Tuesday,
July 17, 2007
"F*** Off" - No Offence Says
Italian Highest
The
ANNOTICO Report
I'm
a little disappointed, and it has created an uproar in Italy, but to keep
matters in prospective, these days I hear "F***"
spewing from the mouths of women
in all kinds of public places, and can you get through an evenings TV
programs without an utterance.
Below,
you will find an article from SIX
years ago, where in the United
Kingdom, police officers attempting to question a citizen were
repeatedly told to "f*** off". He was acquitted of breach of the peace for merely using
"the language of his generation".
The Court of
I
had very divided feelings about the verdict in the rape case cited below
against a young man who continued having sex with his partner even though
she changed her mind halfway through. :) :)
Thanks to Pat Gabriel
It's no longer an
offence to tell someone to f*** off because the term is now so widely used,
The Court of
In its ruling,
the court said that certain obscene or sexual words or phrases had become so
common that they "have lost their offensive
nature".
Conservative
lawmakers immediately decried the ruling as liable to "degrade the
nation's civic values" and called for the judge who issued it to be
sacked.
Tuesday's ruling
is not the first time the Cassation judges have courted controversy with
verdicts changing the official line on offensive
language.
A year ago they
said it was OK to hurl abuse at someone provided
the other side gave as good as it got.
The court said a
woman was entitled to call an acquaintance a "bastard, fool, a cretin and
a drug addict" because the insults had been "mutual".
"There was justification for the crime," said the judges.
It was the second
case on "mutual insults" to make its way to the supreme
court last year. In March, judges acquitted a woman who called an
immigrant co-worker a 'bloody n**ger'. Upholding an
earlier ruling, they said the woman's reaction was justified because the man
had "cursed" her family and her insult was an "equivalent"
response.
Rulings by
The court's most
notorious decision came in a highly publicized 'jeans rape' case in 1999, in
which it decided that a woman who removes tight jeans, even under threat, is
complicit in rape.
In another
divisive ruling, the court said that bottom-patting was all right provided it
was a "sudden and isolated act".
Both rulings were
later reversed.
One that wasn't
was the quashing last year of a rape conviction
against a young man who continued having sex with his partner even though
she changed her mind halfway through.
Other puzzling sentences have included
giving the thumbs up for pedophiles to take porn photos of minors so long as
they didn't sell them, and upholding an adultery rap against
a woman who kissed a bus driver because "the time and emotion invested
in the relationship betrayed marital trust".
No Offence, Officer
BBC
News
Wednesday, 25 April, 2001
When
is it okay to swear at an authority figure? In
It may have been
impolite, but when Kenneth Kinnaird of
Three Scottish judges
have ruled that the 43-year-old be acquitted of breach of the peace on the
basis that he was merely in conversation with the officers - and said the
phrase, not shouted it.
Needless to say, the
Scottish Police Federation is less than amused.
Yet as Lord Prosser,
the senior judge points out in his ruling, the "f" word is
commonplace.
How times have changed
since 1960, when the centuries-old expletive so troubled the presiding judge in
the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial.
However, the jury
found Penguin Books - the publisher of DH Lawrence's 1928 novel - not guilty of
obscenity.
Not in front of the
children
Just five years later
the word had its first airing on television, although not without controversy.
Kenneth Tynan, then literary editor of the National Theatre, made
the breakthrough while discussing censorship on a late-night satire programme.
After he somewhat
nervously quavered that there must be few "rational people in this world
to whom the word `f***' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally
forbidden", the BBC switchboard jammed as outraged viewers rang to
complain.
The corporation later
issued a statement of regret.
According to a survey
on attitudes to "bad language" released last December, the use of swear
words on television and radio before the 9pm watershed is unacceptable to most
adults.
In keeping with the
BBC's guidelines on taste and decency, it has been left up to the reader to
guess which four-letter words topped the study's list of offensive terms.
Contrary lot that we
are, shock value lies less in the word actually used than in its context and
frequency.
Although
three-quarters of the 1,033 adults questioned had no problem with expletives
uttered "in shock", the same proportion didn't like swear words used
as a matter of routine.
Linguistic
wallpaper
Jonathon Green, author
of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang and The Big Book
of Being Rude, says words that hold the power to shock are changing.
"Some 500 years
ago in the Western world, religion mattered - the majority of people believed
in religion and believed in God. Therefore the words and phrases deemed
offensive were blasphemous.
"By the 19th
century, religion was losing its grip and words that had once been standard -
words to do with sex and bodily functions - were beginning to be taboo."
But today, many of
these swear words have become debased because they are so commonly used.
Whereas the Channel 4
comedy Father Ted softened its liberal use of f*** by substituting an
"e" for "u", films such as South Park have dispensed with
such niceties all together.
Viewers may not find
such language offensive themselves, but may well
object if children or the elderly cop an earful, Mr
Green says.
Mr Green challenges the idea that
sanitising language is good manners: "It's not, it's hypocrisy."
The
ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (and are Archived) on:
Italia
Italia
Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com (3 years)
Annotico
Email: annotico@earthlink.net