Bad Words

A Second-Grade Version of Speech Act Theory

When my daughter and her cousin were seven, I overheard a conversation they had in the backseat of the car on a road trip. I made notes about the conversation later that evening, so this is a close approximation to what these two second graders had to say.

Jenny: What does ‘fuck’ mean?

Matt: It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a bad word.

Jenny: It can’t be bad if it doesn’t mean anything.

Matt: It’s just what you say if you get mad. You’ll get in trouble if you say it.

Jenny: Words have to mean something. It has to mean something.

Matt: ‘Abracadabra’ doesn’t mean anything.

(A puzzled silence follows.)

Jenny: Maybe ‘abracadabra’ is not a real word. It’s just magic.

Matt: Like if you say ‘glubbleglkle.’ You can say it, but it’s not a word.

Jenny: ‘cos it doesn’t mean anything.

Matt: Then why would you say it? Maybe you’re just trying to be funny.

Jenny: Maybe you can make up words and they can mean whatever you want.

[At this point there followed several minutes of hilarity as the two made up words and made up things for them to mean. I am so sorry I did not have a recording device. (this happened before the days of cell phones.) After a while, one of the two made up a word for ‘if you go to the bathroom and it stinks real bad.” This brought the conversation back to bad words.]

Jenny: ‘Shit’ is a bad word because it means something stinky and gross.

Matt: But if you say ‘poop’ it means the same thing but it’s not a bad word.

Jenny: ‘Poop’ is a funny word and ‘shit’ is a bad word.

Matt: It’s a bad word if you say it when you’re mad.

Jenny: Well, I got in trouble for saying ‘fuck’ and I wasn’t even mad.

Matt: Ooooooh! You said ‘fuck’ in school?

Jenny: I just wanted to know what it means.

Matt: It doesn’t mean anything. It just get’s you in trouble.

Jenny: It has to mean something. ‘Shit’ is a bad word, and it means something.

Matt: I’m gonna ask Uncle Bill what ‘fuck’ means.

7year old writing on blackboard: No !@#%&!

Take a look at the philosophical questions these two cousins raised:

· What is profanity? What makes some words ‘bad;?

· Does something have to have meaning in order to be evaluated as ‘good’ or ‘bad’?

· What is the nature of meaning? Can we give words our own meanings? Can words mean whatever we want them to mean?

· What makes an utterance a ‘word’? What is a ‘real’ word?

· Do words have different force (or different meanings) depending on the emotion of the speaker?

· What makes some word’s funny?

· Are there words that have an effect (such as getting you in trouble) without meaning anything?

These two seven-year-olds came remarkably close to recognizing that some speech acts are performatives, functioning in language to accomplish something, not to ‘mean something.’ I was in graduate school before this idea was introduced to me in J.L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words. I now wonder whether J. L. Austin (and all the philosophers in the field of pragmatics) were listening to children!