book to the game's setting, The World of Thedas:
– “Even the humans who pray to some woman they burned alive – and her god
they call ’the Maker’ – say something when they knock their shins. It's a
curse to say ‘Andraste's...’ – well, any body part, really” (Gaider and Gelinas
27).
In the games thus derived curses are used by many characters as a part of nominal phrases in place of interjections that express emphasis or exasperation in sentences and, apart from the above-mentioned body-part blasphemies, often carry allusions to the manner of her execution by burning.
The following representatives were taken from the transcriptions that were written for the purpose of this thesis and were based on the scenes from the second game of the series that were recorded by various players and published on the web page
YouTube.com for entertainment purposes. They can also be found on the enclosed CD.
– interjection related to burning: Anders, scared by a bowl that was thrown at
him: “Andraste's flaming knickers!” (Dragon Age 2)
47 – body-part interjection: Varric Tethras, seeing the commander of the templars
is losing her mind: “Andraste's dimpled butt-cheeks!” (Dragon Age 2)
– expressing exasperation: when defending the honour of their leader: “For
Andraste's sake! Leave Hawke out of this!” (Dragon Age 2)
6) The Stone (Dragon Age)
As many other fantasy worlds, such as the further-discussed Terry Pratchett's
Discworld, even the fictional universe of Dragon Age is inhabited, among numerous other races, by dwarfs. And in accordance with the traditional approach shared by many authors, such as J.R.R. Tolkien or Lloyd Alexander, the dwarfs in this video game series also prefer the shadows of their underground cities and the hard stone above their heads as well as under their feet. Since the dwarven race in this franchise is atheistic and most of their people have seen only stone for the most of their lives, as Gaider's book The
World of Thedas confirms, they have formed a revering relationship with the stone itself, attributing to it sometimes even qualities akin to life. Most of their cussing, therefore, generally revolves around mining and the stone personified. For this reason these can be seen as a sort of religious curses and blasphemies, even though not invoking the name of a classic deity (Pinker 18).
The notable examples include also the dust, according to the Dragon Age Wiki seen as an impurity, the refuse of the stone and the opposite of hardness. For this reason the worst of the slums in the dwarven capital is called Dust Town. Cussing with dust can either denote that the recipient of the deprecation is of such low esteem that they belong in the slum, which is the same, according to the Dragon Age Wiki, as calling them a duster, or is used as a generally negative interjection.
48 Similar meaning is ascribed by the context of the game to sand, offering less than solid footing and treacherous if encountered in the mine, often resulting in cave- ins. For this reason the phrase listed in the Wiki and uttered by one of the villains in the beginning of the game, to be on loose sand, denotes experiencing an uncertain and risky situation.
Since the true dwarves are also rumoured to be able to sense the precious metals in the stone and navigate the tunnels even in pitch-black darkness, as one of the in-game
Codex articles called “The Castless” states, dwarves on the surface who have lost the affinity for the stone and sense and see nothing when they are underground are often taunted using another specific pejorative term described in Gaider's book The World of
Thedas – stone-blind. The first three examples were transcribed for the purpose of this thesis from the published recordings of the game which are included on the enclosed
CD, the fourth example is taken from the first volume of the aforementioned book The
World of Thedas.
