What the fuck?

A student once asked me whether he could do a word report about the word nigger. Instead of answering straight away, I took up his question and, in the next session, asked the class what they thought. They seemed to be surprised when I whole-heartedly said “Yes, of course.” There is no reason to ignore words only because they have negative connotations. They form part of the language, and whether we like the word in question or not is irrelevant. To illustrate my point further, I gave them a short report about a word which I myself do not use: fuck. It is a word which is frequently used and thus relevant for the linguist. So what can we say about fuck? To begin with, it can be used as a verb, as a noun and as an interjection, without any change of form, a phenomenon which is called conversion in word-formation. Then, compounds can be formed using it: fuckhead, fuckall, fuckwit. Phrasal verbs can be formed as well: fuck up, fuck off. It can be used in the literal sense but much more frequently is it used in the metaphorical sense. As a matter of fact, fuck is used metaphorically much more frequently than literally: What the fuck is going on? Get the fuck out of here. Who gives a fuck? Get a bigger fucking hammer. Fuck, you scared the shit out of me. Mary’s fucking beautiful. Moreover, one may wonder about the word’s  phonological form. There is a velar consonant and a closed vowel in the word fuck, and it is a short word. Are such words perhaps particularly apt to be swearwords, i.e. is there any sound symbolism involved in such words? Consider dick, bunk, dork, wank, prick, shag, wog, pig, slag. Whatever one may say about fuck, it can hardly be said that it is not an interesting word.