From: jhw@wetware.com (strychnine)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: report from the field
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 20:00:20 -0800
Organization: Dr. Strychnine's Box of Sharpened Springs
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <jhw-0112972000200001@kallisti.warpspeedcom.com>
X-Newsreader: Value-Added NewsWatcher 2.0b27.1+

Some of you have noticed the frequent usage of the word "F*ck!" in the
Text and in the Records of Communication among the target population.

The word has roughly the same meaning as "Fuck!"  Of course, if you happen
to be reading this from behind the kind of profanity filter that
automatically replaces "Fuck!" with "F*ck!" in everything you receive,
then they're homographs for you.

While "F*ck!" is spelled differently than "Fuck!", it is often pronounced
differently as well.  "Fuck!" rhymes with 'duck' or 'duke' in various
dialects.  "F*ck!" is often pronounced with a silent vowel.  Some dialects
use a machine generated tone for the vowel phoneme, usually around 440 Hz.

While "F*ck!" has roughly the same meaning as "Fuck!"-- in fact, the
former is derived from the latter-- the two words are not completely
synonymous.  While no two words can be completely synonymous, "F*ck!" and
"Fuck!" are less synonymous than many other homograph pairs.

For instance, "Fuck!" is profane, while "F*ck!" is not.  Usage patterns
and associated connotational signals are consistent with this assessment. 
(See addenda for examples.)

It would appear that this rule for making profane lexical tokens into
non-profane tokens by transmuting a vocal phoneme into a non-vocal one
isn't consistently applied.  For example, one regularly finds reference in
the Text (and the Records) to "G*d" as opposed to "God," but one almost
never finds uses of other words one might expect to be derived this way,
e.g. "c*nt," "n*gger," "f*lch."

A possible explanation is that the Authors only applied this rule to words
that they successfully managed the transition from obscenity into
profanity.  Perhaps they needed these homographs for signifying concepts
in both profane and non-profane contexts.  On the other hand, obscenity is
obscenity no matter the context.

How and when this linguistic evolution occurred may be of interest to
historians, but for our purposes it is irrelevent.  It is simply important
to keep this in mind when preparing information for distribution among the
target population.

As always, you are granted freedom within the limits of your discretionary
budgets, but overuse of irregular semantics remains a twenty-five demerit
offense.  Your division commander is accountable to the project director
for inspecting your product for quality.

-- 
juliet hotel whiskey at whiskey echo tango whiskey alfa romeo echo
[sgi|mips|daver|indetech]!wetware!jhw
"Perhaps today is not such a good day to die." --Ambrose MacClaine