– as an emphasising oath: Oghren, expresses his affection to a woman: “By the
stone, you're a lady after my own heart!” (Dragon Age: Origins)
– risky situation: Beraht, a criminal lord, making sure his henchmen don't
betray him, lest their families might suffer the consequences: “Don't even
think about bungling this job. Your whole family's on loose sand with me
right now. And I know you don't have anywhere else to turn.” (Dragon Age:
Origins)
– derogatory noun: another Beraht's henchman, mocking the claims of
innocence of a traitor he was ordered to kill: “So you're not the turncoat,
49 two-faced swindling duster Beraht told us about?” (Dragon Age: Origins)
– another derogatory term: the aforementioned note from Hardal, a surface
merchant dwarf, to his apprentice adjusting to life outside: “To insult the
ones who live with humans […] our unenlightened kin below call us Stone-
blind up here.” (Gaider and Gelinas 27)
7) Lawn Ornament (Discworld)
One of the most characteristic locations of the extensive series of satirical fantasy novels by Terry Pratchett is the twin city of Ankh-Morpork. Not unlike the
American city of New York, as states the Discworld and Terry Pratchett Wiki, it places a large variety of races and creatures in one rather enclosed place. These cultures inevitably meet, shake hands, and sometimes clash blades. And most of these clashes involve dwarfs – pluralised with an f and alluded to using the adjective “dwarfish” in
Terry Pratchett's books, as opposed to the more common way of using “dwarves” and
“dwarven” in fantasy literature and games, such as in the Dragon Age series, or in the work of Tolkien mentioned in the analysis of these video games, as well as on the
Discworld and Terry Pratchett Wiki. As the Wiki suggests, these stubborn inhabitants of the underground are known to be very proud of their “dwarfishness”, even though some of them are more proud than others. And the easiest way to insult one of them is to call them a lawn ornament. These decorations that humans have adopted as a cute addition to their gardens are an affront to the hard-working miners and masons of Discworld.
The Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki defines the epithet as “an insult for the Deep-
Downers, and as a picture for what certain narrow-minded parochial people would reduce the Dwarf race to, if they were to be allowed.” And since, according to the Wiki
50 as well as the books, being left behind as a retrograde and isolationist race is exactly what has been threatening the dwarfs for several years, and what eventually escalates into a civil war in the last book Raising Steam, it touches a sore point on the hurt pride of the nation of the stone.
The books use also a counterpart in the language of the dwarfs, b’zugda-hiara that is a new coinage by the author. It is, however, not used so often as the human term, only, likely because it is seen as too offensive to translate into the language of the offended. For this reason this term is not included in the coinages, but in this category.
– the human term: a customer in a tavern, unsatisfied with sharing a room with
a dwarf: ”I ain't drinking here again,...It's bad enough that they let monkeys
drink here. But these bloody lawn ornaments...” (Wyrd Sisters, 205)
– the dwarfish word: the King of dwarfs addressing the crowd about their
decline: “I tell you now that history will run straight over us squabbling
dwarfs and I will not stand by and allow that history to end with our race
brought down to the status of angry b’zugda-hiara” (Raising Steam 90)
8) The Gap (Discworld)
As it was mentioned before, the dwarfs are particularly proud people. Therefore they are not likely to receive an insult without responding to it in similar fashion. One of the popular curses among the dwarfs, particularly in the book Raising Steam, is to wish their enemy be taken by the Gap. This shortening of the word Ginnungagap serves here as a rough equivalent of Hell, being the name of the primordial Chaos or Void from which the Discworld was created. The Discworld & Terry Pratchett wiki states that the
51 word Ginnungagap itself comes from the Norse cosmogonic myth where it has the same meaning of the emptiness before all things. The dwarfs in Terry Pratchett's books are portrayed to be very systematic and order-loving society, therefore, as the Discworld
Wiki claims, being taken by the Chaos might very well be the worst fate one might encounter. The word is used in many contexts, similarly to Hell, with the difference of actively taking the recipient of the curse, instead of the person in question being told to go there. It also appears as a part of a euphemism for being murdered and cleaned away.
– as a euphemism: Captain of the City Watch describing the enemy's tactics:
“[T]he modus operandi is to find some innocent dwarf with the right
connections and let it be known to him or her that if they do not toe the line
and do what they are told, then perhaps all of their family will simply
disappear into the Gap.” (Raising Steam 363)
– as a curse: an elderly militiaman who just defended his family from an
armed assault: “I can’t abide those bloody Grags, the bastards! May the Gap
take them!” (Raising Steam 63)
9) Zarquon (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
As the first book of the series says, the universe “. . . is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is” (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 48). It is, therefore, inevitable that many races share it and meet and their cultures come into contact. Despite the infinite size of it, large part of the universe, according to the Hitchhikers Wiki, knows the name of the Great Prophet Zarquon. This religious leader, introduced in the second book, inspired many of his followers by
52 stating that he will return and told them to wait for his Second Coming. He did eventually return, but no sooner than 8 seconds before the end of the universe to only state that he was sorry to be late (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 98). His name is used for blasphemous curses in a similar way as the name of Jesus is in real life and the name of Andraste in the above-mentioned series of video games Dragon Age.
