The Russian language may lose its obscenity

Rector of the Pushkin Institute Natalya Trukhanovskaya believes that obscene language in the Russian language can leave the category of taboo and become neutral. She made this assumption in an interview with RBC.

“One of the possible scenarios that I can predict: due to the fact that this vocabulary becomes less and less taboo, more and more widespread, it will gradually cease to be a forbidden fruit, and will move to the level of a neutral kind of swearing, which in our country is not even considered a swear word.” , noted Trukhanovskaya.

In her opinion, the spread of swearing in society was facilitated by bloggers, politicians and other opinion leaders who, by using profanity in public, weakened this taboo.

“No one knows who talked in what way in the kitchen, in the yard, in the train compartment, but in the public sphere it was taboo. <...> I don’t know for what socio-political or socio-social reasons it suddenly became possible to express oneself like that publicly. This is where the widespread use of this vocabulary in our language came from,” Trukhanovskaya is sure.

To confirm her words, the rector of the Pushkin Institute gave two examples, recalling Soviet state television and the German language: “Everyone watched TV and understood how to speak correctly. It is clear that it is unrealistic to ban all bloggers from using offensive language. Maybe we will follow the path of other languages. For example, in German there is swear vocabulary, but there is no profanity, there is no such lexical layer as swearing.”

Trukhanovskaya explained the trend toward the use of profanity by public people as “the urgency of the moment” and “a surge of aggressiveness.”

“Imagine someone breaks into your house. It will be strange to tell him: “Please leave the room. You’re interfering with our dinner,” she gave an example, adding that in this case people will express themselves in slightly different words.

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