Presenting on Profanity
March 31, 2008 by kellymurphy00
I have fallen in love with swearing. No, really. I think its a dying artform and its greatly misunderstood by interpreters, and the general public. No other aspect of language is so intertwined with our emotions and rules of social interaction - profanity can not be looked at in a vacuum. I love it when its complicated and constantly shifting.
Many years ago, when we were told to figure out a research topic during my Interpreter Training Program (ITP), I wasn’t serious at first. I couldn’t imagine that a cutting edge profanity study would be useful. I thought that maybe I would find some gender differences and wouldn’t that be neat?
Well I found a whole lot more than that - Interpreters, in general, don’t know how to handle profanity. Their gender and years of experience are almost irrelevant. Experiencing profanity doesn’t happen in a soley conscious way - much of our perception of profanity is realized on a subconscious, gut level.
Though my shareshops, interpreters are given tools to bring their understanding of profanity up to a conscious level and develop strategies for their toolbox for the next time they have to face those four little letters.
For 2008, I will be facilitating a number of shareshops around the country. Keep your eyes on my site to see where I will be next and my blog for where I’ve been.
As one shareshop attendee from Kansas said “I came here thinking I would learn some vocabulary, but I left with something much better - I learned how to handle profanity instead.”
If your organization is interested in having this topic presented to your membership, please contact me via e-mail, kemurphy00@yahoo.com.
Future Shareshops
June 29th, ‘08 - Houston, TX TSID/Region IV
July 31st, ‘08 - St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada AVLIC
September 27th & 28th, ‘08 - Sacramento, CA Region V