This corresponds with Piker's group of cussing using religious terms (18).
The books portray the prophet's name as a much more versatile curse than the name of Christ or Andraste, more similar in use to Red Dwarf's smeg. This mainly applies to its contracted form Zark which can be used as a noun or a verb with derivations that include Zarking and Zarked. This places it in a unique category of religious profane verbs. While the shortened form is used frequently in the way the real- world expletive fuck would be used, it still appears in compound words in the original role of a holy name of a pseudo-deity.
– Zaphod Beeblebrox criticises the decision to install artificial intelligence
capable of contemplating philosophy into hotel equipment: “Holy Zarquon,
[…] did I ask for an existential elevator?” (The Restaurant at the End of the
Universe 38)
– Ford Prefect expressing his distaste in staying any longer: “There must be
some way off this Zarking planet!” (Mostly Harmless 177)
– The same character, asking about means of his escape from said planet by
hitch-hiking: “And how many spacecraft have visited this Zarkforsaken little
fleapit recently?” (Mostly Harmless 177)
53 3.3 Loanwords and Other Languages
1) Chinese (Firefly)
One of the most remarkable ways to circumvent the censorship, according to
Pucher (72), as well as the online list “Faux-Fanity”, has been demonstrated by the producers of the television series Firefly. A large part of the profane language, from individual words to entire lines of monologue and dialogue, has been replaced by phrases in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. And in no way are they just simple curses translated into different language – they include very creative sentences with surprising vocabulary, as the “Faux-Fanity” web page points out that one would hardly expect in a common conversation, demonstrating features of semantic change from neutral to derogatory. Their inventiveness is praised also in Jes Battis' book analysing the fictional universe of the series Farscape, mentioning it as a clever means to “get away with luridly inventive phrasing that would never normally get past a network censor” (145).
Even though mostly used as interjections expressing shock, disgust, and anger, some of them serve as derogatory nouns and adjectives. The following examples are taken from the translation of the Chinese utterances spoken in the series published on the pages of
University of Missouri:
– expression of shock: Malcolm Reynolds on hearing an outrageous business
proposition: “Daxiang baozhashi de laduzi!” (Explosive diarrhoea of an
elephant) (2002, episode 6)
– insult: River Tam expresses her disregard of the captain: “liu kuoshui de
biaozi he houzi de ben erzi.”(Stupid son of a drooling whore and a monkey)
(2002, episode 5)
54 – derogatory adjective: Jayne, inquiring why they are still not in the designated
location: “Why you got us parked here? This ain't the guo cao de
rendezvous spot!” (dog-humping) (2002, episode 2)
Since both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese are viable languages used by millions of native speakers, the words are certainly used in context outside of the series.
Some of the phrases used in the series are commonplace among the native speakers, as the Firefly and Serenity Database points out, but some are so unique that the very same combination of words in this context is highly improbable with the exception of humorous use and allusions to the series' fandom.
2) Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)
Even though the peculiar teen slang of Anthony Burgess' dystopian science- fiction novel contains also elements taken from Cockney rhyming slang and several of the author's own invented slang words, according to Cain and Conley's Encyclopedia of
Fictional and Fantastic Languages the vast majority of it is based on Russian language.
Transliterated Russian loanwords are mixed with clippings and blends and otherwise mangled words.
Most of the taboo words occurring in the fictional vocabulary, as it was translated in a glossary by Stanley Edgar Hyman and published in newer editions of the book, correspond to the teenage mentality focused on violence, sex and various crimes.
For this reason it is safe to assume that Nadsat is a form of fictional argot, a language of criminals and outcasts intended to be as obscure as possible to conceal sensitive information from outsiders. This use would classify the entire slang as a sort of taboo
55 language, since it is undesirable to speak it in public, where it is shunned and seen as a symbol of crime and violence. This is evidenced by the fact that Conley and Cain point out that many adults in the book don't understand it, and even the protagonist's former, now-reformed friend Pete refuses to speak it (29).
