COARSE SPEECH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 159, 8 July 1935, Page 5

COARSE SPEECH.

OFFENSIVE WORDS.

"TIMES ALWAYS CHANGING."

It»ROF. SINCLAIRE'S VIEWS, j A slight dispute between Mr. E. C. Levvey, S.M., and Mr. R. Twyneham in j the Magistrate's Court in Christchurch j about the significance of ' the word I "bloody" suggests the case of quite- a J number or commonly used words and.! phrases which are sometimes regarded 1 as offensive - and sometimes *not (says the "Press"). Mr. Twyneham argued that the word "bloody," which he suggested had been used by a witness, could be considered obscene, claiming in support an opinion given by Mr. Justice Sim. Mr. Levvey replied that the word, was not obscene, indecent or profane, but that it was coarse and provocative. He added that times had changed since the judge had given his opinion. "One of the first words I heard when I landed in Australia was 'bloody,'" said Professor F. Sinclaire, professor of English at Canterbury University College, who was asked about the extent of the usage of words which are often thought coafse or offensive. Professor Sinclaire said that he had not been shocked, but in the circumstances had thought that the word was use.d in quite the right spirit. Drawing The Line. "There is the word 'belly'—would you alter that to stomach?" he said. "We do not use 'belly' in the drawing room. We may have become more prudish in our vocabulary, and it must be admitted that we do draw the line. I have seen notices on which the word 'expectoration' has been used instead of 'spitting.' That seems ;to be unnecessary. " 'Times hare changed'—well, times are always changing," said' Professor Sinclaire. "That is quite a safe remark." He referred to the greater frankness of the literature of the seventeenth century, and again to the prohibitions placed on certain topic* of conversation and certain word' in the Vict rian age. 'It was rcporto'l thu* SnmnclL^μtierhad

said that his father was the only man whom he had ever heard to admit openly that he did not like Shakespeare. Butler had remarked that he would not have minded his father's attitude if he had not given as a reason that Shakespeare was so coarse, aggravating the offence by saying that he liked Tennyson. Changing Standards. "Any word can be provocative in a certain context," said Professor Sinclaire. "It may be provocative to repeat what a man has just saidr I think that our standards of coarseness are largely class standards. Very often the avoidance of the use of certain words may be a kind of prurience." To say that times had changed simply meant that the centre of prudishness had shifted, he said. An instance of this was the mention by Dickens of the American women who insisted on draping the legs of the chairs. Some Victorian novelists referred to a man's trouser§ as his "unmentionables."