In view of the recent thread on Bowdlerization and public cursing that we've seen, I just thought it might be interesting to put some history and historical bad language up fer your education.There have traditionally been two forms of swearing; obscenities and blasphemies. The most offensive form generally varies according to the culture of the times; in more religious times, blasphemy was considered more offensive, but now obscenities are considered worse; saying "drat!" (short for "God rot!") or "blimey!" ("God blind me!") are considered very mild indeed.
The earliest surviving terms of abuse that persist to this day are generally Anglo-Saxon terms; usually scatalogical or sexual; terms like "arse" date from c1000 A.D.; they were used fairly widely; but swear-words (i.e. religious terms) were considered more serious.
A particular special case is the practice known as "flyting"; that is, a game of competitive insult; frequently a form of entertainment, but sometimes resulting in deaths; the object was to insult your opponent more creatively and exhaustively than he could you; an example of this is given between Beowulf and one of the Scyldings in the tale of Beowulf. Think of a modern Usenet flamewar or "yo mama is so X..." exchange, multiply it by a hundred and you have some idea of the sort of insults exchanged. The practice of flyting persisted until banned in Scotland in 1550; one of the greatest printed flytings is between Dunbar and Kennedy; both noblemen and poets; it dates from ~1505; terms like "cuntbitten craward (coward)" abound; the imagery is very varied and imaginative. Interestingly enough, "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy" is the first place in the English language that the word "fuck" is recorded ("fukkit" in the text).
With the Norman invasion of England, a new series of oaths and curses became current; a lot of variations on a religious theme were born; the Saxon ones tended to stay current as well. There is a clear class-divide in the usage of bad language; the lower class would use obscenities and swear-words equally; the middle classes tended to avoid them; and the nobility would use both, but tended toward swear-words more than obscenities. So you can see the care that Caxton (middle-class) takes to avoid bad language; he refers once or twice to "erse" or similar. Chaucer, on the other hand, told the Canterbury Tales exactly as people would say them in common usage; it contains over 300 different insults, obscenities and swearwords; from peasants (the Miller, the Wife of Bath) and clergy (the Pilgrim, the Pardoner); the introduction to the Miller's Tale is a particularly famous bit of obscenity (e.g. "he kysed her naked ers...").
Coming into the Tudor period, there was no discernable reduction in swearing; Henry the VIIIth and Elizabeth were both notably fond of bad language.
(One innovation of the times was the "minced oath"; there were the beginnings of a backlash against swearwords; the "God's" generally got replaced by "'s"; thus "God's wounds" became "'swounds" (and later "zounds!") "God's blood!" became "'sblood!", "God's death!" became "'sdeath!" and "God's little body!" became "'oddsbodikins".)
We can see obscenity in most of the major writers of the time; Ben Jonson was blatant in his use of obscenities; Shakespeare more diplomatic. Nonetheless, Shakespeare is not averse to the occasional bit of filth; for example, in Henry IV Act III Scene i;
Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath, and leave 'in sooth,'
A slightly more obscene and subtle case is in Henry V Act III scene iv, where Katherine is being taught English by Alice;
KATHARINE: Ainsi dis-je; de elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?
ALICE: De foot, madame; et de coun.
KATHARINE: De foot et de coun! O Seigneur Dieu! ce sont mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d'honneur d'user: je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le coun!
(Note: this probably doesn't mean much to you unless you know that, in the French of the time, "foutrer" was "to fuck" and "coune" was the equivalent of "cunt". Shakespeare's audience would have known...)
With the Stuart era, the theatres were clamped down on as places of immorality; swearing was accompanied by heavy fines and/or punishment. The first signs of this starting to weaken occurred during the time of Cromwell; he may have clamped down in some areas, but censorship was not one of them; Rabelais was translated into English for the first time.
The Georgian era saw widespread swearing; there was were many abusive words, much of them sexual in nature. Dr. Johnson (he of dictionary fame and Boswell's biography) remarked famously to Garrick that the two finest things in life were drinking and fucking; at which Garrick replied that he was surprised that there not more drunkards; for though all could drink, not all could fuck.
The late Georgian era also saw a new phenomenon; the self-appointed moral judge. Prior to this, the Church and Crown were the punishers of swearing; but as they became more lenient and less relevant to everyday life, so the excessively self-righteous started to berate others for their language; Thomas Bowdler was the most famous of these.
Unfortunately, Bowdler had a noticeable effect on the Victorian middle classes; while a minority of poets and dramatists continued to use whichever words they felt like, there was persecution and blackballing of people who didn't conform to "polite society"; this lasted for large parts of last century; up until the dawning of the modern era.
The present day has been characterized by two things; the explosive growth of the "mass media" and a reaction against the prissiness of the Victorians; especially since the 1960s. In actual fact, I doubt that the overall level of swearing has increased since the 11th century; it's just that each individual person now has access to the output of far more people than ever before; and there are more people than ever before.
As such, I think that the judge in the case of the canoeist was showing a complete and total lack of regard for the richness of the English language; to use a satisfying bit of Middle English, I think he was no more than Bowdler's fartsucker.
Gideon.
(note: fartsucker; a brown-nose; a creep. Good word, isn't it?)