The most clear-cut obscenities of Nadsat belong to the group of male and female intimate body parts and genitalia, such as yarbles, a clipped Russian word for apples, yarblicka, used to denote testicles, even though in Russian the word has no connotation related to male genitalia apart from their round shape. Another example is groodies, the word for breasts, which comes from the Russian word grud, chest.
– Alex, the protagonist, taunting another gang member: “Come and get one in
the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou!” (testicles) (16)
– Alex, describing his surroundings: “There was this devotchka sort of
cowering, a young pretty bit of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her”
(a girl, nice breasts) (26)
The usage of Nadsat is limited by the fact that not every English speaker understands Russian words, a fact taken advantage of by the author that forces the readers to learn at least some Russian in order to appreciate the book (Conley and Cain
29). Despite that it has been successfully used for artistic effect for example in the series of science-fiction video games Borderlands, where a weapons manufacturer Vladof of clear Russian background uses words from Nadsat as the names for various models of their firearms, as evidenced by the numerous entries in the Borderlands.wikia.com encyclopaedia with names such as Pooshka, Droog or Horrorshow. According to the
56 Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages it also inspired Jack Womack, the author of the novel Ambient, to create the fictional language of his secret religious sect of the Ambients, a fact further supported by the comparison of these two novels that was published as a part of the Publisher's copy of Ambient (Conley and Cain 12).
3) Japanese (Shadowrun)
The setting of this fictional cyberpunk world of this tabletop role-playing game has drawn much inspiration from the eastern cultures. Some of the main influences mentioned in the Core Rulebooks were the Japanese quickly-expanding and ever- innovating electronics market, the codex of honour associated with the samurai and the intricate structure of the Japanese criminal organisation – the Yakuza (Brozek 20-34).
For this reason the largest part of the extensive slang of the game's universe consists of
Japanese words, and since the protagonists of the games move regularly through the underworld, as seen in the novel Dark Resonance by Phaedra Weldon, a large part of them are profanities, and also share the same argot-like intention to hide the content of the conversation to outsiders as some of the Nadsat expressions. Some of these words are compounds that a native speaker might find ungrammatical, as the user Twincast points out in his reply on the Shadowrun Universe forum, but are often intentionally mangled to appear as a part of a Japanese-English Pidgin.
– insults: uttered when the protagonist discovers a complication: “Damn it.
The hacker had tripped the alarm. Baka!” (idiot) (Weldon 13)
– racism: “He would refer to her as a kawaruhito, if he referred to her at all.”
57 (changed person, derogatory term for humans transformed into members of
other races) (Charrette 491)
– addressing: a corporate security manager threatening a discovered hacker:
“You’re in a drekload of danger, omae!" (you - a derogatory personal
pronoun) (Weldon 52)
4) Cityspeak (Blade Runner, Shadowrun)
One of the most complicated slangs created by loanwords is the Cityspeak that appears in the dystopian future of the film Blade Runner. The official Blade Runner web page BRmovie.com ascribes the creation of the slang largely to Edward James Olmos who played the part of Gaff featuring in the extract below. According to the page it consists exclusively of loanwords and grammatical constructions from foreign languages, mainly Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Korean and Chinese, switching between multiple languages in one sentence. As seen in the translations accompanying the script published on the page Trussel.com, the languages retain the meaning the speaker intends to deliver, but the knowledge of all of the mentioned languages is essential to comprehend it. Because the resulting “street lingo”, as it is called in the aforementioned article commenting on Cityspeak on the web page
BRmovie.com, is intended to be used among the lower social classes and outcasts it necessarily contains a number of vulgarisms and can be considered a form of argot. The following transcription, as well as the rough translations, is taken from the script for the film published on the web page Trussel.com and contains incorrect spelling that has been accommodated so that the English-speaking actors could pronounce it.
