I’m not a linguist, just a super-amateur word-fancier. We learned a lot about Noam Chomsky in my college communications courses… love him or hate him, most have to agree that he changed the way we think about linguistics. I think he would say (but your best bet is checking his work) that the ROOTS of language are innate… that our anatomy predetermines certain tones, pitches, intervals, consonances, assonances that naturally categorize into certain camps of communication. For instance, no matter where I might travel in the world, and regardless of the predominant language in the culture I’m in, questions seem to be generally indicated with a rising pitch at the end of a sentence. Likewise, “happy” tones and intervals and “sad” tones and intervals are shared in most cultures… a visitor from aboriginal Australia who had never heard English spoken could easily identify my emotion by vocal tone. In the same way, baby cries the world over which use a “num” or “nyah” sound tend to indicate hunger (the tongue is pressing the soft palate in a way that mimics sucking), whereas cries using a more sterotypic “waaah” sound tend to indicate discomfort or frustration… regardless of which language mom and dad speak. My guess is that Chomsky would suggest that these commonalitites indicate a shared language framework which is intrinsically tied to human anatomy and evolutionary development… and that our variances in language spring out from these common roots.

As for those words which sound “coarse” to our ears… you betcha, that is largely cultural in my experience. For example, the word “fuck” is used far more commonly in Ireland (where my ancestors come from), almost casually among adults and far more often as an adjective modifier (as in “I’m fuckin’ wiped out,” or “she’s fucking gorgeous”)… and while it may ring very coarse to us and be reserved for only beer halls and sailors on shore leave, it can pass even in office chatter or fairly polite conversation in Ireland. On the flip side, to use the expression “bloody” means virtually nothing to us (as in, “my bloody stapler is broken”), short of conjuring thoughts of actual injury… but it is used as a top-tier curse in the UK.

So, coarse language may, as with the rest of our language, share some common anatomical roots… but they are probably pretty far distanced at this point, and my guess would be that 99% of how we determine “coarse” has far more to do with our culture, our history, and our taboos than it does with our intrinsic characteristics.

Cheers,
Justin

It’s fascinating stuff–thank you for linking. Are you a linguist? Is Noam claiming that certain … *words* have innate meaning apart from our understaning of them, or rather that humans tend to put words *together* in certain ways which he says are hard wired?

I mean it makes sense to me that we have a category of words called “coarse”. But surely what goes into the category must be culturally defined? Noam isn’t saying that categories of words are innate, is he? I’m just thinking, for instance, that here in the United States women’s breasts have become ridiculously sexually objectified, to the extent that in lots of places it’s considered somehow improper for a nursing mother to allow her breast to be exposed while nursing her baby (which is outrageous, in my opinion, but that’s another discussion). In certain parts of Liberia, where I hung out for a few weeks a while back, the women quite nonchalantly went topless in public, and it was normal for them. On the Christian missions ship I used to work on, the guys in the engine room had a vocabulary that was considered normal/not coarse for us. Nobody felt offended by that vocabulary. But I didn’t use it around my mother, because she was offended by some of it. However, my mother had the grace to say not “You’re wrong/sinful/out of God’s will to use that language”, but rather “It hurts me when you use that language, so could you refrain out of love for me.”

Back when my language was a lot more … refined, in the sense that I never would have used “curse words” in just about anyone’s list, I was really using that, at one level, to somehow be “better than” people who did use that kind of language. I really thought of myself as better than in lots of ways back then. Yet in all my “refined” language, I used to say really hurtful, mean, horrible things to people on a much more regular basis than I do now.

I see I’ve started rambling. I should go to bed.

A: I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts, along with the others on here. I’m glad to be a fly on the wall in these dialogues!

B: As to your question about the meaning of a word… there are lots of differing theories on this very topic. Linguists and educational theorists are all over the map with opinions on what parts of language are innate, and what are subjective. The classic Piaget perspective is that language is wholly subjective, grown from nothing and acculturated into the speaker. Contemporary linguist Noam Chomsky, however, forwarded a theory called “Universal Grammer” which suggests that the framework of language is actually INNATE, and that we fill in with specific words and dialects from these built-in beliefs. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar if you’d like to learn more about that). It’s actually reminiscent of the debate on whether sexual orientation is innate or assumed (a debate we certainly don’t need to re-light in this discussion)… it’s nearly impossible to say for sure, but a lot of scientists and theorists have spent a lot of time arguing it!

Cheers,
Justin

thank you!

No one need apologize for being a recovering sex addict, in my not so humble opinion. Some of the great Christian heroes have been recovering sex addicts.

How can a word have a meaning for you, or for me, beyond what we think it means? Can word meanings exits outside of/apart from human minds?