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Dirty words in the mainstream mediaPosted by Joel Martinsen, March 12, 2009 11:43 AM
![]() Today's New York Times reports on the "grass mud horse" phenomenon:
The paper's standards on taboo language prevent it from printing the actual "vile obscenity": grass mud horse () sounds similar to "mother fucker" (), a fairly common curse. Chinese media faces similar problems. Reports on the grass mud horse that have appeared in print media have not censored the animal's name, but they've usually left the reader to interpret the obscene meaning for themselves. It's a little harder to do that in TV journalism, where actually reading the name would make the connection fairly apparent. It's much simpler to simply ignore the whole thing. That's what BTV did earlier this week. According to the program "Good Morning Beijing," which aired a report on the mythical beast on March 10, Chinese netizens are gaga over the alpaca simply because it looks funny. In place of dirty language, the program borrowed the word jiong (囧), which in net-speak refers to something particularly astonishing or bewildering, to connect the alpaca to online culture.
The program goes on to pay a visit to an alpaca-keeper and reveals that the animals were first brought into China in 2002, but it never actually informs viewers why Internet users latched onto the strange-looking creature in the first place. Links and Sources
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Comments on Dirty words in the mainstream media
This is funny. I haven't seen it on TV but I can very well imagine the embarrassment of the presenter. And the editors of BTV came up with such a stupid explanation: odd-toed what?
On the other hand, hey, we are told all the time that tones are essential to differenciate words, and 草泥马 has different tones from 操你妈。 So it shouldn't be forbidden to say caonima on TV using the proper tones, right?
Funny. Though it must be said that the western media does not print obscenities or pseudo-obscenities either.