Jesse Sheidlower,
president of the American Dialect Society and author of “The F-Word,” makes the
case in the NYT for printing expletives in full (“The Case for Profanity in
Print”). He says this is particularly imperative when said expletives are
integral to a story (as in the case, among many others, of Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland using the four-letter word to refer dismissively to
the EU); or when reviewing works of literature and art with expletives in their
titles. He thinks not just efforts to render the exact words that were used in
a roundabout way, but also replacing some of the letters comprising these with
asterisks or dashes, can only serve to obscure important aspects of what needs
to be reported or reviewed – and harks back to a bygone year of unnecessary
prudishness.
This raises an
interesting question. Should there be any
limits to what can appear in print or on a screen? Sheidlower does not suggest
any. He makes a nod to some lingering sensitivities when he mentions that “terms
that are insulting toward a particular group of
people should be handled with sensitivity.” But, he hastens to add, “that doesn’t mean obscuring the issue” – so racial slurs are to be printed
in full, too. How about terms which many people still, clinging to backward tastes,
find unpalatable? Their apprehensions should obviously count for even less – so
they would be best advised to hug the Zeitgeist, or at least downregulate their
yuk responses.
