CornellSun.com Topic

profanity

To Swear or Not to Swear: That Is the F@!%ing Question

Florencia Ulloa  —  Oct 6, 2009

One of the most satisfying and interesting pieces of literature I have ever read is a twofold manifesto concerning an important part of the Mexican language: its curse words.

Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize recipient for Literature in 1990, wrote a 30-page essay about the verb chingar — I guess the closest thing in English would be the verb “to fuck” — which happens to be one of the most insightful pieces of Mexican philosophy and psychology I know.

I read it together with Carlos Fuentes’ chapter on the same topic in La muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz), for a high school class. Both of these literary pieces started what I would possibly call my language reformation.

Clarity on Profanity

Rob Tricchinelli  —  Sep 14, 2009

Opening to the opinion pages of The Sun, a reader can sometimes spot profanity. This paper has no official policy on whether and when such words are acceptable, preferring instead to handle each individual case on its own. I think this is another area in the editorial process that can improve. I have encouraged some Sun editors to formulate more concrete — but not exhaustive — guidelines, and I hope this column can serve as a way to get the conversation going on what those guidelines should be.

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