Somewhere, and I don’t remember where, Arthur Danto describes the power 'bad words' have of ‘bleeding out’ of any quotation marks within which one might hope to contain them. Thus in the philosophy of language it has been known for some time that if John says, “Sally said ‘wow’,” John is not really using ‘wow’ in a sentence, he is only mentioning it in connection with Sally’s use. But try the same thing with ‘fuck’ -–supposing say that John and Sally are siblings and John is reporting to his parents--, and you will find that to mention is to use. The profanity bleeds out of the quotation marks meant to separate it from the sentence in which it is contained. FCC broadcasting rules confirm this: not only vulgar rants, but even the titles of vulgar songs, are forbidden.
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Comments
WTF is the point of censuring a video about swearing? What the Fuck?
Posted by: rhbee | Mar 8, 2008 4:16:54 PM
Holy Shit! You are correct rhbee---
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 8, 2008 8:52:21 PM
I'm all for censuring it. In fact, I'd censure any censored video on profanity.
Posted by: Laura | Mar 10, 2008 10:38:49 PM
Justin E. H. Smith:
Somewhere, and I don’t remember where, Arthur Danto describes the power 'bad words' have of ‘bleeding out’ of any quotation marks within which one might hope to contain them. Thus in the philosophy of language it has been known for some time that if John says, “Sally said ‘wow’,” John is not really using ‘wow’ in a sentence, he is only mentioning it in connection with Sally’s use. But try the same thing with ‘fuck’ -–supposing say that John and Sally are siblings and John is reporting to his parents--, and you will find that to mention is to use. The profanity bleeds out of the quotation marks meant to separate it from the sentence in which it is contained. FCC broadcasting rules confirm this: not only vulgar rants, but even the titles of vulgar songs, are forbidden.
More here.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Mar 11, 2008 4:33:05 AM
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