Why Good Are Bad Good Words Bad?

The old idiom, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” has been used for decades, and although a good sentiment, can be disproven by any person with an basic understanding of their feelings. The power of the words one hears can greatly affect their self esteem and confidence. The fact that words hurt is an issue everyone faces, but some words hold too much power, power that can be used in not so ideal ways. Slurs, or words that are used to oppress minority groups, are used too casually in the modern world, with grave consequences on the minorities they are used against. The word faggot, a term used to describe gay men, has become popular in modern America between school boys as a way to either mock their peers or intentionally hurt an actual queer person. This word in particular moves farther away from offensive and can be categorized as oppressive due to its both psychological and social ramifications. The use of the word faggot is an act of oppression when one looks at both the social and psychological effects the word has on both the user and the recipient of the slur.

Conventionally schools are trying to promote success and positive student image. Using profanity in the classroom through literature can promote a negative mentality.

Despite that students now use profanity in their public schools and even more out of school, this could cause more children and teens to use the offensive language around their peers.

In today’s society curse words and insults are used in many people’s regular vocabulary. Most of these insults, if not all, are being said without prior knowledge of the meaning behind the word. An example of an insult like this is porch monkey, a derogatory term for African Americans. The people that use derogatory terms like this are often ill-informed and unaccepting of other cultures.

Besides literal uses for cuss words (as verbs), over two-thirds of all swearing is linked in expressing some kind of emotional connotation. These help with expressing the speaker’s anger, frustration, and surprise (“son of a bitch”, “f*ck me!”, “holy shit!”) which are done in emotional outbursts of these single words, also known as epithets. In addition profanity has a direct connection with emotional response in that when one utters one of these “worser words” it helps increase heart rate and work as an analgesic, showing how it can help manage emotional pain as it has a direct connection. One such emotional connection could be noted in the use of “FUBAR” (F*ucked up beyond all recognition) in the movie Saving Private Ryan to help the convey the soldiers emotions in how sick of they were of the war. Commonly physical fights take place to help express emotional pain or anger, these are normally avoided by voicing this anger through these taboo words. For example one can use name calling (bitch, asshole), or curse in the form of a put down (eat shit and die) all spur emotional responses and can help avoid physical confrontations by giving a voice to inner feelings. This is commonly seen in rap songs where many cuss words are used to unveil inner feelings. Such the rap group NWA used

    Everyday we read and hear profanity from books which we should shelter our children from having to learn more about the awful things we have in life. Having profanity in our everyday lives affects us in a negative way because if our children hear the foul language then there is a greater chance that children will pick up the words we would not like them to say. In the article “Potty-Mouthed” by Martin Chilton, states that swearing in Young Adult fiction is a controversial and complex issue. Young Adult fiction is controversial issue because some parent let their children read books that other parents would not agree with based on the language, violence, suicied and sexualactivity. A lot of teenage books have very mature points of view that some or most of our teens can not even

Meta ethics looks at ethical language and helps us to identify whether the word good is meaningful. Analytical statements are sentences that are true because of the relationship between the subject and the predicate. Analytical statements are usually self-explanatory, e.g. all carnivores eat meat; we know what a carnivore eats which is meat, the subject is the carnivore and the predicate here is the meat. Analytical statements are logic based, they tell us about language but little meaningful information about the world. Also no additional meaning or knowledge is contained in the predicate that is not already given in the subject. Synthetic sentences may or

“Sticks and stones may brake my bones, but words will never hurt me”, goes one old playground rhyme. We are usually taught to ignore a person who uses foul language, but everyone knows that words can really hurt a person. When someone uses hateful words against us, it can hurt just as much as a slap or a punch. When people start to use obscenities with ethnic or racial slurs, it can push some sensitive buttons. Racial slurs used in a joking manner leads to others using it in a condescending manner, which ultimately leads to violence and feelings of hatred. From my experience, racial slurs can cause the most extreme negative reactions in people.

