My Boolean Results

Upon searching through both the ProQuest and EBSCOhost databases (as we were instructed to for unit 7),  in order to find the information that I needed, I used the Boolean searches:

•  definition AND (profanity OR "curse words") AND change*
•  definition AND (swearing OR "curse words") AND change*.

 I found that I was very successful in finding credible sources about profanity in today's culture, but not very successful in finding sources for my question "What was the original definition of profanity and how has it changed over the years?", I found some, but not very much. But what I did find were relevant to another one of my questions, "Who is in charge of deciding which words are considered obscene?"


Also for this assignment, we had to use our Boolean searches to find a total of three sources, one newspaper article, one magazine article, and one article from a scholarly journal.


For my newspaper article, I chose "Broadcasting 'Indecency' on Trial."  by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.. {1}
This article because this article talks about how the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is cracking down and fining media broadcasters for using "explicit content" (i.e. using vulgar words, and even partial nudity) hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars! The article continues to go into how the broadcasters are claiming that the FCC's decision is unconstitutional, but the FCC fears that if they were to rule in the broadcaster's favor, then the television and any other media source would then become flooded with profanity and nudity. I chose this article because it explains a little bit about the FCC and what they are doing to control the use of vulgarity.


My magazine article is titled "EDUCATION: SWEARING AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: Slang just might make a New Canadian Feel More Like Everyone Else." {2}
I chose this article as a source because I thought it would be very interesting. It talks about how people from other cultures who are trying to learn the English language are actually becoming confused by how our everyday English is extremely different from the textbook English, and the largest baffler of them all is our use of profanity. There was one sentence of this article that really spoke to me about how our use of swear words really affect ourselves and others. "... but just because she isn't required to know English slang or swearing to become a Canadian doesn't mean she won't need it in order to feel like one." Although, not necessarily just to become a Canadian of course, but just to fit in with the rest of society.


Now the article from the scholarly journal, "Feds Change the Rules.", by Doug Halonen {3}, was a bit more on the money for what I was hoping I would find. This article goes on to talk about how the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has ruled that "...the use of the F-word and similar expressions runs afoul of agency regulations no matter what the context the words are used." And how broadcasters will be loose their broadcasting licensees if they are to "violate" the indecency rule (as of 2010) along with individual fines for each indecency in a single broadcast.


I actually discovered quiet a bit while doing my research for this assignment. And really, my search terms hardly changed at all! Which I found rather convenient. Even though my original search question was about the original definition of profanity and how it has changed, didn't get answered, another question that had been on my mind, about who was in charge of deciding what is to be considered profane and what they do about it, did get some answers. Which is cool too.


{1} Boutrous, Theodore J. Jr. "Broadcast 'Indecency' on Trial." Wall Street Journal: A13. Los Angeles Times; National Newspapers Core; The Wall Street Journal. Jan 17 2012. Web. 25 July 2012.


{2} Teitel, Emma. "EDUCATION: SWEARING AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: Slang just might make a New Canadian Feel More Like Everyone Else." Maclean's Dec 06 2010: 59-. ProQuest Research Library. Web 25 July 2012.


{3} Halonen, Doug. "Feds Change the Rules. (Cover Story)." Television Week 23.12 (2004): 1-34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 July 2012.

Do the Boolean!

For unit six, we've learned about how to use Boolean operators and how to turn research questions into well thought out search statements. So as an example, here are five questions plus one of my research questions from an earlier post:

1) Does television advertising by the pharmaceutical industry have an impact on prescription drug abuse?

•     Does television advertising by the pharmac* industry have an (impact or influence) on prescription drug abuse?
•      television advertising and pharmac* industry and (impact or influence) and "drug abuse"

2) What are the similarities between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current economic status?

• What are the similarities between the "Great Depression" of the 1930s and the current economic status?
• similarities between and "Great Depression" and current economic status

3) What breeds of dogs make good therapy pets?

• What breed* of dog* make good therapy pet*?
• breed* dog* and good therapy and pet

4) Debate the pros and cons of fish farming.

• Debate the "pros and cons" of fish farming.
• debate and "pros and cons" and fish farming

5) Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat based diet?

• Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat based diet?
• vegetarian diet and healthier and meat diet

1) What was the original definition of profanity and how has it changed over the years?

• What was the original definition of (profanity or "curse words") and how has it changed over the years?
• original definition and (profanity or "curse words") and changed 

Evaluating your sources

I have finally figured out how to put up a new post without creating a new blog!!! Bwahahahahaha!!!
So for this unit, we got to learn how to use library databases to look for resource books that we would do research with for our topics. As I have told you before, mine is Profanity. Now, I suppose you can use the word "profanity" in all of your searches, but you won't always get what you are looking for. So I went to thesaurus.com  to find some synonyms for well, you guessed it... profanity. Some of the main synonyms that came up included the obvious, "cursing", "swearing", "obscenity", and there were also some rather humerus ones like "four-letter word" and "no-no". I'm not kidding! You can go see for yourself! Whoops, I'm getting off track, so anyway, for this unit we had to go to different library databases (including Clark Cannell Library, Summit Research, Books 24x7, and Google Books).


1) For the Clark Cannell Library (which is the library at my college, just in case you didn't know that), I have to list the search terms I used, I have to cite one book, list the subject headings, state weather I used a circulating or an E-book, give the location in the library as well as the call number, and explain what clues I had in the book record that lead me to believe that this book was credible. So this is what I got:
 I tried searching "profanity", I got nothing. I tried "history of profanity", still nothing. So then I tried "swearing", and I finally got 2 hits! So now that I finally had something to choose from, which is a circulating book, here is what I chose: 
           Rawson, Hugh. Wicked Words: a treasury of curses, insults, put-downs, and other formerly                                            unprintable terms from Anglo-Saxon times to present. New York: Crown Publishers, 1989. Book.
The subject headings were:

• English language-- Slang-- Dictionaries
• English language-- Etymology-- Dictionaries
• English language-- Obscene Words-- Dictionaries
• Blessing and Cursing-- Dictionaries
• Invective-- Dictionaries
• Swearing-- Dictionaries

The location is in the Cannell Reference, and the call number is PE3721.R38 1989
And what clues did I have that lead me to believe this book was credible? To be perfectly honest, I didn't. I just picked one of me two options. And quite frankly the other option wasn't that much different.

