In the study of language and

literary style In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, t ...

, a vulgarism is an expression or usage considered

non-standard Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...

or characteristic of uneducated speech or writing. In

colloquial Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conver ...

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexical ...

English, "vulgarism" or "vulgarity" may be

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

ous with

profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...

obscenity An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...

, but a linguistic or literary vulgarism encompasses a broader category of perceived fault not confined to

scatological In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces. Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases su ...

or sexual offensiveness. These faults may include errors of pronunciation, misspellings, word malformations,Johannes Tromp, ''The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary'', ''Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha'' (Brill, 1993), pp. 27, 39–40, 243. and

malapropism A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...

s. "

Vulgarity Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse, or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social class, or social climbers. John Bayley claims the term can never be self-referential, because to be aware of vulgarity is to d ...

" is generally used in the more restricted sense. In regular and mostly informal conversations, the presence of vulgarity, if any, are mostly for intensifying, exclaiming or scolding. In modern times, vulgarism continues to be frequently used by people. A

research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

paper produced by

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 2005 shows that the age group of 10–20 years old speak more vulgarity than the rest of the world's

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

combined. The frequent and prevalent usage of vulgarity as a whole has led to a

paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

, in which people use vulgarity so often that it becomes less and less offensive to people, according to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''.

Classicism

The English word "vulgarism" derives ultimately from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''vulgus,'' "the common people", often as a

pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...

meaning "the nwashedmasses, undifferentiated herd, a mob". In

classical studies Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...

as the Latin of everyday life is conventionally contrasted to

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later periods ...

, the

literary language A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langu ...

exemplified by the "Golden Age"

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western can ...

(

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caes ...

Vergil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

, among others).J. N. Adams, ''Bilingualism and the Latin Language'', pp. 300–301, 765, ''et passim''''Social Variation and the Latin Language'' (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 3–5. This distinction was always an untenable mode of

literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

, unduly problematizing, for instance, the so-called "Silver Age" novelist

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Satyricon The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petro ...

'' is full of conversational vulgarisms.Andrew Laird, ''Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature'' (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 250.

Social class

Vulgarism has been a particular concern of

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

traditionalists.Tony Crowley, ''Language in History: Theories and Texts'' (Routledge, 1996), pp. 168–169. In the 1920s, the English

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoreti ...

Henry Wyld Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld (27 March 1870–26 January 1945) was a notable English lexicographer and philologist. Early life Wyld was born in 1870 and attended Charterhouse School from 1883 to 1885; he was then privately educated in Lausanne f ...

defined "vulgarism" as:

a peculiarity which intrudes itself into
Standard English In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone substantial regularisation and is associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service a ...
, and is of such a nature as to be associated with the speech of vulgar or uneducated speakers. The origin of pure ''vulgarisms'' is usually that they are importations, not from a regional but from a class
dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
—in this case from a dialect which is not that of a province, but of a low or uneducated social class. ... vulgarismis usually a variety of Standard English, but a bad variety.Henry Wyld, as quoted by Crowley (1996) p. 169.

The moral and aesthetic values explicit in such a definition depends on

class hierarchy A class hierarchy or inheritance tree in computer science is a classification of object types, denoting objects as the instantiations of classes (class is like a blueprint, the object is what is built from that blueprint) inter-relating the vario ...

viewed as authoritative. For instance, the "misuse" of aspiration (

H-dropping ''H''-dropping or aitch-dropping is the deletion of the voiceless glottal fricative or "''H''-sound", . The phenomenon is common in many dialects of English, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical developmen ...

, such as pronouncing "have" as ave") has been considered a mark of the lower classes in England at least since the late 18th century,Manfred Görlach, ''English in Nineteenth-Century England: An Introduction'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 57Ossi Ihalainen, "The Dialects of English since 1776", in ''The Cambridge History of the English Language'' (Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. 5, pp. 216–217. as dramatized in ''

My Fair Lady ''My Fair Lady'' is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play ''Pygmalion'', with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons f ...

''. Because linguistic vulgarism betrayed social class, its avoidance became an aspect of

etiquette Etiquette () is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a ...

. In 19th-century England, books such as ''The Vulgarisms and Improprieties of the English Language'' (1833) by W. H. Savage, reflected upper-middle-class anxieties about "correctness and good breeding". Vulgarisms in a literary work may be used deliberately to further

characterization Characterization or characterisation is the representation of persons (or other beings or creatures) in narrative and dramatic works. The term character development is sometimes used as a synonym. This representation may include direct methods ...

, by use of " eye dialect" or simply by

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

choice.

References

{{Authority control Language varieties and styles Etiquette

Classicism

Social class

See also

References