Stated in the website of Teen Ink about the profanity "We would not be learning the true history if certain pieces of it and little details were ignored or left behind. In order to understand history to its most, we must learn from our mistakes and realize what we have done wrong. All language is beautiful in the right context" ("Should Of Mice"). With the use of profanity, young audiences can gain the knowledge and understand the history behind the words and why those words were used frequently at the time. This is significant for the young audiences to learn and to know that they must learn from the mistakes of using profanity and learning from it so that those words can't be repeated. This is also supported through the knowledge of racial slurs and offensive language in Teen Ink as the site states "If people do not read, learn, and understand how African-Americans were treated in the past, then history will most likely repeat itself. We must learn and understand our mistakes, in order to prevent them in the future" ("Should Of Mice"). With audiences exposed to offensive language and profanity at a young age, they would learn that these words are not appropriate and would likely not use these words. If young audiences don't gain the knowledge of these words, then history will repeat itself with people using the derogatory words. This also

During the time in which we could own another human being as an object to do work we would use words that were only used to control others and bring them down. Racial slurs were used to control a person, to make them feel as if they were nothing and make sure they felt like nothing. In the book "When Race Breaks Out" even Helen Fox says , “Ethnic slurs by the dominant group are meant to keep a subordinate group in place.” showing that when any type of discriminating words should be left in the past.

Occasionally, minorities address themselves and their friends as racial slurs as jokes. Meanwhile, communities all throughout the country use these racial slurs to attack other minority groups because they are different. The most attacked minority is black people. The worst time for them was right after the civil war. The post-civil war era was the first time in history where black people were equal. This equality, however, led to segregation and black people were treated like trash. They had no power and they were more of slaves than ever before. This unequal treatment from the beginning has set an unreasonable divide between white and black that is still faintly there today. Most people of African descent take offense to words like “nigger” and “nigga” because of it being a very racial and profane word. These words may not always be meant as insults, but because of its long history, it causes discomfort and sometimes anger in people. Getting rid of racial slurs would be the end of the divide between minorities and non-minorities which would lead to a more open and accepting

Given a list of five words: retarded, slimy, whatever, turnt, and nigger. Only four out of the five were used to conduct the experiment on which words to be banned. As in the pie chart describes above, nigger was chosen to be banned than any other word, with retarded coming in second. “Nigger” led with 40%, “retarded” second with 30%, and “turnt” with 20%. Turnt isn’t even an actual word; it is slang to define when someone is hyped for something. It can be used, as “This party is going to be so turnt.” Nigger is used negatively to insult people based on the amount of melanin in the skin. However, African-Americans may use it “in a neutral or familiar way” to regard each other (“Nigger”). If I were to ask what words to be banned, I would suggest

There is an author who claims hateful words are more dangerous than sex, I believe he takes his stance a little to far. Vulgar words are always unacceptable; this does not mean that they are spoken often, and more dangerous than sex. Words do not kill people, and are only words. Whereas Unprotected sex can be life threatening. Vocabulary that means one thing to one person, does not necessarily mean the same thing to a different person. Therefore, words are just words and not more dangerous than sex.

To explain to the Utaboopians about taboo language, the definition is necessary. Taboo language refers to phrases and words that are termed inappropriate in certain settings. Edmund Leach describes three types of phrases and taboo words in English. The first is dirty words, which are associated with excretion and sex, for example, shit, and bugger. The second one refers to Christian religion, terms such as Jesus or Christ. Lastly the names of animals that are used in calling a person such as a cow or a bitch. Taboo language is ancient and was invented the same time as language(Muho and Bakir 400). It was first introduced into the European language by Captain Cook in his third tour around the world. When he visited Polynesia, he saw several ways in which the word taboo was used so as to evade certain customs across various things. Taboo words are often explained and approved by the organizations of power, like religion and media. Taboo words are forbidden

Have curse words become so common they have lost their shock value? Yes, cursing has lost its shock value, if you walk around in the store, schools, restants, or any place infact, you hear cursing from parents teens and even kids. It is rare to hear a converson and to not have any swear words in that conversation. There are reasons why this is happening they dont know what it means, dont know what is happening to their brains when they do curse, and there is not any enforcement.