Steven Pinker -- The Stuff of Thought
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, is currently promoting his new book: The Stuff of Thought.

One of Pinker’s main research areas is linguistics, and in the talk I watched here -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU – he talks about the different ways in which profanity is used. Why, he asks, when we spill a glass of wine in our laps, do we suddenly switch our topic of conversation towards excretion, fornication or theology? Why are these particular topics censored with such illogical hypocrisy?

He cites one particularly amusing example where Bono, the lead singer from U2, upon accepting a Golden Globe Award on live national TV, uttered the words: “this is really, really fucking brilliant.”

The case ended up at the FCC and they had to decide whether to fine the network for broadcasting the offending word.

They decided not to fine NBC, on the grounds that indecency is “material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities” and that the fucking in “fucking brilliant” is “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.”


Cultural conservatives were enraged and this bill was penned (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:h.r.3687)

House Resolution 3687

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

A BILL

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting `(a)' before `Whoever'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane', used with respect to language, includes the words `shit', `piss', `fuck', `cunt', `asshole', and the phrases `cock sucker', `mother fucker', and `ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'

Pinker notes that unfortunately the “fucking” in “fucking brilliant” is an adverb and that is the one part of speech that the representative penning the bill forgot to include on his list.