"Emphatic Swearing"

I was just listening to a great talk about taboo words by Steven Pinker at the FIRE Soapbox conference, and particularly liked this example of "emphatic swearing":

The taboo word is often used to draw a listener's attention, emphasizing the following noun or adjective. For example: "This is really, really fucking brilliant" [that's a reference to the Bono incident that led to FCC action -EV] or "He thinks he's a fucking scoutmaster, Rip Van fuckin' Winkle."

When emphatic and idiomatic swearing is overused, it can lead to a form of English sometimes referred to as "fuck patois." This is a style where swearing is so pervasive that it becomes almost a defining feature of the language. An example of this can be found in the story of a soldier who says, "I come home to my fucking house after three fucking years in the fucking war, and what do I fucking well find? My wife in bed, engaged in illicit sexual relations with a male!"

I think there's more going on in the soldier story than just fuck patois—indeed, what makes it emphatic might be the absence of "fuck" in the closing phrase—but in any event it's pretty funny.

Note that the term "fuck patois" is often credited to Tom Wolfe.