Expletives

• Syntactic expletive, a word that performs a syntactic role but contributes nothing to meaning
• Expletive attributive, a word that contributes nothing to meaning but suggests the strength of feeling of the speaker

Usually these come in the four letter variety, and offend little old ladies and christian hipsters. Usually, but not always.

Substitutions, Battlestar Galactica's ever witty “Frack” for example. Or the clever little teens and their “frick” or “freak.” Just because these words are not “fuck” does not mean they are any less degrading to use.

I went through a phase, as a teenager of course, where I wanted desperately to use the word fuck as much as possible. I wanted to insert it into every sentence until people no longer heard it. I thought it a noble cause. I thought, if I can make people not care about this word anymore, then it won't offend anyone and the world will be better. I was the picture of goody-two-shoes. Blonde, bubbly, hard working, drugless, mostly drinkless, flat shoes, virgin, listened to Gershwin and wanted to be a foreign service agent. I thought, shit, if I can swear as much as possible I will be a leading example of why swear words don't have to be so distasteful.

I thought, that is, that only naughty people used naughty expletives, and therefore the expletives were naughty. I did not think they were naughty because they cluttered up language and made listening to you more difficult.

I realized that when I moved to Moldova and had no idea what words like “dovedesti” meant, or many others I didn't bother memorizing because they meant nothing. They make language dirty. They make expression unclear. Expletives in English are so profuse that when you hear a person not using them, you think they are curt, or even rude.

Expletives can be words like, haha, the ever-present “like,” the over used “really,” “pretty,” “totally” and a dozen other adjectives that don't need to be used. Adverbs tend not to happen as much in speech as they do in writing, but they are just as annoying.

I've expanded my definition of expletive to include any word or phrase that makes my message unclear. My new goal is to eliminate them. It has taken me six years conscious effort to recognize them, but now that I do, I love Hemingway more than I thought possible.

Appropriate times and places for expletives: When a simple description will simply not do.

For example:

“I am scalded!”

just doesn't get the point across like

“Buggering Christ that is hot fucking water!”

or even

“Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck!”

In these situations, usually the cause and effect are obvious: Water + Hand = Pain.

Almost anyone can gather the leap in logic there: that water must be hot and that person must now be in pain. This leap is the same that poets try to imitate in their writing to get a point across more fluently. Therefore, swearing is actually the act of living poetry. Which grown up Kiddo quite appreciates.

Cutting them out reserves the impact they will have. Boy Who Cried Wolf sort of deal. If you shout “Goddammit” every time you stub your toe, no one will care when you say such things about slicing your thumb off.

In order for them to have maximum effect, however, one must cut the expletives out of normal speech. When they are dropped into normal speech, then the listener will know this sentence is important to you. This expression is more important than the last, or the one following. A normal speech expletive is designed to do this. If you use one it changes the context of the expression.

I just heard one of my favorite songs play in a Starbucks. There is one naughty word in it, but it is not an expletive. Here is a new train of thought. The singer uses “bullshit” to describe her art. She has a “bullshit canvas,” but because we are in a non-naughty setting it is changed to “pointless canvas.”

One of these phrases conveys anger, and one apathy. Since the phrase occurs right at the apex of the song, otherwise very smooth and pretty throughout, it is a shocking little tidbit. It is effective. It shakes the listener into realizing the singer's desperation to love or be loved. If the word is changed to something innocuous, the whole song is simply pretty and smooth, and nothing is realized.

The “bullshit” is key.

The expression is key.

If you go around trying to desensitize people as I did, you lose a major tool in your expressive arsenal. It's not that they are bad, it is that they are powerful. If you use them, use them with precision, because otherwise you sound like someone who does not understand power, and therefore are powerless. Powerless people get treated as such, and tend to have ugly trampled lives, so don't, MORAL ALERT, trample your speech into ugliness.