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59-550: An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus , obscaenus , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profits " and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity. In

118-487: A script , has several characteristics. These include paralinguistic features which are forms of communication that do not involve words but are added around an utterance to give meaning. Examples of paralinguistic features include facial expressions, laughter, eye contact, and gestures. Prosodic features refer to the sound of someone's voice as they speak: pitch, intonation and stress. Ellipsis can be used in either written or spoken language; for instance, when an utterance

177-607: A sentence are not the same thing. According to Bakhtin, sentences do not indicate a change of speech subject, and thus do not automatically satisfy one of the four properties of utterances. According to him, the sentence as a language unit is grammatical in nature, while an utterance is "ethical". Miller Test The Miller test , also called the three-prong obscenity test , is the United States Supreme Court 's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene , in which case it

236-482: A conviction for mailing and delivery of a newspaper called the Chicago Dispatch , containing "obscene, lewd, lascivious, and indecent materials", which was later upheld in several cases. One of these was "A Book Named John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure " v. Attorney General of Com. of Massachusetts, " 383 U.S. 413 (1966) " wherein the book " Fanny Hill ", written by John Cleland c.  1760 ,

295-476: A defense witness in a court hearing. Although Cohen removed the jacket before entering the courtroom, he had been observed wearing it in the courthouse corridor by a court officer. When Cohen left the courtroom, the officer arrested him for disturbing the peace. Cohen defended his attire as being an expression of disapproval of the war in Vietnam. Nonetheless, he was convicted of "maliciously and willfully disturbing

354-556: A few minutes to clear Larry Peterman, owner of a Movie Buffs video store, in Utah County, Utah . He had been charged with distributing obscene material for renting pornographic videos that were displayed in a screened-off area of the store clearly marked as adults-only. The Utah County region had often boasted of being one of the most socially conservative areas in the United States. However, researchers had shown that guests at

413-569: A fine. Criticism to the legislation have included: It is often used against people who expose their nude bodies in public environments that were not warranted a license to cater to the demographic interested in such practice (the first such place was the Praia do Abricó in Rio de Janeiro, in 1994), even if no sexual action took place, and it may include, for example, a double standard for the chest area of women and men in which only women are penalized. Such

472-608: A pornography distributor from North Hollywood , California, was judged to be held accountable to the community standards applying in western Pennsylvania, where the Third Circuit made its ruling, because the materials were available via Internet in that area. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled in United States v. Kilbride that a "national community standard" should be used for

531-452: A push to prosecute obscenity cases. Red Rose Stories, a site dedicated to text-only fantasy stories, became one of many sites targeted by the FBI for shutdown. The government alleged that Red Rose Stories contained depictions of child rape. The publisher pleaded guilty. Extreme pornographer Max Hardcore served 30 months of a 46-month prison sentence for obscenity. Many U.S. states have had bans on

590-475: A reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole". For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends the average person in one community may differ from what offends the average person in another community. Another important issue is that the Miller test asks for an interpretation of what

649-462: A result, children with parents who are more educated have larger vocabularies (Hoff, 2003). In child-directed speech, utterances have several additional features. For example, the phonology in child-directed speech is different: Utterances are spoken more slowly, with longer pauses in between utterances, higher pitches, etc. The lexis and semantics differ, and a speaker uses words suited for children, "doggie" instead of "dog", for example. The grammar

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708-566: A smaller vocabulary and a slower growth in their vocabulary skills (Arriaga, Fenson, Cronan & Pethick, 1998; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, Laursen & Tardif, 2002; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991; Lawrence & Shipley, 1996; Ninio, 1980). This correlation is due to the fact that more educated parents use more lexises when speaking to their children as opposed to parents who are less educated (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003 a; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Waterfall, Vevea & Hedges, in press). Hoff's 2003 analysis supports this correlation and shows that

767-490: A thing took place in the 2012 FEMEN protests in São Paulo. Various countries have different standings on the types of materials that they as legal bodies permit their citizens to have access to and disseminate among their local populations. The set of these countries' permissible content vary widely accordingly with some having extreme punishment up to and including execution for members who violate their restrictions, as in

826-631: A variety of content involving pornography and violence. Section 163 of the Canadian Criminal Code provides the country's legal definition of "obscenity". Officially termed as "Offences Tending to Corrupt Morals", the Canadian prohibited class of articles that are to be legally included as "obscene things" is very broad, including text-only written material, pictures, models (including statues) records or "any other obscene thing". According to Section 163(8), if "a dominant characteristic of

