Quote:
Originally Posted by frasnow
Give me a break. Swearing is not culture. Anybody can swear. To attribute everything to culture is to allow far worse atrocities. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard.
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The phrase under scrutiny is not swearing. It is not cursing. It is definitely vulgar, and could legitimately be considered obscene, but in the vernacular of linguistics it is emphatic rather than invective. The "f-bomb" label is not applicable to every use of the "f-word", and I do not believe it applies here.
The use of those words in their emphatic sense is certainly a cultural thing.