Page 88 - The Economist Asia January 2018

The Economist January 27th 2018
72 Books and arts
2 curtail civil liberties of opponents, includ- Profane language has the greatest emotional resonance,
ingmedia”. swearing in your mother tongue always
Alas, these catalogues and checklists Foul play feels most powerful, even among the most
are more emotionally satisfying for Trump fluent multilinguals. As swearing func-
opponents (see, he is a tyrant, they can ex- tionsasa complexsignal, subtle enough ei-
claim) than genuinely illuminating. Mr ther to amuse or to offend, these words
Trump says horrible, shameful things all varyaccordingto whata culture deems un-
too frequently. But he has not actually Swearing Is Good for You. By Emma Byrne. mentionable. Russian, for example, “has
locked up opponents or sent thugs to W.W. Norton; 240 pages; $25.95. Profile an almost infinite number” of ways to
smash printing presses. That makes for a Books; £12.99 swear, most of them involving the honour
puzzle. Is the president an autocrat, ordoes of your mother. As for Japanese, because
he just play one on TV? The puzzle is not N THESE potty-mouthed times, when the culture is largely free ofan excretory ta-
solved bycraftingpseudoscientifictests for Icertain world leaders sling profanity boo (hence the poo emoji), there is no
autocracy that give equal weight to harsh about with abandon, many observers nat- equivalent of “shit”. Yet the word kichigai
words and malign acts. urally lament the debasement of speech. (loosely translated as “retard”) is usually
Both books are at their strongest when But instead of clutching pearls, why not bleeped on television. Translators often
examining how Mr Trump flouts norms find a silver lining? Learning more about struggle to render curse words and insults
with impunity. Both ascribe the presi- when, how and why people swear offers in other languages, as their emotional heft
dent’s success to the similar insight that insight into everything from the human tends to be culturally circumscribed. For
modern politics resembles a form of tribal brain to a society’s taboos. Trash talking example, Westerners were more amused
warfare. What a leader does matters less even affords some real physical and social than alarmed by reports of an Iraqi minis-
than whom he is for, and above all, whom benefits, as Emma Byrne argues in “Swear- ter declaring “A curse be upon your mous-
he is against. ingIs Good forYou”. tache!” to a Kuwaiti diplomat in 2003.
For much of the 20th century, the pro- For all their shock value, swear words Women who curse face a double stan-
fessors write, politics worked because are practical and elastic, capable of threat- dard. Although swearingin a male-domin-
most practitioners subscribed to two vital ening aggression or coaxing a laugh. ated profession can be a short cut to accep-
norms. First, mutual tolerance, or the un- Among peers, profane banter is often a tance, women are also more likely to be
derstanding that competing parties accept sign of trust—a way of showing solidarity shunned or seen as untrustworthy—even
one anotheras legitimate. Second, forbear- with a larger group. Critics may say such by women—when they sound like steve-
ance, or the idea that election-winners ex- language reveals boorish thinkingora lim- dores. This is not only because women are
ercise some restraint when wielding pow- ited vocabulary, but swearing is often im- expected to be more polite than men, Ms
er, ratherthan treatingpolitics like war. pressively strategic, and a fluency in crass Byrne suggests, but also because swearing
Not Mr Trump. Mr Frum describes the language typically correlates with verbal tendsto be associated with sexuality. Since
president in near-animal terms, as sniffing fluency in general. women are judged more harshlythan men
out his opponents’ weaknesses—“low en- Because the language learnt in infancy for their sexual adventures, bad language
ergy”, “little”, “crooked”—in the same way leads to assumptions ofbad behaviour.
thathe instinctivelysensed the weak point Stoicism in the face of pain may seem
in modern politics: “that Americans resent noble, but swearing a blue streak is appar-
each other’s differences more than they ently more helpful. A study of volunteers
cherish theirshared democracy”. forced to plunge theirhandsin ice-cold wa-
Neither book flinches from tracing the ter found that those who swore kept their
role that race, class, education and culture hands submerged for longer than those
play in what are ostensibly political argu- who were stuck bellowing a neutral word.
ments. MrLevitsky and MrZiblatt offer the By making people feel more aggressive—
troublingthoughtthatthe normsofcivility and therefore, perhaps, more powerful—
and compromise seen in Washington be- swearing seems to improve the tolerance
tween the end of Reconstruction and the ofpain.
1980s rested, uncomfortably, on racial ex- A self-described swearing evangelist,
clusion. Southern whitesdid such an effec- Ms Byrne is certainly bullish on the merits
tive job of disenfranchising freed slaves ofbad words. Butin hereagernessto prove
soon after the civil war that black turnout how “fucking useful” they are, she some-
in South Carolina plunged from 96% in times overplays her hand. She argues that
1876 to 11% in 1898, as voting curbs bit. As a swearing makes people less likely to be
result, manysouthern statesendured what physicallyviolent, butofferslittle evidence
amounted to decades of authoritarian sin- to back this up. She commends the way
gle-party rule. As the professors bluntly piss-taking can help people work together
putit: “Itwasonlyafter1965 thatthe United more effectively, but largely overlooks the
States fully democratised.” The parties way this approach can alienate minorities.
have been sorting themselves along racial She also occasionally trades empiricism
and class lines eversince. for hyperbole, as when she declares: “I
Neither book blames all American ills don’t think we would have made it as the
on racism—they are more nuanced than world’s most populous primate if we
that. But the authors of both do argue, in hadn’t learned to swear.”
effect, that America has never tried to Still, “Swearing Is Good for You” is an
maintain democratic norms in a demos as entertaining and often enlightening book.
diverse astoday’s. Unlessthatcan be fixed, It may not quite stand up the bold claim of
it is a grave threat to the republic. Keep it in its title, but Ms Byrne’s readers are sure to
sight, even as the Trump Express flashes come away with a fresh appreciation of
dangerously past. 7 language at its most foul. 7