Everything about Vulgarity totally explained
"
Vulgarism" (also called
scurrility) derives from
Latin vulgus, the "common folk", and has carried into English its original connotations linking it with the low and coarse motivations that were supposed to be natural to the commons, who were not moved by higher motives like fame for posterity and honor among peers — motives that were alleged to move the
literate classes. Thus the concept of vulgarism carries cultural freight from the outset, and from some social and religious perspectives it doesn't genuinely exist, or — and perhaps this amounts to the same thing –
ought not to exist.
In
Medieval times, "vulgar" referred to texts written in a
vernacular instead of Latin, which was the standard language of
literature,
science, and
theology at the time. During
Late Antiquity "
vulgar Latin" was used to refer to the vernacular dialects that sprang from Latin across the
Roman Empire— the predecessors of the modern
Romance languages.
The major step in the liberation of
academia from Latin was the
Protestant Reformation which advocated giving
Mass and reading from the
Bible in vulgar languages. Following in the footsteps of the Reformation, some proponents of the
scientific revolution began to establish the precedent for writing in vulgar. However, as understanding of one or more the
classical languages had been a commonality among the educated in the
Western World, this switch to the vulgar also had the effect of limiting the accessibility of texts. Scholars who didn't share the native language of the author would have had access to the work had it been produced in one of the "universal" classical languages. Texts were just too expensive to produce in more than one language (with the exception of the Bible, since it was virtually guaranteed to sell). In effect, this ironically limited the spread of knowledge among the wider world of scholars, while marginally increasing the spread of knowledge among the uneducated in the authors' home country who shared use of the vulgar but often couldn't read it. It wasn't until wide-spread literacy, mass-produced print, and easy translation came about many years later that the vernacular became instrumental in the general spread of knowledge.
Although most dictionaries offer "obscene word or language" as a definition for
vulgarism, others have insisted that a
vulgarism in English usage is different from either
profanity or
obscenity, cultural concepts which connote offenses against a deity and the community respectively. One kind of vulgarism, defined by the
OED as "a colloquialism of a low or unrefined character," substitutes a coarse word where the context might lead the reader to expect a more refined expression: "the tits on
Botticelli's
Venus" is a vulgarism.
More broadly, as "vulgarity" generally has a social and moral component, a "vulgarism" offers a substitution for a commonplace that isn't a mere
euphemism; it draws attention to the speaker's high-toned moral superiority or sophistication. Some fatal flaw in the usage often reveals that the speaker's ambitions are not based in reality: vulgarisms are pretentious, in that they lay unwarranted claim to social graces and education and attempt to inflate the user's status.
Several examples will be instructive.
A case in point is
objets d'art which denotes ornamental decorative objects of little practical use but considered by the user to be of some artistic merit and material value. The phrase is taken from 19th-century English auctioneers' puffery, with the assumption that if it were French it was of a higher standard of artistry. "Objects d'art" is a gaffe aiming at the
French objets d'art ('
artistic objects' ). It appeared in
Rothschild wills published in the late 19th century, and it's an expression now in common
English usage. Like most vulgarisms, it's a
shibboleth, defining the status of the speaker.
The substitution of
homes for brick-and-mortar
houses had its origins in
real estate salesman's pitch which implied that the hearth or foyer of family life could be bought in the market, ready-installed in its architectural shell. The inflation was a vulgarism for at least two generations. Today it has gained such wide acceptance that it simply distinguishes middle-class from upper-class usage; or as
Nancy Mitford, an expert on the subject, would have said
'U' from 'Non U' usage.
Thomas Carlyle equated vulgarism with
materialism when he wrote "The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the
ark of the covenant". The religious image that he used is a clue that for Carlyle vulgarism had an inescapable moral component, and its specific
Old Testament origin evoked the image of the Philistines in their 19th-century connotation, the embodiments of
Philistinism.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Vulgarity'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://vulgarism.totallyexplained.com">Vulgarism Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