885-465: Is a record of child sexual abuse . Abuse of the child occurs during the sexual acts that are recorded in the production of child pornography, and several professors of psychology state that memories of the abuse are maintained as long as visual records exist, are accessed, and are "exploited perversely". Some countries also bans writings—that depict sexually explicit activities involving a child. In New York v. Ferber , 458 U.S. 747 (1982),

944-565: Is a type of speech that is casual in which the utterance is usually more relaxed. The development of utterances in children is facilitated by parents, adults, or any other guardian the child has growing up. Studies have indicated that this development is affected by the parent, adult, or guardian's socioeconomic status (SES). It has been shown that children whose parents received more education and have higher SES have larger vocabularies and learn new words more quickly during early childhood while children with less educated parents and lower SES have

1003-402: Is also a characteristic included in utterances which is the way the words are voiced, the pronunciation and the different types of lexis used in different parts of the world. Deictic expressions are utterances that need more explanation in order to be understood, like: "Wow! Look over there!" Simple conjunctions in speech are words that connect other words like "and", "but", etc. Colloquial lexis

1062-457: Is composed of two articles, Art. 233 "Obscene Act", "to practice an obscene act in a public place, or open or exposed to the public", punished with arrest of 3 months to 1 year or a fine; and Art. 234 "Obscene Written Piece or Object", to do, import, export, purchase or have in one's property, to ends of trade, distribution or public display, any written, drew, painted, stamped or object piece of obscenity, punished with arrest of 6 months to 1 year or

1121-476: Is conveyed and the speaker omits words because they are already understood in the situation. For example: A: Juice? B: Please. A: Room temperature? B: Cold. Non-fluency features also occur when producing utterances. As people think about what to say during conversations, there are errors and corrections in speech. For example, voiced/un-voiced pauses which are "umm", "erm", etc. in voiced pauses and in transcripts un-voiced pauses are denoted as (.) or (1) relating to

1180-475: Is how the conversation is organized, in which adjacency pairs - an utterance and the answer to that utterance - are used. Discourse markers are used to organize conversation ("first", "secondly", etc.). Lexis denotes the words being used in a text or spoken; these words can create a semantic field . For example, a semantic field of love can be created with lexical choices such as adore, admire, and care. An utterance found in spoken or written language , as in

1239-584: Is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt", stated in 1868 by Lord Justice Cockburn , in Regina v. Hicklin , now known as the Hicklin test . Stanley Kauffmann 's novel The Philanderer was published by Penguin Books in 1957 and was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity. The Obscene Publications Act is famously vague, defining obscenity with reference to material that is likely to "deprave and corrupt". The 1959 act

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1298-551: Is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited. The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California . It has three parts: The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied. The first two prongs of the Miller test are held to the standards of the community, and the third prong is based on "whether

1357-474: Is obscene", famously wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced ... [b]ut I know it when I see it ...." In the U.S., the 1973 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene—and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment . Delivering

1416-479: Is simpler, repetitive, with less use of verbs and adjectives. There is a greater use of one word utterances and the pragmatics uses supportive language like expansions and re-casting. Paul Grice (1989) came up with four maxims necessary in order to have a collegial conversation in which utterances are understood: According to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin , there are four accepted properties that utterances should have: Bakhtin also emphasizes that an utterance and

1475-578: Is that the Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia , 394 U.S. 557 (1969), that possession of obscene material could not be criminalized, while in Osborne v. Ohio , 495 U.S. 103 (1990), the high court ruled that possession of child pornography could be criminalized. The reason was that the motive for criminalizing child pornography possession was "to destroy a market for

1534-675: The Marquis de Sade . Obscenity law has been criticized in the following areas: Obscenity laws remain enforceable under Miller despite these criticisms. Some states have passed laws mandating censorship in schools, universities, and libraries even if they are not receiving government aid that would require censorship in these institutions . These include Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Twenty more states were considering such legislation in 2001–2002. Child pornography refers to images or films (also known as child abuse images ); as such, visual child pornography

1593-559: The United States , issues of obscenity raise issues of limitations on the freedom of speech and of the press , which are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . Federal obscenity law in the U.S. is unusual in that there is no uniform national standard. Former Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States , in attempting to classify what material constituted exactly "what

1652-513: The "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the Hicklin test , stemming from the English precedent. In practice, pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test. For instance, in 2000, a jury in Provo , Utah , took only

