ARTICLE: FUCKYeshiva UniversityCardozo Law Review February, 2007   28 Cardozo L. Rev. 1711   By Christopher M. Fairman*   * Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

1. February, 2007 28 Cardozo L. Rev. 1711 By Christopher M. Fairman* * Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. ARTICLE: FUCKYeshiva UniversityCardozo Law Review

3. Linguists;

4. Psychoanalysts;

5. and other social scientists to examine its history and modern usage. Then, my professor considers taboo as the non-legal source of fuck's power. To illustrate the effect of taboo on the legal treatment of the word fuck,I survey only two areas: First Amendment (The Constitution of the United States), and education.

6. I. FuckHistory: Etymology The first recorded use is disputed. The etymology of fuck is unclear. Some etymologists trace fuck to Germanic languages with an original meaning of "to knock" and cognates such as Old Dutch ficken, Middle High German vicken, and German ficken. This widely accepted derivation, however, has its critics. Of particular interest to the lawyer-lexicographer is the suggestion of an Egyptian root petcha (to copulate). During the last Egyptian dynasties, legal documents were sealed with the phrase, "As for him who shall disregard it, may he be fucked by a donkey." The hieroglyphic for the phrase - two large erect penises - makes the message clear. Another possible etymology is through the French foutre and Latin futuere, but there are similar doubts and an absence of lineage for this derivation as well. Possibly there is a hybrid derivation where foutre participated with ficken to produce fuck. Still other etymologies suggest a Celtic derivation.

7. Linguists Fuckis a highly varied word. While its first English form was likely as a verb meaning to engage in heterosexual intercourse, fuck now has various verb uses, not to mention utility as a noun, adjective, adverb, and interjection. Testimony to the varied nature of the word fuck is Jesse Sheidlower's dictionary, The F-Word, the definitive source on its use.

8. Linguists Linguists studying fuck identify two distinctive words. Fuckmeans literally "to copulate." It also encompasses figurative uses such as "to deceive." The legal treatment of fuck is inconsistent due in part to the lack of recognition of this linguistic difference. But if you wear a t-shirt printed with pictures of Bush, Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice labeled "Meet the Fuckers," intended as a parody of the popular comedy "Meet the Fockers," get ready to be kicked off an airplane. Fuck remains a word "known by all and recognized by none.” To understand this dichotomy over "our worst word," The answer lies in taboo. An Associated Press poll conducted in March 2006 found that sixty-four percent of those surveyed used the word fuck. President´s Bush use it with aplomb. (Vide link below). The Vice President embraces it as well. fuck!

9. II. Fuck as Taboo: Education Taboo speech is so taboo that it hasn't been regarded as a legitimate topic for scholarship. Saying fuck is a cultural taboo; studying fuck is a scholarly taboo. Where meaningful distinctions have been developed, taboo is both central and common. This failure only serves to perpetuate and strengthen taboo within the culture. It's therefore not surprising that a variety of labels exist for what one is studying when one focuses on the use of words like fuck: cursing, swearing, dirty words, profanity, obscenity, and the like.

10. Understanding Word Taboo Every culture, there are things that we're not supposed to do and things we're not supposed to say: taboo acts and taboo words. Sometimes there's a correlation, such as Western society's taboos relating to sex. While sex is not entirely forbidden, it is regulated by a set of conscious and unconscious rules; given the appropriate time, place, and person, sex is not taboo. Incest, however, is taboo - so is the word motherfucker.

11. Understanding Word Taboo For example, Thai speakers in an English environment do not use certain Thai words because they sound like taboo English words, such as the Thai words fag (sheath), fag (to hatch), and phrig (chili pepper). Similarly, Thai speakers avoid English words, such as yet, that sound similar to taboo Thai words, such as jed, a taboo Thai word for sexual intercourse.

12. Psycholinguistics and Fuck An understanding of fuck as taboo language begins with Columbia University English Professor Allen Walker Read's groundbreaking work in 1934. Read combined both linguistic and psychoanalytic principles to understand the nature of obscenity in general and the taboo status of fuck in particular. He viewed obscenity as a symbolic construct: "obscenity lies not in words or things, but in attitudes that people have towards these words and things.“ The deep psychological motivation for taboo, according to Read, "probably has its roots in the fear of the mysterious power of the sex impulse.“ Because primitive man found that the force of passion could so disorder life, he hedged it with prohibitions. It took twenty years before another psycholinguist, Dr. Leo Stone, returned to the study of fuck. With his inquiry, all the tools of psychoanalysis were brought to bear on the taboo word. Stone concluded that based on inferences from clinical observation, the opinion is established that the important and taboo English word "fuck' bears at least an unconscious rhyme relation ... to the word "suck' within the framework of considerations that determine the general phenomenon of obscenity, including the anal emissive pleasure in speech.”

14. Obscenity: Test Miller Finally in Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973), the Court reaffirmed the unprotected nature of obscene material and articulated a now well-known three-part test that: (1) the average person, applying community standards, would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This test, however, essentially guarantees that fuck is not legally obscene.

15. Conclusion: Fuck must be set free. Fuck is taboo - deep-rooted and dark. For over half of a millennium, we've suppressed it. If the psycholinguists are right, we've done so for good reason. Fuck embodies our entire culture's subconscious feelings about sex - about incest, being unclean, rape, sodomy, disease, Oedipal longings, and the like. The word shoulders an immense taboo burden. Recognizing the role of taboo language, it is easy to understand why there is still such a reaction to the word For my purposes, taboo is also the tool that helps me understand why the law acts and reacts to the word fuck as it does. For your purposes, the individual reaction of parents to spare their children from the inadvertent broadcast or the calculating teacher now has a point of reference.