Fuckin' this and Fuckin' that

My neighbour is of some sort of eastern European descent… and instead of using common subconscious time/gap fillers such as ‘umm’ or ‘like’,  he uses the work fuckin’….and I reckon that each sentence that is used there is at least 2 or 3 fuckin’s. One time I tried to count the amount of times he used the word and lost count (I am pretty bad at counting generally…but he did use it a lot). 

Now this use of profanity in some ways is congruent with what is talked about within Daly et al (2004) when discussing expletives in general conversation. It would almost seem as though the use of expletives is part of a code of some sort. Being that he is a tradesperson it might just be that it fits within a tradie code of conduct.

With this in mind it is interesting what fits within a particular code may be completely unacceptable within the realms of another code. Profanity, it seems, is one of those particulars that can differ in terms of what is acceptable depending on context. But it would seem that the way in which one uses profanity is highly pertinent to how that profanity is heard or interpreted. And this is part of what Daly et al (2004) are getting at. I think this is also part of what Garfinkle (1971, pg 77) sort of gets at when he says “to recognise what is said means to recognise how a person is speaking”.

I don’t think that my eastern European friend is getting angry at me each time he swears, quite the opposite, I think that with his searing communicates warmth and acceptance. Some food for thought I guess…

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 301.2/23

Daly, N, Holmes, J, Newton, J & Stubbe, M 2004, ‘ Expletetives as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor’, Journal of Pragmatics, vol.36, no.5, pp945-964.