Comments on: what is vulgar in academia?

By: Coturnix

Coturnix — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:58:34 +0000

Wow, danah, I had no idea you wrote this post so long ago. If I knew, I would have referenced in recent kerfuffle.

By: jpimp

jpimp — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:12:42 +0000

keiko! you can join my hoe squad in my pimp player mobile, holler at your boi#

By: Keiko

Keiko — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:45:01 +0000

Im a whore! Guys Comment My Page If You Like!
Thanks Boys ~
Keiko

By: Matt Volatile

Matt Volatile — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:13:00 +0000

I’m an academic, and have submitted abstracts and papers with most of George Carlin’s favourite swear words. There’s no place for shyness or censorship in academia – in fact, most decent academics positively embrace caustic language.

Granted, it’s not appropriate to swear for no reason, and you’d have trouble justifying using certain curses in an undergraduate essay, but plenty of PhDs and books in, for example, queer theory, have used the F and C words in their titles, let alone their abstracts.

Your tutor is an idiot and doubtless would have trouble getting anything published in any decent journal with views like that.

By: Tash

Tash — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:45:37 +0000

I’m about to start a dissertation around the topic of Myspace and the consumption and production of genered virtual identites and would be really interested to know more about your ‘Myspace Whores’ piece if that was possible. Thanks.

By: what

what — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 21:45:39 +0000

Roseg, yes I would use the word “nigger” in an academic paper about the Ku Klux Klan. In the context, the use of the word is wholely appropriate. While it may not be a word that is appropriate in everyday usage, there should be no problem with using it in a paper about a racist organization that uses the word as part of their rhetoric.

The fact is that words are not inherently good or bad, their meaning is based on the intent of the person speaking them. A word is merely a verbal expression of an idea, and repugnant and vulgar ideas spawn repugnant and vulgar words. To make the argument that any one word is inappropriate for use in an academic paper, even if relevant to the context, is one of both arrogance and ignorance. Censorship is never justified under any circumstance.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:29:10 +0000

What an amazing disconnect with almost the entirety of modern culture — and this was a social scientist that said this to you? Art whore, media whore, and yes MySpace whore put the word in a pretty well-established usage — one that, of course, has nothing to do with sex work! (Well, metaphorically it does, perhaps.)

But more disturbing is the assumption that your choices in your academic presentation on the topic of your research could somehow be a reflection of the speaker. I know we have pretty close mentoring and advising relations with a lot of professors and even administrators (if we’re lucky) but ultimately we “own” our work, at some point they have to let us stand or fall on our own merits. Or will your advisor closely monitor you the rest of your life to make sure you don’t do or say anything in your career that might reflect badly on them?

By: Karla

Karla — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:37:20 +0000

Fascinating discussion here. I quite agree with you. I’m trying to imagine this happening in my discipline, and can only imagine the “use prostitute instead” response from elderly, unusually prim professors who specialize in some distant time period. But even there it’s hard to imagine.

By: roseg

roseg — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 07:00:26 +0000

OK. Thanks. The term has integrity in the way you’re using it and your audience will get that.

Interesting that the fellow who says you can’t use the title thinks that your work reflects on him. Sounds like a personal boundary problem more than a gender/class thing…

By: Prentiss Riddle

Prentiss Riddle — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:41:39 +0000

Somehow I find the suggestion that it be changed to “MySpace prostitutes” not just tone-deaf but creepy. I mean, “MySpace whore” doesn’t really make me think of sex workers any more than “this pisses me off” makes me think of golden showers. If an editor changed every instance of the verb “piss off” to the supposedly less vulgar “urinate”, the result would be far ickier than the original.

Does anybody know a linguistic term for the process in which some words or phrases lose their original sexual or scatological meanings? I’m thinking not only of “to piss off” but also of “to suck”, which I’m convinced must have originated as a homophobic slur. We may be in the middle of such a shift regarding the word “whore”.