Vulgarism

In the study of language and literary style, a vulgarism is an expression or usage considered non-standard or characteristic of uneducated speech or writing. In colloquial or lexical English, "vulgarism" or "vulgarity" may be synonymous with profanity or obscenity, but a linguistic or literary vulgarism encompasses a broader category of perceived fault not confined to scatological or sexual offensiveness. These faults may include errors of pronunciation, misspellings, word malformations, and malapropisms. "Vulgarity" is generally used in the more restricted sense. In regular and mostly informal conversations, the presence of vulgarity, if any, are mostly for intensifying, exclaiming or scolding. In modern times, vulgarism continues to be frequently used by people. A research paper produced by Oxford University in 2005 shows that the age group of 10–20 years old speak more vulgarity than the rest of the world's population combined. The frequent and prevalent usage of vulgarity as a whole has led to a paradox, in which people use vulgarity so often that it becomes less and less offensive to people, according to The New York Times.

In the realm of ideas, vulgarisation (also vulgarization) is the process of adapting a complex or specialist theory for a popular, non-specialist audience. While this can broaden an idea's impact, the term often carries a pejorative sense, implying that the original work's nuances and subtleties have been lost or distorted in the simplification. A prominent example of vulgarisation is how Charles Darwin's complex theory of natural selection was popularly reduced to the slogan "survival of the fittest". The phrase was coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, and was central to the ideology of Social Darwinism, which applied the simplified biological concept to justify social inequality, imperialism, and laissez-faire capitalism.