2) For the Summit Research, I again had to list the search terms that I used, cite one book, list the subject headings, give the location and call number, and state what clues I had in the book record that lead me to believe this book was credible. But this time I also had to explain how my search was different from that of the Cannell Library search.
Again, I tried searching "profanity" but instead of getting no results like I had expected, I got over 30,000 results!!! The book that I chose this time was:
      Hughes, Geoffery. Swearing: a social history of foul language, oaths, and profanity in English. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991. Book.
The subject headings I that was given to me:

• Swearing-- History
• English language-- Social aspects
• English language-- Obscene words

The location is in the University of Washington Library's Suzzallo/Alen Stocks, and the call number is PE3723.S85 1991.
What clues did I have that lead me to believe this book was credible? I recognized the author from the search I had just done in the Cannell Library's database, plus while doing this search on Summit, there were at least four other books that I had seen by the same author. Which helped me in trusting this book a little bit more.
How did my search on Summit differ from my search on Cannell? Well, as I have mentioned before, I was able to use only one search term for Summit and got well over 30,000 results, but in using the exact same search term in Cannell Library, I got nothing. So, while using Cannell Library can help, I feel that using Summit Research, I will get more reliable (hopefully) sources available to me.

3) Books 24x7 - IT Pro Collection of E-Books. I admit I was a little iffy about trying this one, mainly because I had never heard of it, but much to my surprise IT was actually very much like any other library catalog that I had used before. So needless to say, I warmed up to it quite quickly. The basic search was fine, but the advanced search is much more through. Not only does it use what ever keyword(s) you have already put into the basic search, but it also allows you to choose additional keywords and where exactly you would like it to look for them (i.e.: the Text, Title, Author/Publisher, ISBN, Code Listings, and Notes). I do very much plan on using this database much more often in the future.

4) And finally we had to use Google Books. I like Google Books, because I've used it before and I actually knew what I was doing. So for this part of the assignment, we had to choose one book that looked like it could be useful for our topics, and again list the search terms used, cite the book, and explain what clues I had that lead me to believe this book would be trustworthy.
The search terms I used were "profanity" and "cursing". That was all it took to get thousands upon thousands of results. So the book that sounded rather intriguing to me was"
     Jay, Timothy. Cursing in America; a psycholinguistic study of dirty language in the courts, in the movies, in the schoolyards, and on the streets. Philadelphia: John Benjamins North America, 1992. Book.
What clues did I have that lead me to believe this would be a credible source? Well for one, the 5-star rating system that Google provides, and upon reading a little bit of the book, the author is professionally objective about the topic. Like its purpose is solely to inform, and not to convince me that one side is better than the other.

This unit was rather informative. Out of all of the databases we learned to use, I would have to say that Books 24x7 and Google Books were the best because they provided much more possibilities and more ways to refine you searches. But Cannell Library and Summit Research have their own advantage in that they have the books on hand and you don't have to buy them in order to fully use them. So really all four of them have their own advantages and I plan on using all four of them.

Finding the Information

So for this unit in class, we needed to read up on how to select our information for our research. And provide what sources we think we should use for not only five practice questions, but also the three research questions we asked in our blogs for our previous unit, (rodli-blog-3.blogspot.com), as well as what we expect to find information wise by using those resources. So here are my answers to the eight total questions:
Practice Questions:
1) Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat-based diet?
  ~ I would use the world wide web to find reliable sources/websites that focus on the health benefits and risks of both of these types of diets.
2) Target often forces musicians to alter lyrics in order to have their CDs sold in Target stores. Is that censorship?
  ~ I would again use the world wide web to not only define the term "censorship" but also to find more in depth information on which bands in particular have been forced to alter their lyrics.
3) How much more can a college graduate expect to earn over someone with a high school diploma?
  ~ To find the information that would aid me in answering this question, I would turn to newspapers, web-based news, and broadcast media to find local up to date information on the areas current wages (and demand) for someone with a degree from college versus someone with only a high school diploma.
4) Should educators use commercial services to combat plagiarism?
  ~ I think using scholarly journals to find what the scholars think about how plagiarism should be combated, would be best.
5) Is the current lack of sunspot activity affecting global warming?
  ~ For this, I would use both books and the world wide web. I would use books to review how previous sunspot activities (or lack thereof) have affected things in the past, and compare that information to what is available on the Internet as far as information on how "global warming" has become today.

My own research questions:
1) What was the original definition of profanity and how has it changed over the years?
  ~ First I would use a dictionary to define the term "profanity" in its present form, and then I would follow up with scholarly journals to research the known history of how profanity originally began.
2) What are the most used "swear words"?
  ~ Now obviously the answer to this question would totally vary depending on the culture you are in. But I think it would actually be best to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc..., to ask your friends and family about what they think the most used "swear words" would be, and maybe even take your own poll on which curse words they use most often and how often they use them during a specific time period.
3) Who is in charge of deciding which words are considered obscene?
  ~First off, I would actually check the scholarly journals that were previously used to research the known history of profanity in case the agency in charge of deciding what is to actually be considered a swear word was mentioned. If not, then I would check out the different government websites to see if there is any sort of information available on who is in charge there.