Profanity Doesn't Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Profanity Doesn't Work

#91

Post by jdietrich » Fri, Nov 04, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC

In my experience, attitudes to swearing are a remarkably effective heuristic. If someone takes offence at my use of language, they're almost certainly going to take offence at the thoughts and feelings I use that language to communicate.

People fuck and shit and piss. Those words represent the most essential parts of our nature, the most basic acts of a living animal. Use them wisely, use them to enrich communication, but don't deny them, don't try and remove them from the language. Profanity does work, precisely because it offends you, precisely because it's a shock to the system. The world is too vital and visceral for us to constrain the words we use to describe it.

The world might be full of witty, creative people who hate swearing, but I certainly haven't met any. In my experience, people who dislike swearing are prissy, small-minded bigots. They're the sort of people that call modern art ugly, the sort of people who seek to constrain the private lives of adults "for the sake of the children". Frankly, they can fuck off - I've no time for any of them.

Re: Profanity Doesn't Work

#92

Post by vacri » Fri, Nov 04, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #82

vacri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's author hints at innuendo, euphemisms, dysphemisms and doublespeak as alternatives to swearing. I love wordplay and regularly engage in it with my friends. But to write an article using wordplay as the basic tool for explaining anything other than wordplay is worse than being offensive. You run the risk of alienating a lot of English-as-second-language folks for a start, as they lack a lot of the fluency…

Second-language English speakers should always be seen as your target audience for any professional communication. Most English speakers alive today do not speak English as their first language. Also, many who speak English as a first language are not experts in English either. Metaphor, idiom and wordplay are great, interesting and they have their uses, mainly in social contexts and for identifying yourself as a mem…

By 'speaking in metaphor' I mean that the speakers wind in and out of allegory and double-meaning, not that they are using one-shot cliche metaphors, and that what is said between-the-lines is readily acknowledged as being part of the message, just as much as what is literally stated.

Re: Profanity Doesn't Work

#93

Post by jt2190 » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 1:20 PM UTC

cleverjake wrote: post #81

tensor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But regardless, I thought one of the biggest points of hacker news was the ability to grok out meaning of news and opinions, and not debate the effectiveness of its communication. I think it's quite the opposite. The community has grown around an appreciation for effectively communicating and discussing ideas. This is why comments with little information and inflammatory comments are typically down voted. In terms of…

Of course, and I agree, however that is focusing on this particular part of the conversation strikes me as extremely superfluous. "shit work" is a colloquialism. A crass one? perhaps. But to say that it is harming the community - when it is communication within the community, just seems like FUD to me. And then to go on and claim the rest of his articles are offensive as well, simply for using one of a select few wor…

A small company I worked for once upon a time almost lost a major client due to a curse. Thankfully the CEO was able to beg for mercy. (People loosing their jobs counts as "hurt" to me, BTW.)