58 – Gaff: “M'sieu, aduanon kovershim angam bitte.” (French, Hungarian and
German: “Sir, you will please come with me now.”)
Sushi Master: “He say you under arrest, Mr. Deckard.”
Deckard: “Got the wrong guy, pal.”
Gaff: Lo fa, ne-ko shi-ma, de va-ja Blade... Blade Runner! (Hungarian: “Ah,
don't shit me, man! You're the Blade … Blade Runner.”)
Sushi Master: “He say you Blade Runner.”
Deckard: “Tell him I'm eating.”
Gaff: “Captain Bryant to ka, me ni omae yo!” (Japanese: “It's Captain Bryant
wants to see you, y'know!”)
According to the authors of the Shadowrun.wikia.com encyclopaedia the multicultural variety of Cityspeak inspired the creators of the Shadowrun tabletop game to include some features of it in the slang of their own futuristic underworld and even use the name City speak as an homage to the film. Even though much greater part of their sentences is in English, according to the glossary of the slang on the Shadowrun
Wiki, an occasional word from a variety of foreign languages appears in the conversation, such as a Dutch word drek used in place of faecal nouns crap and shit as both single and compound words, or the above-mentioned Japanese phrases.
– A hacker celebrating the trouble that an abusive corporation is going
through: “Looks like Horizon’s got all kinds of problems. Couldn’t happen
to a nicer bunch of drekholes.” (Weldon 52)
59 5) Czech (Stargate Atlantis)
When an expedition of the brightest minds into another galaxy is being planned, it is very likely that not all of the greatest minds will be native speakers of English. The resulting mixture of cultures and languages listed on the Stargate Wikia web page may use English to cooperate with one another, but when they are in their private quarters or focused on their jobs and mumbling under their noses, they might slip back into their mother tongues.
Such is the case of the slightly jumpy but still very intelligent doctor Radek
Zelenka, a character from the science-fiction series Stargate Atlantis who every once in a while comments on the situation at hand using a vicious remark or an expletive from his native Czech., the collection of which is listed on the Stargate Wikia web page about this character. This habit has a humorous outcome in many episodes of the series when the rest of the personnel and scientists of the base try to understand what he has just said or warn him not to say anything that would divulge sensitive information on the records he sends home to his wife (2005, series 1, episode 17). A lot of his language is also littered with profanities and vulgar phrases that would hardly be allowed to pass freely if their equally strong counterparts were used in English, in a way similar to the Firefly's use of Chinese to mask the profanities (Battis 145)
The following examples were taken from the collection of his transcribed and translated outbursts on the character's page on the web page Stargate.Wikia.com because the transcripts published on the web pages GateWorld.com and stargate-sg1- solutions.com contain the passages in question merely described as “Curses in Czech” and “(in Czech): [A very rude word not repeatable in polite company]” and the translation.
60 – Commenting on the poor skills of his subordinate scientists: “Ježiši, já s
těma hercema nemůžu dělat!” (Jesus, I can't work with these actors) (2005,
series 1, episode 16)
– Disappointed about their new area of operation: “Do prdele, to je na hovno
tohle to, kdo to vymyslel že budeme pod vodou tentokrát?” (For cryin' out
loud, this sucks. We're gonna be under water this time - whose idea was
that?) (2005, series 2, episode 14)
3.4 Words Merely for Artistic Effect
This chapter deals with examples of taboo language that serves little purpose other than fulfilling the aesthetic function. These pseudo-expletives are closest to the group of taboo words alluding to a fictional reality of the work but their value as profanities is secondary to their aesthetic value. They are also not used in any context that would place them within any Pinker's or Hughes' class of taboo language. They also demonstrate a contradiction between their nature as decent or indecent words and the context in which they are used. They are nevertheless mentioned here because they are still recognisable as having close relation to profane language.
1) Belgium (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
One of the most creative avoidances of censorship issues was seen in Douglas
Adams' science-fiction satirical parody series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, namely in the third book of the original pentalogy, Life, the Universe, and Everything.
