Gowl, eejit, langer: Perhaps the Netflix show on swear words needs a Cork episode
Nicolas Cage in History of Swear Words on Netflix.
She's a linguistics professor who studied at numerous universities but one word in particular was new to Dr Barbara Siller when she moved to Cork — 'langer'.
However, Dr Siller, the programme director of Applied Linguistics at University College Cork, was more than capable of deciphering the meaning from the context. She was commenting on Netflix show History of Swear Words, hosted by Nicholas Cage — a loud and proudly profane series that explores the history and cultural impact of curse words. Through interviews with experts in etymology, rappers, historians, and comedians, the series dives into the origins of 'bad language' or swear words.
There's an episode on some of the most widely-used 'bad' words around. The first one is on the word 'fuck'.
Dr Siller first moved to Cork in 2003 and notes that Irish people don't actually swear much more than any other nationalities. She does point out that connotation and denotation are hugely important however.
However, a regionalised version of the show could indeed be in order: Gowl, gombeen, eejit, langer... some classic Irish swears that have a wealth of meaning behind them. An appropriately placed 'gobdaw' or 'bollocks' can really sum up a situation or character. And many would argue that there is a world of nuance between a 'fecker' and a 'hoor' and a 'wagon'!
Dr Siller grew up in a German-speaking area of northern Italy and remarks that many there would use Italian curse words for emphasis.
On the Netflix show, Nicholas Cage relishes this chance to say fairly taboo words as much as possible. And he really does savour the various inflections you can get on a single word. He murmurs it, he roars it, he uses it as punctuation.
Cage presents the show from a very clean and carefully curated study which aims to give an air of erudition to his 'research' but the leather armchair, olde worlde globe and gilt-edged books all seem a bit too contrived.
Experts range from comedians Jim Jefferies, Zainab Johnson and Nikki Glaser to the excellently named Kory Stamper, a lexicographer and author. Ms Glaser used to write dictionary definitions at Merriam Webster and one of her roles there was to work on profanities.
All their expertise and opinions are interspersed with movie clips featuring loud or inventive cursing: think Pulp Fiction and Scarface for starters.
There are also episodes dedicated to 'shit', 'bitch', 'dick', 'pussy' and 'damn'.
It's reminiscent of a Horrible Histories for grown ups really.
Does swearing in response to pain or shock actually do anything other than let people know how upset or hurt you are? Apparently so and the science behind this is briefly explained. Myths are debunked and some of the more prudish rules around swearing are skewered too. Other episodes focus on scatological terms, pure insults and words with double meanings. And, of course, there are words that still sound so wrong — but why is that? The experts here delve into why this might be the case.