1711-486: The 19-year-old writer of a fictional sex story "The Forestwood Kids"; however, the case was dismissed in 1995. In February 2009, citing its Policy On The Classification Of Obscene Material , the CBSA banned two Lucas Entertainment films because they show the "ingestion of someone else's urine... with a sexual purpose". In 2016 Mark Marek, owner of bestgore.com , pleaded guilty to breaching obscenity legislation for posting

1770-1130: The 1960s. Utterance In oral/spoken language, utterances have several characteristics such as paralinguistic features, which are aspects of speech such as facial expression , gesture , and posture. Prosodic features include stress, intonation, and tone of voice, as well as ellipsis , which are words that the listener inserts in spoken language to fill gaps. Moreover, other aspects of utterances found in spoken languages are non-fluency features including: voiced/un-voiced pauses (i.e. "umm"), tag questions, and false starts, or when someone begins uttering again to correct themselves. Other features include fillers (i.e. "and stuff"), accent/dialect, deictic expressions (utterances such as "over there!" that need further explanation to be understood), simple conjunctions ("and", "but", etc.), and colloquial lexis (everyday informal words). Utterances that are portrayed in writing are planned, unlike utterances in improvised spoken language. In written language there are frameworks that are used to portray this type of language. Discourse structure (which can also be found in spoken language)

1829-721: The BBFC. If the BBFC refuses a certificate, a video is effectively banned for home viewing, but not necessarily in the cinema . Four films that were originally refused a certificate— The Exorcist , Straw Dogs , The Evil Dead , and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre —were granted a certificate in the late 1990s and have subsequently been screened on mainstream television . According to the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, "publication may be age-restricted if it contains highly offensive language likely to cause serious harm". In New Zealand, screening of Deep Throat (1972)

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1888-524: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that child pornography need not be legally obscene in order to be outlawed. The Court ruled that in contrast to the types of images considered in Miller , images that depicted underlying harm to children need not appeal to "the prurient interest of the average person", portray sexual conduct in "a patently offensive manner", nor be considered holistically, in order to be proscribed. Another difference between U.S. constitutional law concerning obscenity and that governing child pornography

1947-612: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the word "fuck", although almost universally considered obscene when used to describe sexual intercourse, is speech-protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution when used to express a political belief. On 26 April 1968, Paul Robert Cohen, then 19 years old, donned a jacket bearing the words "Fuck the Draft" while visiting the Los Angeles Courthouse to testify as

2006-493: The UK prosecuted a man for writing a fictional sex story ( R v Walker ). In 2009, the crown prosecution service (CPS) dropped the case. During the 1960s and 1970s most Western countries legalised hardcore pornography . By the 1980s the UK was almost the only liberal democracy where the sale of hardcore pornography was still completely illegal, although ownership was not a criminal offence (except child pornography ). Home videotape

2065-525: The amount of time of the pause. Tag questions are also a part of non-fluency features; these are used by the speaker to check if the listener understands what the speaker is saying. An example is "Do you know what I mean?" False alerts occur when the speaker is voicing an utterance but stops and starts again, usually to correct themselves. Fillers usually give the speaker time to think and gather their thoughts in order to continue their utterance; these include lexis such as, "like", "and stuff", Accent/dialect

2124-400: The authorities tried to prevent the illegal sale of pornography they found that juries , while not particularly liking the material, were reluctant to convict defendants where the material was intended for private use among consenting adults. During the 1990s the advent of the internet made it easier than ever before for British citizens to access hardcore material. Finally, in 2000, following

2183-608: The case of Iran where the current laws against pornography now include death sentences for those convicted of producing pornography. In India the Obscenity law is the same as had been framed by the British Government. Charges of obscenity have been levelled against various writers and poets till date; the law has not yet been revised. The famous trials relate to the Hungryalists who were arrested and prosecuted in

2242-539: The courthouse was not speech but conduct amounting to an "absurd and immature antic". Standards superseded by the Miller Test include: FCC rules and federal law govern obscenity in broadcast media. Many historically important works have been described as obscene or prosecuted under obscenity laws, including the works of Charles Baudelaire , Lenny Bruce , William S. Burroughs , Allen Ginsberg , James Joyce , D. H. Lawrence , Henry Miller , Samuel Beckett , and

2301-574: The dismissal of a test case brought by the BBFC , hardcore pornography was effectively legalised, subject to certain conditions and licensing restrictions. It is still an offence to sell obscene material by mail order . After 1984, videotape sellers were more likely to be prosecuted under the Video Recordings Act rather than the OPA. The VRA requires that all videos must have a certificate from

