From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu Jan 03 2002 - 17:10:56 MST
> I disagree with you. It is inappropriate for all occasions. At
> least in English, there's no idea or concept that requires
> profanity to be expressed unambiguously. There's always a word
> or collection of words that can be used instead of the profanity.
Now, that's just not true at all. The expressive content of
a statement is not just (or even mainly) the predicates expressed
by the meanings of the words; a sentence also communicates how
the speaker feels about the subject, and sometimes that even
helps clarify what he's trying to say.
I have a lot of respect for those who like to think and reason
and speak clearly. But expressing how you feel doesn't hurt,
and it can help. I, for example, use profanity rarely (perhaps
about one message out of 50 or so--I'd have to check an
archive to be sure, so when I do I hope it has some effect.
If I used it all the time no one would notice. But the last
time I did (I think it was "fuck the will of the people") it
expressed my opinion of public consensus as clearly and directly
as if I had said "I don't particularly value the will of the
people in that context", but it also makes it clear that I think
that's an important point, and that I actually have some
/negative/ feelings about public consensus.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:32 MST