The comedian George Carlin had a very post-modern comedy routine about seven words in the English language that were extremely taboo to say in polite conversation. The humor in the joke is that these words are just words until society gives them power by creating a negative association with those words. In the case of the seven words that George chooses to discuss (I can not state them in a formal paper because they are so extremely explicit that my professor may deem their usage to be indecent) the connotation of the words is so vile that nearly everyone in America can agree that those words should not be said, accept for in private settings with close friends. It would also be agreed that any of the seven dirty words could be cause for physical violence if those words were directed towards a second party with malice.
Jean-Francois Lyotard would agree with Carlin that those words were given power by the elite ruling class to hold negative sway over the public. He might even argue that curse words can be used to control the public by censoring these words so that people who use them can be viewed as savage, while people who do not use them can be seen as civilized. In essence the seven curse words are part of a language game that society plays with its members to enforce a notion of what is good and evil. Lyotard writes of how society has "many different language games . . . the decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices" and that the application "of this criterion to all of our games neccessarily ential a certain level of terror" (Lyotard, 356). Essentially, the words we use are given to us by the elite through education during childhood and adolescence to further the elites power over society. Words that are noble and virtuous are attributed with America, such as liberty, freedom, and justice. Words that are ugly, like Carlin's seven words, are attributed to lower class brutes and foreigners. When one uses post-modern theory to analyze these words they can begin to be deconstructed so that the power given to them by the elite becomes null.
Lyotard writes of this deconstruction as the "delegitmation" (Lyotard, 360) of societal word games. He felt that legitimation, "can only spring from [the citizens] own linguistic practice and communicational interaction" (Lyotard, 360). More simply put, words can only be legitimized by discussing their meanings and associations with other, un-elite, members of society so that a new perspective regarding their definitions and connotations can be redefined. In this way words like liberty and freedom can be reanalyzed and seen as potentially negative because the cost of those ideals is paid for in human blood. Carlin uses comedy to create delegitimation because he creates a space for common people to discuss words at length, and how silly it is that they hold so much power when that power can only be given to them by the common people who use them. If we take all the taboo out of the words than they simply become sounds, and no longer can they cause such violent reactions with their presence. This same tactic can be used to remove any other language game because it forces one to look at words with a post-modern skepticism, and as such we can begin to rebuild our vocabulary based on new ideals and constructs not being imposed upon us by the elite.
Works Cited
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "The Postmodern Condition." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 397-414. Print.
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