Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing – Melissa Mohr

Book Review

– R Srivatsan

[ezcol_1half]Eulale, may you enjoy good health with your wife Vera, and good fucking.” (Graffito found on a Roman wall around the first century Christian Era. Varone, A 2002. Erotica Pompeiana. Rome: <Le’erma > di Bretschneider )

Holy Shit is a fun filled, erudite and perceptive history of swearing in the West from Roman times to the twenty first century. Given the vast time period covered, it may be expected that the book will be somewhat superficial in its treatment of different aspects of the subject, but it is surprisingly deep in some of its observations.

Mohr’s work brings out the relationship between the sacred (the holy) and the profane (shit) in the use of English language in Western history. The holy element of swearing comes from the sin of using god’s name in vain – a peculiarly Christian idea: e.g., “Good God”, “Jesus H Christ”, etc. Perhaps this is enough to tell us that swearing doesn’t have the same history in India, since we don’t have the holy in it at all. Somehow, “He Bhagwan” or “Devuda” or “Kadavale” don’t work in the same way. The profane element is there in common between the West and in Indian languages– ‘motherfucker’ almost equated by ‘maderchod’ in Hindi; plus sundry other everyday usages.

What are the different theories of swearing? Mohr outlines the physiological, the linguistic and the historical. Physiologically, she argues that swear words actually have a different action on our brain and body which can be objectively measured. On the other hand, she describes physiological research that explains how disease can result in the propensity to be abusive: e.g., Tourette’s syndrome where people with a specific disorder tend to be obscene in their speech or gestures.

Linguistically, Mohr argues that swear words tend to hijack meaning – moving away from the exact meaning (denotation) to its connotation. “This tastes fucking good!” has nothing to do with intercourse – it has to do with how good something tastes (There is no specific equivalent of this structure of obscenity in Indian languages). In other words, swearing is a non literal use of a word that has a specific undesirable, yet very powerful meaning. And yet, what is a ‘powerful meaning’?

Historically Mohr suggests that swear words derive their extreme power from the opposite of connotation – they are directly and evocatively connected to what they refer to, far more than any other words are. Hence the exclamation “Shit!” (here too there isn’t an equivalent in Indian languages) is powerful because however connotatively it is used, it remains attached almost physically to what it describes – here, the smelly, repulsive mass of visceral expulsion.

Swearing, Mohr argues has a very different flavour in different periods. For example, in the Roman Empire two thousand years ago, swearing was directed at men, describing them as individuals who had sex in a particular way. Sometimes it was in praise, For example, when Caesar returned from a conquest in 46 BC, he was among other things called a ‘pedicator’ (butt-fucker) to both protect him against envy and also show his virile prowess in war. On the other hand, a man who took the feminine position in sex (regardless of whether the partner was a man, a boy or a woman) – e.g., used his mouth to provide sexual favours, was cursed with a language of special venom.[/ezcol_1half]

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In the Middle ages (very approximately 2nd Century AD to 1300 AD), use of god’s name, speaking of heaven out of place, calling to Christ in trivial speech were all sins which carried serious punishment. These were because taking god’s name was a sacred act and using it without that sacredness at heart was a supreme offence. Later on in the Middle Ages, it was a sin to speak of (God)’s blood (related to the current word ‘bloody’), or (God)’s wounds (later secularized in the English speaking West to ‘zounds’). These forms of swearing were related to the spread of Christianity.

In describing the situation after the Middle Ages, Mohr generally agrees with the historical sociologist Norbert Elias’ thesis on the emergence of the concept of civility. In other words, the birth of a recognizably modern society gives rise to a set of cultural restraints on what a person may or may not do in public view – and in parallel what a person may or may not say in respectable company. Over the centuries, this becomes something that is codified by the excesses of Victorian morality so that by the nineteenth, it becomes unacceptable to even say the word ‘legs’ or ‘trousers’ in public. However, colourfully obscene language flourishes alongside as a cottage industry, as witnessed by much literature in the nineteenth century.

This period and the early twentieth century are also obsessed with the appearance of slang, obscenity and vulgarity in literature – as evidenced by the legal proceedings against DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and James Joyce’s Ulysses.

On the whole, evidence does not permit Mohr to follow the linear path of historical progress and say that swearing is a thing of the past, and that in a civilized world, there is no need for swearing! On the contrary, abusive, powerful language is alive and well, expressing the inexpressible and shocking the civil norms of speech and writing today.

Reading Mohr’s book, I was struck by the absence of a concept that would have explanatory value for many of the effects of swearing she describes – shock that seems to be an invariable effect of hearing obscene language, discomfort in hearing swear words, bodily response (skin transconductance changes) when swear words are heard. While she uses the term connotation to describe the excessive effects of the swear word, the concept of connotation remains in the realm of meaning and significance. The effects she describes are bodily, physically experienced, effects –Gilles Deleuze called such words ‘order words’, i.e., those words that affect physically rather than communicate meaning. The absence of this concept is somewhat striking in an otherwise sophisticated study.

Another important issue is the context the swear word is used in and why: in other words, the act being performed in the use of the word. What is the difference between swearing in one’s active speech and reporting its use in speech or writing? How does one think about the literary reproduction of obscene language – either in a novel or in a theoretical exposition like Mohr’s? In absence of this theoretical anchor, Mohr is unable to differentiate between swearing in everyday language and swearing as it appears in literature.

Third, I was struck by the fact that Mohr has not dealt with the problem of intersecting domains in which verbal obscenity is interpreted – in the domain of gender and that of race or class. While her analysis is able to handle the social class and race domains with some sophistication, she has very little to say (except that it makes her more or less uncomfortable) about how abusive language affects (both in meaning, and in its power effects) a gendered response. Put differently is there a response to swearing that differentiates men and women as targets, respondents and speakers in a given culture and at a specific point in history? In making this differentiation it is not necessary to propose that women are universally victimized by swear words and other forms of obscenity, only that there are likely to be specific historical differences in the reception and expression of obscenity that need to be taken into consideration in a theoretical discourse1.

Finally, I began to think about how we would study the history of abuse in India – what is the equivalent of racial abuse? For example ‘nigger’ is a classically troublesome example dealt with in detail by Mohr. What are the parallels in India? Would it be the use of a caste name as an abuse? E.g., what is intended when a member of the dominant elite abuses someone by the term ‘Madiga’? How are verbal caste slurs related to caste-based abuse in general? Further, what is the relationship that emerges between caste-based abuse and the new notion of a verbal atrocity which is punishable under the SC/ST Atrocities Act? How does one then think of obscene language that is used by the productive castes? Is this a ‘vulgar’ way to repudiate the superior claims of upper caste society and standard language with the proliferation of terms like ‘dengu’, ‘modda’ etc.? How indeed is the language used to describe sexual elements (‘mithun’, ‘yoni’, ‘lingam’) in sacred Hindu texts constructed as ‘polite’ and acceptable? What are the intersectional effects of these language practices on women?

Note: 1. In keeping to these limits I am skirting the debate between Judith Butler and Catharine Mackinnon on the illocutionary effects of pornography. See the section titled ‘Anti-pornography paradigm’ in Judith Butler, 1994. “Against Proper Objects. Introduction” in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6.2+3 (1994); 1-26.
Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition, 2013.