From the Los Angeles Times
Exhibit A-word: If it's the height of rudeness, it's also our reflexive response to it.
By Geoffrey Nunberg
Other vulgarities have their defenders, but the "A-word" gets little respect, whether it's referring to someone's anatomy or his character. As a term of abuse, it's Exhibit A for those who bewail the coarsening of American culture. Is it really worth giving any thought to? Actually, yes.
Granted, we should use it sparingly. The word may no longer shock, but it is crude, as it has to be so we can make our feelings fully known when a neighbor starts his leaf blower at 7 a.m. But the discomfort about hearing it shouldn't carry over to hearing about it. Precisely because it is coarse, it's a window on our attitudes about how we should treat each other. And it offers a much more truthful picture of the problems vexing our public life than those simplistic op-ed harangues about a rising tide of incivility and an America split into two nations, the courteous and the crude. In fact, when we use the A-word, we become a citizen of both: If it's the height of rudeness, it's also our reflexive response to it....
Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist, is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. His latest book is "Ascent of the A-word."