In everyday life, all of us often hear words and expressions, the use of which is completely unacceptable from the point of view of public morality and is intended both to insult the addressee and to express negative assessments of people and phenomena. This is the so-called profanity of Russian vocabulary, or, more simply, a mate, which is one of the unsightly, but, unfortunately, hardly eradicated sides of our "great and powerful" language.
A long tradition of banning foul language
Familiar to all of us from childhood, profanity among linguists is called obscene. This term comes from the English obscene, which means "shameless", "obscene" or "dirty." The English word itself goes back to the Latin obscenus, which has the same meaning.
As many researchers testify, the taboo ban on the use in the presence of women of various expressions related to the sexual sphere, developed even in the pagan era among the ancient Slavs - ethnic ancestors of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. Subsequently, with the advent of Christianity, the ban on the use of profanity was universally supported by the Orthodox Church, which allows us to talk about the long-standing historical tradition of this taboo.
The attitude of society to the use of mat
In this regard, the results of a sociological survey conducted in 2004 are of interest, the purpose of which was to reveal the attitude of Russians to the use of obscene expressions by show business stars. It is very characteristic that the vast majority of respondents, almost 80%, expressed their negative attitude to such a phenomenon, saying that in their statements profanity is a manifestation of lack of culture and licentiousness.
Despite the fact that in oral speech these expressions are widespread among all segments of the population, in Russia there has always been a taboo on their use in the press. Unfortunately, it significantly weakened in the post-perestroika period due to the weakening of state control over the print sector, as well as due to a number of side effects that resulted from the democratization of society. In addition, the lifting of the ban on coverage of many topics not previously covered by the press has led to an expansion of vocabulary. As a result, mat and jargon have become not only fashionable, but also effective PR tools.
Offensive and humiliating abuse
We have to admit that among adolescents the ability to swear is considered a sign of growing up, and for them profanity is a kind of demonstration of belonging to “their own” and neglect of generally accepted prohibitions. Of course, replenishing their vocabulary with similar expressions, adolescents tend to use them, often using fences, toilet walls and school desks for this purpose, and in recent years the Internet.
Considering the problem of using profanity in society, it should be noted that, despite all the freedom of expression established in recent years, responsibility for the use of obscene expressions from writers or speakers is not removed.
Of course, it is hardly possible to prohibit swearing to a person for whom - by virtue of his upbringing and intellect - this is the only accessible form of self-expression. However, it should be borne in mind that abuse in a public place offends those for whom the taboo on the mat - due to their moral or religious reasons - has not lost its force.
The main motives for using profanity
In modern language, mate is most often used as an element of verbal aggression, which aims to scold and insult a specific recipient. In addition, people of low culture use it in the following cases: to give their expressions greater emotionality, as a way to relieve psychological stress, as interjections and to fill in speech pauses.
History of Profanity
Contrary to popular belief that obscene expressions entered the Russian language from the Tatar during the Tatar-Mongol yoke, serious researchers are very skeptical about this hypothesis. According to most of them, the words of this category have Slavic and Indo-European roots.
In the pagan period of the history of Ancient Russia, they were used as one of the elements of sacred conspiracies. For our ancestors, profanity is nothing more than an appeal to magical power, which, according to their ideas, was contained in the genitals. This is evidenced by some surviving centuries echoes of the most ancient pagan spells.
But since the establishment of Christianity, church authorities have been consistently struggling with this speech phenomenon. To this day, many circulars and decrees of Orthodox hierarchs aimed at eradicating the mat have survived. When in the XVII century there was a strict distinction between the spoken language and the literary language, the status of a collection of "obscene expressions" was finally assigned to the obscene language.
Obscene expressions in historical documents
About how rich the Russian vocabulary of profanity was at the turn of the XV-XVI century, the studies of the famous linguist V.D. Nazarov testify. According to his calculations, even in an incomplete collection of written monuments of that time, there are sixty-seven words derived from the most common roots of obscene vocabulary. Even in more ancient sources - birch bark letters of Novgorod and Staraya Russa - often there are expressions of this kind in both ritual and humorous form.
Mat in the perception of foreigners
By the way, the first dictionary of profanity was compiled at the beginning of the XVII century by the Englishman Richard James. In it, this curious foreigner explained to his compatriots the specific meaning of some words and expressions that are difficult to translate into English, which we today call obscene.
Their widespread use is also indicated in their travel notes by the German master of philosophy of the University of Leipzig, Adam Olearii, who visited Russia at the end of the same century. The German translators accompanying him often found themselves in a difficult situation, trying to find the meaning of using well-known concepts in the most unusual context for them.
Formal Prohibition of Profanity
The ban on the use of profanity in Russia appeared relatively late. For example, it is often found in documents of the Petrine era. However, by the end of the XVII century, its taboo took the form of law. It is characteristic that the poems of the famous poet Ivan Barkov in those years, who made extensive use of obscene vocabulary, were not published, but distributed exclusively in lists. In the next century, immodest expressions were included only in the unofficial part of the work of poets and writers, who included them in their epigrams and comic poems.
Attempts to remove the tab from the mat
The first attempts to legalize obscene expressions were observed in the twenties of the last century. They were not of a mass nature. Interest in the mat was not self-sufficient, just some writers believed that profanity was one way to talk freely about sexual matters. As for the Soviet period, throughout its duration the ban on the use of swearing was strictly observed, although it was widely used in everyday colloquial speech.
In the nineties, with the advent of perestroika, censorship restrictions were lifted, which made it possible for profanity to freely penetrate literature. It is used mainly to convey the living spoken language of the characters. Many authors believe that if these expressions are used in everyday life, then there is no reason to neglect them in your work.
