Register

The term is used in semantics and stylistics to denote a particular choice of diction or vocabulary regarded as appropriate for a certain topic or social situation. The English vocabulary consists of three basic sources: the Germanic base deriving from the original Anglo-Saxon settlers, the French element brought with the Norman conquerors, and the classical element deriving from Latin and Greek that became more prominent from the Middle English period through to the Renaissance. English usage is strongly marked by separation of registers. Thus formal utterances, professional language, and serious literary forms like the epic and the romance use consistently high register, with a large proportion of terms derived from French and classical sources. Ordinary conversation, sitcoms, the fabliau, the farce, or the dirty story, on the other hand, use a consistently lower register with a greater Anglo-Saxon element. Consequently, a change of register, especially downward, often constitutes a breach of decorum. On a more mundane level, the topic of sex is marked by a clear separation of registers trenchantly articulated by C.S. Lewis: “As soon as you deal with [sex] explicitly, you have to choose between the language of the nursery, the gutter and the anatomy class” (Tynan 1975, 154).

The classic description and illustration of register is that given by Sir James Murray in his Preface to the great Oxford English Dictionary (ca. 1884). It divides the vocabulary on a hierarchical basis from formal to informal, using the central categories of “Literary,” “Common,” “Colloquial,” and “Slang” in descending order, designating the less common as “Scientific,” “Technical,” “Foreign,” and “Dialectal.” Being a Victorian, Murray did not include the category of “Obscene.”

Formal oaths naturally employ elevated diction, being one pole of a binary opposition, whereas the vocabulary of swearing is largely made up of native common words drawn from the categories of colloquial and slang, and also illustrated in the entry for rude words, Thus shit and turd are ancient native terms that have retained their insulting capacity up to the present. By contrast, the more formal terms ordure and defecation , which are classically derived, do not have this ability, although excrement was so used in earlier times, for instance, by the dramatist Ben Jonson (1572–1637). The same is obviously true of fuck as against copulate, bum as against posterior, cunt as against vagina , and cock as against penis . In each case the first term of the pair can be used with great insulting diversity, whereas the second has a narrow and fairly precise meaning. Context is always an important factor. Thus in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1605) the play’s opening question, “What bloody man is that?” (I ii 1) leaves a modern audience in momentary uncertainty about the tone. However, Eliza Doolittle’s famous lapse from formal dignity into the demotic exclamation “Not bloody likely!” in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion provoked a scandal in 1914.

Naturally for a Victorian, Murray placed the category “Literary” above “Common.” He would have had in mind the great novels, plays, and poems of English literature up to his day, in which the register is generally elevated. But there are problematic major authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Charles Dickens, whose diction includes all the categories down to the most obscene. Today, with “four-letter” words much more common in print, the status and definition of a “literary” register is even more problematic.

Although scientific and technical terms are not naturally qualified to be used in oaths, high-register terms can be used as a form of swearing, for example, infernal, confounded , and perdition . Similarly, foreign terms have occasionally found a place in the arsenal of English oaths. Thus foutra from French foutre , meaning “fuck,” became fashionable for several decades from about 1592 and is used by Shakespeare. Similar in meaning, currency, and period is Italian or Spanish figo! (also fico! ), which was emphasized by a rude gesture explained in body language. Dialect terms, being native and regional, tend to be limited in use to their place of origin, only occasionally gaining wider currency. There was, however, a rare in- stance when Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, in a heated debate in the House of Commons, accused an opposition member of being “frit,” which in the dialect of Lincolnshire, her native county, means “cowardly.”