Language is contextual. Many of those words may have lost
their universal bite, but with the right tone, inflection and
situation, they can still hit just as hard as they ever did
(fights continue to start with the phrase "What did you say
about my mother?" no matter how many times we laugh at "Your
mama's so fat . . ." jokes ). In reality and in fiction. And
that's not a bad thing, at least in fiction. It sometimes
serves a very necessary role.
What bothers me is its gratuitous use to appear hip or
street. Anthony pointed out a very important distinction
between narrative voice and dialog. Nasty words could be well
put in characters' mouth to express anything from friendship
to anger depending upon context. They may even be very
effectively used in portraying a character as a phony,
someone not nearly as hip as they would have you think, just
as the misuse of a high-falutin' word may expose a social
climber. It's fine, just part of the story, if I think a
character is a phony. It's another thing entirely if I
believe the narrator is.
And for the record, Richard Pryor later disowned his use of
the N word
(the word still holds great negative power for me that I
can't say it, won't even type it in my own voice). Still, he
didn't pull any of his old recordings that featured it. And
Chris Rock does some very interesting, and funny, riffs on
the word in Bring the Pain.
Mark
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