According to the article by Esther Inglis-Arkell, during the review of the book by the
61 American publisher they asked the author to alter, among other scenes depicting violence, the passages containing the expletives shit, asshole and fuck, since they were seen as too strong. The author responded by swapping them respectively for swut, kneebiter and Belgium. While the former two alterations consisted merely of replacing one vulgar word with another one, newly invented and harmless, the third correction also included a description of why should the name of a European country be seen as rude:
In today's modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be
unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago
were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in
public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in
extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and
proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a
well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality. […]But even though
words like ‘joojooflop,’ ‘swut,’ and ‘turlingdrome’ are now perfectly acceptable
in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it
embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly
forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except for use in Serious screenplays. […]
There is also, or was, one planet where they didn't know what it meant, the
stupid turlingdromes. (Life, the Universe, and Everything 159-160)
Apart from turlingdrome, which is used in the end of the extract as a pejorative noun, the meaning of the other words is unknown. And even the aforementioned context
62 of turlingdrome carries little semantic value. It is, therefore, impossible to decide into which category by Pinker they belong (18). The word Belgium has, however, gained a wide popular acclaim for its inventiveness and originality. According to Mark Harrison's answer to a reader's question on the web page Quora.com, it has even went on to become a favourite swear word among British academics. The explanation also contains a passage clearly meant to contain the word unfucked-up that the author of the article comparing the British and American versions sees as having been censored by the author himself to spite the censors and show what was originally there.
2) Effing stairs (Discworld)
Where the previously-mentioned example showed an innocent name place in offensive context, the next word goes in the opposite direction. In Terry Pratchett's last
Discworld novel, Raising Steam, one of the richest entrepreneurs in the city of Ankh-
Morpork threatens an aspiring railway engineer to have him thrown “down the Effing stairs” (38). While in most contexts this would be seen as a minced oath for the derogatory adjective fucking, and thus placing the word firmly in Pinker's sexual expletives (18), the author hurries to explain that the staircase is actually made from a high quality wood that grows only in one place – the Effing Forest, according to the
Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki likely inspired by the real-world Epping Forest, a location on the border of North-East Greater London known for its ancient woodland.
Pratchett thus turns the word rather into an allusion to a fictional place, which, however, loses all vulgar connotation. So instead of being profane and angering his wife while threatening with violence, as the author of the entry on Effing Forest on the Discworld
& Terry Pratchett Wiki mentions, Sir Harry King, the richest manager of sewage
63 systems and waste disposal in the whole Discworld, can boast about the luxury of his well-furnished homestead.
– “Lad, time is money and I’m a busy man. You told Nancy down on
Reception that you’ve got something I might like. Now stop fidgeting and
look me in the face square like. If you’re another chancer wanting to
bamboozle me I’ll have you down the Effing stairs before you know it.”
(Raising Steam 38)
– “The wonderfully colourful oak wood of the Effing Forest was much in
demand for high-class joinery” (Raising Steam 38)
64 4. Conclusion
This thesis focused on the phenomenon of the creation of artificial taboo language and its appearance in contemporary works of fiction with the intention to demonstrate that it is a viable and widely-used method of being profane and avoid being offensive in the eyes of authorities. It also dealt with the ways taboo language is formed in these works of fiction by analysing word formation processes involved in them and inspirations in other language systems.
While the word taboo originally meant a religious idea so sacred that it is entirely unmentionable (Hughes 43), the term gradually broadened its meaning and is now used almost synonymously with indecent language, swearing and blasphemy. Jay opens his article by stating that he “uses the terms taboo words or swear words interchangeably to describe the lexicon of offensive emotional language” (153). Hughes adds that it now refers to words that are unmentionable in polite company, such as religious swear words, obscenities, racial insults, and terms like cripple and spastic”(43).
Following this synonymy between swear words and taboo words and the definitions of taboo words provided in Jackson and Amvela’s Words, Meaning and
Vocabulary, a corpus of artificial taboo words has been created for the purpose of the analysis. Representatives of works of fiction belonging to thirteen franchises were chosen from both literature and audio-visual media, specifically six television series, a film, four books, and a computer game and a table top game.
