Bonfire of profanities

International Herald Tribune, New York Times by William Safire | Jan. 4, 2009 (Review)

Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, and epithets, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing. But roundheeled readers should stop rubbing their hands because the deliberately shocking subject can be treated with decorum, in plain words, without the titillating examples of "dirty words."

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Posted by Leo Romero

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2.8

by George Blahusiak - Jan. 4, 2009

Interesting article. I think however it missed the principal point. During my time at university our English Lit prof told us that there are 30,000 or so words in the language. If we can't express ourselves without profanity then our knowledge of the language is pretty poor indeed. Mind you, even Bill the Bard (William Shakespeare to those who don't know him all that well) occasionally used rough language. Still, he knew most of the other words too, and used them well so that his use of rough language wasn't all that common.