Wash my mouth out with soap now!

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I came across a post on BoingBong which collects together strange names of towns suck as Fucking in Australia and Dildo in Newfoundland - read more here.

Our most common response to such words is shock, horror and giggling. Some people use it regularly to indicate their subversiveness. Others because they are angry and these words seem to represent the extreme of verbal aggression.

In the recent Big Brother racist row, there was a huge hoo-ha when the Indian actress was allegedly called a “Paki”. In trying to defuse the situation, the TV producers confirmed she was actually called a “cunt”. The message seems to be: A racist slur is evil but a misogynistic one is fine and dandy….??!

All this talk of provocative/ abusive language reminded me of a 78 page academic paper by a law professor, Christopher Fairman, on the legal implications of the word fuck, simply entitled “Fuck”. You can download the whole treatise from Stanford Law School here. Or read a summary on the Social Sciences Research Network here. He analyses the impact of the word in different contexts and why it raises such a kerfuffle. A fascinating read if you have the stamina for all 78 pages!

Photo: thanks to blo#gstream.com