The series include Battlestar Galactica Original and Re-Imagined series,
Farscape, Firefly, Mork & Mindy, Red Dwarf, and Stargate Atlantis, the film used as an
65 example is Blade Runner. The books that were analysed are J. K. Rowling's Harry
Potter series, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Anthony Burgess'
A Clockwork Orange and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The games comprise of the
Dragon Age video game trilogy and Shadowrun tabletop game and two of the novels published to accompany the game – Choose Your Enemies Carefully by Robert N.
Charette and Dark Resonance by Phaedra Weldon. They were analysed and in each of them at least one specimen of taboo language was found.
These specimens were then divided into four groups according to their origin as far as word formation and aesthetic function are concerned. The three major groups were classified as newly-coined words with one case of semantic shift included, loanwords and influences from other real-world languages, and words and proper nouns related to fictional realities of the work, such as religious terms, social imprecations and racial epithets.
The group of newly-coined words comprises of frak and felgercarb or feldergarb from the Battlestar Galactica franchise, frell and dren from the Farscape series, smeg from Red Dwarf, shazbot from Mork & Mindy and gorram from the Firefly series. The latter is also the source of the words that underwent a semantic change from neutral to vulgar connotation: rutting and humped. The allusions to the respective fictional worlds are the insults mudblood, muggle-lover and blood-traitor, and the true taboo of Voldemort's name from the Harry Potter books, the racial epithet toaster from
Battlestar Galactica, invocations of the name of the prophet Andraste and the stone- related dwarven curses from the video game series Dragon Age, the insult lawn ornament and the wish of someone being taken by the Gap from the Discworld series and the blasphemies derived from the name of the prophet Zarquon from The
66 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The usage of foreign languages to mask swearing was found in Firefly using
Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, in A Clockwork Orange with the Nadsat teen slang based highly on Russian, the use of Japanese words in the world of Shadowrun, the
Cityspeak multi-language mixture of Blade Runner and the Czech outbursts in Stargate
Atlantis.
The fourth group that was used for the classification of artificial taboo language contained words that were used mainly to fulfil the aesthetic function. In their context appears the contrast between the vulgarity of the word itself and the context in which it was used. While Belgium in Douglas Adams' The Life, the Universe, and Everything is normally a neutral word, the author used it as the rudest word in the universe. In contrast, Pratchett takes the word Effing, a minced oath under normal conditions, and has it used as an innocent place name, inverting the process used in the previous example.
Newly-coined words, as described by Jackson and Amvela, are words that have
“no relationship whatsoever with any previously existing word” (51). They can be, however, identified as expletives from the context in which they appear, most often in an emotionally escalated situation, for example an argument, or from the reaction of the recipient of such word or the spectators of such conversation, such as the uproar explicitly stated in the extract regarding the artificial insult mudblood from Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (112). This method of recognition applies just as easily to loanwords and words derived from curses used in foreign languages.
Another means of identifying artificial swear words, as seen by Pinker in his book The Stuff of Thought, is by the phonological similarity to an existing profanity,
67 such as being a four-letter or a monosyllable word (339), while in many cases being both, or by a pronunciation containing the “f-” or “sh-” initial sound or the “-t” and “-k” ending sound, such as the most fan-appreciated fictional vulgarism frak, or even the seemingly innocent word from the family series Mork & Mindy shazbot.
Swearing has formed an inseparable part of human communication with traces dating back millennia, such as the old testament of the Bible. Virtually all people have uttered at least some milder curses when all did not go the intended way.
This reflects in the artistic creation as well, mainly among authors of fiction, writers, film makers, even video game developers. A fictional world that is created by the author needs to be as life-like as possible to ensure the appeal to its audience. One of the means used by the creators is a believable society with its distinct features, such as folklore, traditions, and religious organisations. And a society that is different from ours is also bound to have different figures of speech reflecting these differences. This is where taboo words come into play.
