Crap, Shit, and Poop

George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" provides a delightful analysis of our idiotic segregation of language and the notion of a "bad word". The heart of the rant, I think, is the following:

"Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large."

While I have some friends (or at this point they may just be "people I knew in college who no longer talk to me") who do not use certain words I've never heard a reasonable explanation for why some words are socially acceptable, good and proper words for use in daily conversation while others are dreadful abominations of language. I understand that I cannot say "fuck" at work, but I've never been given a sensible reason for why this is. It is just one of those aspects of society that our mommies and daddies taught us. As I am still confused, though, I shall present my question in the following condensed manner:

What the fuck is the difference between crap, shit, and poop?

Take, for example, the exclamations, "Oh crap!", "Oh shit!", and "Oh poop!". What are the differences between these three exclamations?

Oh poop!: This seems to be a more juvenile and childish exclamation.
Oh crap!: This seems to be a socially acceptable exclamation that one could say inside of, say, a church.
Oh shit!: This seems to be an exclamation that which is not socially acceptable.

Fundamentally, though, they are all the same. They are variations upon the exclamation "Oh no!"; they are exclamations uttered when something bad happens. But what is the difference between the three? Crap, Shit, and Poop all reference the same thing: excrement. So what is the difference between these words? What makes "crap" socially acceptable while "shit" is not?

For that matter what is the difference between "fucked" and "screwed", "darn" and "damn", "gosh" and "god", "hell" and "heck"?

Each of these expressions fulfill the same utility within our speech. "I'm fucked" and "I'm screwed" mean the same thing, convey the same notion. So why is "screwed" acceptable while "fucked" is not? Why would someone say "heck" rather than "hell"?

Obviously our problem is not with the communication of any given situation or idea. If an individual is in a situation in which they are screwed/fucked we have no problem with them communicating their predicament. The concern we have is for how they communicate. If a person were to say "What the heck?" there would be no problem yet "What the hell?" is somehow problematic. But, again, what is the difference?

The answer is not "the words themselves". There is not some link between the noise we make when we say "fuck", the letters used to compose the word "fuck", and the dreadful nature of the word "fuck". The words shit, crap, and poop are not somehow dynamically different so denoting the degree to which either is appropriate in any given situation; one could not objectively analyze any of these words outside of the social context in which they exist and somehow discover which is socially acceptable and which is not.

So what the god-damned fucking hell is the difference, then?

Wittgenstein described language as a language-game. Wittgenstein dismissed the idea of words as boats, of a fashion, which are used to transport ideas from one's mind to the mind of another and rather discussed language in terms of the language-game, the social construct.

This, I think, is the answer to the question of difference. There really is no difference between shit, crap, and poop unto the words themselves but rather the difference is found in the arbitrary rules constructed by those who use the language. "Shit" was decided to be less acceptable than "crap" which is more mature than "poop". "Heck" was created to fill in for "hell". "Screwed" takes the place of "fuck". "Gosh darn" serves the purpose of "God damn" without making anyone uncomfortable.

And when you think about it? When you realize that the only difference between crap, shit, and poop is that arbitrary designation? You relize that it's all incredibly god damned re-fucking-tarded.

Oops. I ought to have said, "gosh darned re-frickin-tarded" so as not to insult the shitheads.

Err..."crapheads".

There we go.