"rude and inappropriate"

[Charles Doyle]

I have a folklore student who--every time something comes up in class (a joke, a proverb, a song, a legend, whatever) that's remotely sexual, scatological, voilent, blasphemous, misogynistic, racist, or generally iconoclastic--merrily exclaims, "That is SO inappropriate!"  I'm (almost) sure she doesn't mean that consideration of such matters in class is inappropriate (it's a FOLKLORE class!), because she's relentlessly cheerful about everything. She means, rather, that something is sexual, scatological, violent, blasphemous, misogynistic, racist, or generally iconoclastic; "inappropriate" in some absolute, context-free sense--maybe even something like "shockingly gruesome" or "astonishingly funny."

--Charlie

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