词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Cursing in America

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": May 15, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- curse words in American English.

RS: We can't say them on the air, but a listener in Sokoto, Nigeria, Paul Ezeani, would like us to talk about them. So we found an expert who has dedicated¹ his career to studying the role of cursing in America.

AA: Timothy Jay is in the Psychology² Department at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Professor Jay points out that while freedom of speech is protected under the U-S Constitution, there are increasing restrictions³ on language.

JAY: "We have the freedom of speech, right, the First Amendment⁴, but then you can't sexually harass⁵ someone, you can't use racial language to discriminate⁶ against them, you can't produce obscene speech, you can't use indecent speech -- those are kind of laws that we have about the workplace and school."

RS: So when it's OK to curse, what words do Americans choose, we asked Professor Jay.

JAY: "The obscenities that we have in our culture are hundreds of years old, you know, the Anglo-Saxon words, and we can chase those all the way back to the time of Chaucer. So those are pretty stable. What does change is slang, and slang becomes obsolete⁷ and exhausts itself, and we make up new kinds of sexual slang.

"What's happened in our country over the last hundred years is we've shifted from a focus on profanity and blasphemy⁸, which are religious words -- either an indifference⁹ toward religion or an attack on religion -- we've shifted away from that to focus more on words about sexuality. Most of what we think about obscenity has to do with sexual acts or sexual deviance. So that's the shift, probably along with the decline of the church in modern societies."

AA: "Now there's certainly a lot more cursing around us nowadays, it seems -- you turn on the TV, you turn on the radio, you hear words you never would have heard, you know, ten or twenty years ago."

RS: "Is there more permissiveness in our society, and perhaps in our media."

JAY: "Well, media standards have changed. It think it's harder to answer the permissiveness question because at the same time we have more explicit¹⁰ media we also have things like sexual harassment¹¹ and voice mail being monitored and e-mail being monitored. So I don't think we're becoming more permissive, but I think the media that we consume is becoming more explicit.

"I think a lot of this begins in the late '60s, where you've got the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the Vietnam War, a shift in the standards for producing movies. Now we have cable TV and satellite. So all of these media are competing with each other for our interest at night, and when one person turns up the steam, then so does the other. That's what we're seeing every year now."

AA: "So money, maybe it comes down to."

JAY: "Yeah, I think that's the other side of this, is to look at this again as power and also, you know, big corporations who make a lot of money kind of setting the standards but playing with the standards at the same time."

RS: "What is the student of English as a foreign language to do, to learn when and when not to use profanity?"

JAY: "That's a good question. My sister was a teacher in English-as-a-second language programs out in Los Angeles for a long time, and these kind of questions about sexuality and body parts and taboos¹² isn't part of the curriculum, for some good reasons I guess. But the women she taught would always ask her after class. But, you know, there's plenty of slang books. I think people learning English as a second language also pick it up in the media, they pick it up in records."

AA: "I've got to ask you, do you ever use profanity or swear words in your lectures, other than when you're talking about these words as words?"

JAY: "Yeah, I do, for two reasons. One, I do it sometimes for surprise. And then, in my -- I just finished a class on language and censorship, and to really to get them talking, I have to break down these barriers and traditions in the classroom. And still, I mean here in 2003, many of my students just won't talk about it, they just won't use this kind of language."

RS: Timothy Jay is a psychology professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, in North Adams, Massachusetts. His books include "Why We Curse," "Cursing in America" and "What to Do When Your Students Talk Dirty."

AA: And that's all for Wordmaster this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected], and you'll find our programs on the Web at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

MUSIC: "Daddy Could Swear, I Declare"/Gladys Knight and the Pips

1 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

2 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

3 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制

4 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

5 harass   

vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰

参考例句：

• Our mission is to harass the landing of the main Japaness expeditionary force.我们的任务是骚乱日本远征军主力的登陆。
• They received the order to harass the enemy's rear.他们接到骚扰敌人后方的命令。

6 discriminate   

v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待

参考例句：

• You must learn to discriminate between facts and opinions.你必须学会把事实和看法区分出来。
• They can discriminate hundreds of colours.他们能分辨上百种颜色。

7 obsolete   

adj.已废弃的，过时的

参考例句：

• These goods are obsolete and will not fetch much on the market.这些货品过时了，在市场上卖不了高价。
• They tried to hammer obsolete ideas into the young people's heads.他们竭力把陈旧思想灌输给青年。

8 blasphemy   

n.亵渎，渎神

参考例句：

• His writings were branded as obscene and a blasphemy against God.他的著作被定为淫秽作品，是对上帝的亵渎。
• You have just heard his blasphemy!你刚刚听到他那番亵渎上帝的话了！

9 indifference   

n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎

参考例句：

• I was disappointed by his indifference more than somewhat.他的漠不关心使我很失望。
• He feigned indifference to criticism of his work.他假装毫不在意别人批评他的作品。

10 explicit   

adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的

参考例句：

• She was quite explicit about why she left.她对自己离去的原因直言不讳。
• He avoids the explicit answer to us.他避免给我们明确的回答。

11 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

12 taboos   

禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为）

参考例句：

• She was unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. 她被藩蓠、法律及外来的戒律赶下了马。
• His mind was charged with taboos. 他头脑里忌讳很多。