At first, everyone carefully studied the material. Mat – profanity and expressions, the use of which is not allowed by public morality, aimed primarily at insulting the addressee or negative assessments of people and phenomena. In general, it is extremely clear: public morality “does not allow”, the addressee can fly in response, and not only verbally, but despite this, obscene vocabulary (taboo) lives for centuries and does not lose ground – the older. “Barking obscenities” were found written in four old Russian birch bark letters of the XII-XIII centuries. Linguists disagree with the number of roots of swear words – three or four (here the journalists rolled their eyes and began to curl their fingers), but they professionally admire the “truly countless” number of derivative words. Here, “the entire Russian word-building paradigm of verbal vocabulary” is involved, and there are ample opportunities for the formation of other parts of speech: adjectives, verbs, adverbs, gerunds, and even interjections. Why is blasphemy so tenacious?
And everything from the fact that the mat helps us to build and live, scientists have established. If someone drops a battery on his foot, what word will come to mind first? Certainly not a radish.
– With the help of foul language, a person solves his psychological problems, – explains the director of the Institute of Psychology of the Ural State Pedagogical University Lyudmila Maksimova. – For example, for a teenager, this is a growth marker – I can use adult words, despite the fact that there are no other possibilities yet. If they say so in their environment, they repeat being one of their own, their goal is adaptation. Furthermore, verbal aggression reduces the level of physical aggression and, to some extent, the level of violence in society. There are studies from the Afghan war era that replacing regular vocabulary with profanity reduces communication time to seven minutes, in combat conditions this can be critical.
The journalists fell silent, crushed by the weight of the arguments. How to cut the branch on which so much rests, perhaps in vain this one-day world struggle began? How to argue with Freud himself, who said: “The first man who cast a curse instead of a stone was the creator of civilization”?
– Yes, in a critical situation, a mat is used for emotional release, – says Anna Plotnikova, head of the department “Faculty of Philology” of UrFU. – But, of course, it is necessary to distinguish in which particular situation this happens: one thing is in a trench, the other is in an official place. In some situations, obscene language is absolutely unacceptable.
Let me add on my own: a lot depends on the personality of the foul-mouthed person. If his level of culture, sense of humor and personal charisma are indisputable, like those of one of our respected politicians, a simple word, supposedly accidental (well, yes, of course) released by him at an international conference to opponents who have completely lost its shores, it becomes the locomotive of national creativity and gives the Russian alphabet a very important additional letter “double Yat”, that is, “double” in English. It’s art, yes.
Many modern writers also claim their role in art, from Limonov to Dovlatov to Pelevin, for them “barking obscenities” is an all-time literary device. The other day, the writer Alexei Ivanov came to Yekaterinburg to present his new book “Armored Steamships” to readers. She herself is packed into a movie, because it contains obscene language, which greatly offends the author:
– A couple of times my heroes curse, but not the whole novel is written with bad words. Stupid demands of our supervisory commission: to establish a rating and sell books in polyethylene. Of course, in 1918, the Civil War, people are killing, and suddenly everyone here is very polite and educated, ironically Ivanov.
But still, adult citizens who are in peaceful conditions, who have not dropped a battery at their feet and who do not want to recognize the right of a swear to live in art, the swear infuriates for some reason, especially simple and not highly artistic.
– Checkmate is verbal aggression, a form of violence against a person, a desire to inflict damage, – explains Lyudmila Maksimova. – It is used by negative and non-self-critical individuals with low social intelligence. Cognitively complex people rarely use obscene language, because they can solve their psychological problems in other lexical, behavioral, and psychological ways.
There are methods of combating obscene language, their effectiveness, alas, is low, but here we must take the breadth of coverage and coordination of efforts. A colleague told how they managed to calm down swearing teenagers in a tram: the driver threatened to block the doors and call the police, and a colleague showed them article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (minor hooliganism, a fine or administrative arrest) from the phone screen. The children became “cognitively more complex” before our eyes, learning that the police might be interested in familiar expressions, and they fell silent.
It is clear that such a number will not work with adults, but we are not faced with the task of changing the world as a whole, at least in its individual sections. Once I had to sit in a cafe at a nearby table with a company of quite nice guys, judging by the conversation, students. Having finished my coffee and hiding under my beret my ears withered from his vocabulary, I approached and in the tone of a schoolmaster said:
– Guys, all these words are familiar to me, – then I loudly and conscientiously listed what I heard. There was an echoing silence in the cafeteria. – But I’m not going to pour them on your plate. And you ruined my whole caramel latte.
Imagine if they apologized.
And someone unknown walks around Yekaterinburg with a can of paint and a stencil and leaves the inscription “Swearing is the language of degenerates” on the billboards – this is their way of dealing with verbal offenders. In general, one day, of course, is not enough. And we are not going to retrain adult swearing, only if the police, but it does not come into all hands. It remains old-fashioned, like Raikin’s: “Who will call, who will whistle, who will knock, who will play – education is obtained jointly.”
