Shadow Vocabularies: Writing Swear Words
In the late seventies, I worked for a gift shop in Montrose, California. One of my co-workers there delighted the staff with an onslaught of curse words. None of these loaded words existed in shared language. Yet anyone would recognize the intent behind her sudden bursts of nonsensical sound.
She explained that her parents prohibited the mildest of swears, leaving her no choice but to invent her own. My favorite of her creations was “Oh, shivelpitz!” I use “shivelpitz” still in my spoken life. What a satisfying sound.
Our thou shalt not say words make for shadow vocabularies. To speak forbidden words feels a form of magic in the explosion of sudden emotion—curt syllables meant to bite rather than to express. Such words can relieve tension. Such words can hurt.
As we’ve learned more about how we work as embodied creatures, we’ve demythologized the natural necessities that make us animals as well as angels. The old words have lost their potency.
The choice to use an offensive word frames another cornerstone question of writing: why that word in that place? Cursing in writing must have a narrative reason. Those who use the forbidden words as throw-away descriptors may need reminding that any word used too often in storytelling spaces loses its power. Done well, however, even an overabundance of one word can be effective—if it serves the story. (See HBO’s Deadwood.)
A swear word robbed of its shock value is no longer a swear word. Many of the scariest old words are now tossed about in media, high and low, without hesitation, let alone mouthfuls of soap. These words are codes for bodily functions once unfathomable in their mystery. As we’ve learned more about how we work as embodied creatures, we’ve demythologized the natural necessities that make us animals as well as angels. The old words have lost their potency.
We never suffer for lack of forbidden words. Think of the ruin waged by one of the newer F-bombs—the word fat. Think of the suicide rates as they climb and climb.
The words we dare not speak now are the names we use to assert power over one another through humiliation and shame. When we use those words, we are demeaned as social beings. These new shadow vocabularies are truly dangerous terms that mete out as much real harm as any stick or stone. They threaten the victim with shunning, the most brutal form of human punishment outside of death.
Do such words have a place in our stories? That depends on who is telling the story and who that teller identifies as their audience. Some stories are not intended for me. I am better served by listening, by learning why certain words used in certain places by certain speakers wreck lives.
A writer shouldn’t fear using any word—if that word, in the context of its usage, carries a scene’s necessary emotional resonance for that character. All words should be used with compassion and awareness of the potential to cause unneeded pain. I’m not lecturing here but speaking from the experience of having used words without realizing the hurtful gravity of what I was writing at the time.
What I’ve learned since: Do not write to disrupt the lives of readers by assaulting them with shadow vocabularies. Write to disrupt the lives of characters in a way that makes readers feel and think, and then maybe, just maybe, disrupt their own lives by letting in a little light.
Writing Exercise
Here’s a little sound play. Come up with a shadow vocabulary of your own invention. Let the sound of the words convey their forbidden nature. Don’t define these words. Now, write a short scene in which one of your characters uses your vocabulary in such a way that the reader understands your nonsense words as curses. Let the other characters respond in the differing ways people respond to swear words.
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