In recent years the prevailing reason to use fictional taboo language is exactly this need to produce a distinct set of particularities and peculiarities that differentiate the fictional worlds from one another. The original reason to create these artificial taboo words, however, was the strict criteria of what can and cannot be uttered in a medium that is freely acceptable to public audience and readers. Authorities controlling the quality of speech in television and films, censors safeguarding the decency of written word and other auditors of the good manners of communication have been established in order to punish any violations of these limitations.
And since, as Timothy Jay agrees, “swear words are used persistently over a person’s lifetime” (Jay 155), it is rather difficult to make do without using some of them
68 every once in a while. Harsh and violent environments make for an ideal background for the use of expletives and a large amount of fiction takes place in exactly these conditions. That is precisely why authors opted to let their imaginations create new taboo words that would on one hand be intangible to censors (Battis 145) and on the other hand would adorn their narratives with plausible vulgarity.
The creation of artificial taboo language is a widespread phenomenon contributing in its way to the credibility of fictional worlds, while at the same time enabling the authors to smuggle vulgarisms through the censorship process without repercussions. The number of these fictional profanities is, therefore, growing constantly as new series are being produced and it would require a significantly more extensive research to map every occurrence of such language. It is also a field predominately explored by the fans of the franchises in question and not one so thoroughly analysed in academic circles. It is, therefore, a topic that certainly warrants further study.
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Resumé This thesis deals with the creation of artificial taboo words in contemporary English and American literature, films, series and games, mainly from the point of view of formation of new profanities and their classification into groups according to the way they are created. The aim of this thesis is to introduce the topic of artificial taboo words as a method of avoiding the repercussions of censorship and fines issued for violating the decency of language on television and in literature, its wide variety of forms in which it appears, and to provide a classification of the ways it can be created. The theoretical part of this thesis introduces the topic of taboo language in general, its roots, evolution, and cultural influence, provides a brief overview of the persecution by censors, the intention to create a believable world, and artist's whim and spite of the authorities as the main motivations for the authors of literary and audiovisual fiction to create their own vulgarisms, and lists coinage, semantic change, and borrowing as the word-formation techniques most often employed in the process. It also presents the television series, film, books and games that were chosen to provide a corpus of representatives of artificial taboo language and ways to evade the censorship. The analytical part then classifies the examples of taboo language found in these works of fiction according to their origin as newly-coined or semantically changed words, loanwords and entire foreign languages, allusions to the fictional universe, and purely aesthetic use. It also provides extracts from the work of their origin demonstrating their use in given context, comments on their structure, and gives examples of their appearances outside of the original franchise. 79 7. Resumé in Czech Tato práce se zaměřuje na tvorbu umělých vulgarismů v současné anglické a americké literární, seriálové, filmové a herní tvorbě, zejména z perspektivy tvorby nových vulgárních slov a jejich klasifikaci podle původu. Cílem této práce je představit tvorbu nových vulgárních výrazů jako způsob předcházení cenzuře a pokutám za porušení slušného vyjadřování v televizi a v literatuře, množství podob, ve kterých se tato slova vyskytují, a klasifikovat je podle způsobu vzniku. Teoretická část této práce představuje tabu jazyk obecně, jeho původ, vývoj a působení kultury na něj, krátce popisuje postihy ze strany cenzorů, snahu autorů vytvořit uvěřitelný svět a též umělecký rozmar a vzdor cenzorům jako hlavní důvody pro autorovu tvorbu vlastních vulgarismů. Dále uvádí vytváření úplně nových, posunutí významu existujících, nebo přejímání cizích slov jako nejčastější slovotvorné postupy v tomto procesu používané. Také představuje seriály, film, knihy a hry, které byly vybrány jako korpus zástupců uměle vytvořených tabu slov a způsobů, jak uniknout cenzuře. Analytická část pak řadí příklady tabu slov nalezené v těchto vybraných dílech podle jejich původu do skupin nově vytvořených slov, významově posunutých slov, přejatých výrazů a použití cizích jazyků, narážek na fiktivní reálie a čistě estetického využití. Také uvádí příklady z původního díla, kde se dané výrazy vyskytují v konkrétním kontextu, popisuje jejich strukturu a jejich využití i v textech a dílech nesouvisejících s původním fiktivním světem. 80