Curse

A curse does two things in one action, which is what makes it a single operation rather than an insult followed by an accusation. It assigns guilt and it assigns negative image status, and each requires the other, since under the laws of endoreality guilt can only be assigned to a negative image. The example in the definition is the plainest case. Screaming a curse while beating or killing somebody delivers the violence and its justification together, and what the victim is left holding is the blame for their own victimhood. Marsh runs the mechanism from magic to law without a break in it. In cursing proper the recipient's guilt is invoked during the curse, and the guilt is often understood as providing the force that makes the curse work, or the curse is understood as the assignment of guilt that was rightfully theirs. The same guilt-curse relationship operates in a modern court, where the judge acts as the magician and the verdict is the curse. The everyday version is visible once the pattern is named. People who curse at strangers in the street, executives who yell at employees at random and anyone pacing and muttering to themselves are attempting to transfer guilt or signalling that guilt has been transferred to them. Her account of swearing follows from this, since the older taboo words in English overwhelmingly name women, and they remain sayable because cursing women as the negative image remains acceptable.

Anthropology of magic has studied cursing since James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski, and the standard treatment reads it as symbolic action whose efficacy is social. J.L. Austin's speech act theory supplies the closest technical vocabulary, since a curse is performative rather than descriptive, doing something rather than reporting it, and a verdict is Austin's own example of a verdictive. Sociolinguistics studies swearing as taboo language and tracks which categories supply the words. Marsh's contribution is to join these. Magical cursing, judicial sentencing and street abuse are one mechanism in her account, distinguished only by the authority of the speaker, and what all three accomplish is the transfer of guilt to somebody positioned to receive it.