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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>From
NYTimes.com<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>May
3, 2009<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Op-Ed
Contributor<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span
style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Gentlemen Cows
in Prime Time <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>By
ADAM FREEDMAN<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>LAST Tuesday,
the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s
crackdown on the use of dirty words on the airwaves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>That the
justices managed to do this without actually uttering either of the words at
issue — one refers to a sexual act, the other to a bodily function
— exemplifies both the court’s tact and its lack of connection with
contemporary English usage. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The case,
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, was a test of the
commission’s zero-tolerance policy toward isolated curses, or
“fleeting expletives,” as the F.C.C. calls them. The commission put
in place the so-called Bono Rule, named for the U2 singer (and contributing
columnist for this page) who used an expletive during an NBC broadcast of the
Golden Globe Awards in 2003. That same year, Fox Television broadcast a routine
by Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in which both the vulgarities considered by
the court were used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In response to
these incidents, in which children of tender years were doubtless exposed to
salty language, the F.C.C. decided that prime-time TV must be sodium-free, as
it were. Departing from a 30-year policy of going after only repetitive usage
of swear words, the Bono Rule gave the F.C.C. the power to punish a single
utterance of a vulgarity. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In 2007, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, struck
down the Bono Rule, holding that it had no rational basis. But the Supreme
Court disagreed. Writing for the majority last week, Justice Antonin Scalia
stated that it was “entirely rational” for the F.C.C. to conclude,
as it did, that one particular curse “invariably invokes a coarse sexual
image.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Does it? The
evidence is mixed. Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English
Dictionary and the author of a book on swearing, described the F.C.C.’s
argument as “rubbish.” Although the word in question originally
referred to a sexual act, Mr. Sheidlower argued, it has now taken on an
independent “emotional” sense. The nonsexual use of the word can be
seen in countless contemporary examples, as when Vice President Dick Cheney
used it in 2004 to recommend that Senator Patrick Leahy do something that is, strictly
speaking, anatomically impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
counterargument is that the very power of the word as a nonliteral intensifier
derives from its underlying sexual meaning. Or, as Ruth Wajnryb, an Australian
linguist, explained in her book “Expletive Deleted,” the word is
taboo “because of its referential function.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Ultimately, the
Fox Television case raises a dichotomy well known to linguists: descriptivism
versus prescriptivism — that is, whether to yield to the reality of how
language is actually used (descriptivism) or fight to maintain objective
standards (prescriptivism). Descriptivists happily accept “impact”
as a verb and “my bad” as a form of apology; prescriptivists resist
such innovations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>At oral
argument, Fox’s lawyer urged a descriptivist approach, arguing that the
common slang term for sexual intercourse is no longer indecent because
Americans “are significantly more tolerant” of the word than they
were when the high court first upheld the F.C.C.’s multiple-expletive
rule in a 1978 case involving the comedian George Carlin’s “filthy
words” monologue (F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation). After all, we live in
an age, for better or worse, when children are exposed to profanity on cable
and satellite TV and the Internet. Justice Scalia, however, insisted that the
proliferation of swear words made the prescriptivist case all the more urgent:
parents should be able to consider broadcast TV a “relatively safe
haven” for children. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As much as one
sympathizes with language prescriptivism in general (please, let us all resist
“c u l8r”), censorship is necessarily a descriptivist endeavor.
Indecency laws are tied to evolving community standards. In 1623, the English
Parliament passed legislation to prohibit “profane swearing and
cursing.” Under that law, people could be fined for uttering oaths like
“upon my life” or “on my troth.” In the Victorian era,
the word “bull” was considered too strong for mixed company;
instead, one referred to “gentlemen cows.” Times change, notwithstanding
the fervent wishes of prescriptivists to keep dirty words dirty. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The F.C.C. may
have won this round, but the bluenoses can’t declare victory just yet.
The next test of the F.C.C.’s regime will come soon enough, as the
Supreme Court has agreed to review the commission’s $550,000 fine against
CBS for a nine-sixteenths-of-a-second exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast
during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Perhaps the F.C.C.’s
disproportionate response to that incident will be recognized for what it was:
a regulatory malfunction. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Adam Freedman, a
lawyer, is the author of “The Party of the First Part: The Curious World
of Legalese.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Jason
F. Siegel<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Ph.D.
Student, Linguistics & French Linguistics<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Department
of French & Italian<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Ballantine
Hall 642<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>1020
East Kirkwood Avenue<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Indiana
University<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Bloomington,
IN 47405-7103<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>USA<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>siegeljf@indiana.edu<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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