2360-605: The exploitative use of children" rather than to prevent the material from poisoning the minds of its viewers. The three dissenting justices in that case argued, "While the sexual exploitation of children is undoubtedly a serious problem, Ohio may employ other weapons to combat it." This is most notably shown with the "X" rating under which some films are categorized. The most notable films given an "X" rating were Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973). These films show explicit, non-simulated, penetrative sex that

2419-405: The local Marriott Hotel were disproportionately large consumers of pay-per-view pornographic material, accessing far more material than the store was distributing. Because it allows for community standards and demands "serious" value, Justice Douglas worried in his dissent that this test would make it easier to suppress speech and expression. Miller replaced a previous test asking whether

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2478-402: The mean length of utterance and vocabulary of mothers who talk to their children is related to their SES status and thus child vocabulary development. For instance, high-SES mothers use longer utterances and a wider variety of words when talking to their children. These mothers also spend more time talking to their children while low-SES mothers use shorter utterances and a smaller vocabulary. As

2537-681: The northern English city of Leeds . Parts of the Act were repealed shortly after the Paraskos trial and it has rarely been used since in relation to visual art. Sex crime has generated particular concern. In 1976 the BBFC said that, in that year, it had viewed 58 films depicting "explicit rape", declaring scenes that glorified it as "obscene". As opposed to questions of "indecency", which have been applied to sexual explicitness, films charged with being obscene have been viewed as having "a tendency to deprave and corrupt" and been liable to prosecution. In 2008,

2596-422: The opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote: The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether

2655-456: The peace" and sentenced to 30 days in jail. The conviction was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court of California but reversed by the Supreme Court. In a 5–4 decision, Justice Harlan wrote for the Court that Cohen's conviction was based solely on speech and was protected by the First Amendment. 403 U.S. at 26. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Blackmun countered that Cohen's wearing of the jacket in

2714-542: The prurient interest and be patently offensive – have been said to require the impossible: "They require the audience to be turned on and grossed out at the same time". The advent of the Internet has made the "community standards" part of the test even more difficult to judge; as material published on a web server in one place can be read by a person residing anywhere else, there is a question as to which jurisdiction should apply. In United States v. Extreme Associates ,

2773-720: The public in the United States; the ratings are issued through the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). The intent of the rating system is to provide information about the content of motion pictures so parents can determine whether an individual motion picture is suitable for viewing by their children. Obscenity law in England and Wales is currently governed by the Obscene Publications Act , but obscenity law dates back much further into English common law . The conviction in 1727 of Edmund Curll for

2832-606: The publication is the undue exploitation of sex, or the combination of sex and at least one of crime, horror, cruelty or violence", that publication is deemed to be "obscene" under the current law. The current law states: 163. (1) Every person commits an offence who makes, prints, publishes, distributes, circulates or has in their possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or any other obscene thing. The Canada Border Services Agency seizes items it labels obscene. In 1993, Canadian police arrested

2891-597: The publication of Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in her Smock under the common-law offence of disturbing the peace appears to be the first conviction for obscenity in the United Kingdom, and set a legal precedent for other convictions. These common-law ideas of obscenity formed the original basis of obscenity law in other common law countries, such as the United States. The classic definition of criminal obscenity

2950-534: The sale of sex toys , regulating them as obscene devices. Some states have seen their sex toy bans ruled unconstitutional in the courts. That ruling leaves only Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia with current bans on the sale of obscene devices. Literature (non-fiction) communicating contraceptive information was prohibited by several states. The last such prohibition, in Connecticut, was overturned judicially in 1965. In Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971),

3009-541: The speech or expression was "utterly without redeeming social value". As used, however, the test generally makes it difficult to outlaw any form of expression. Many works decried as pornographic have been successfully argued to have some artistic or literary value, most publicly in the context of the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1990s. The first two prongs of the Miller test – that material appeal to

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3068-591: The video of the murder of Jun Lin . He received a six-month non-custodial sentence in a plea agreement, and left court after sentencing with his mouth covered in duct tape to protest his prosecution. Ever since 1940, in the Title VI of the Penal Code, naming crimes against sexual dignity (until 2009 crimes against social conventions), the fourth chapter is dedicated to a crime named "public outrage related to modesty" ( Portuguese : ultraje público ao pudor ). It

3127-435: The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. While most recent (2016) obscenity cases in the U.S. have revolved around images and films, the first obscenity cases dealt with textual works. The classification of "obscene" and thus illegal for production and distribution has been judged on printed text-only stories starting with Dunlop v. U.S. , 165 U.S. 486 (1897), which upheld

3186-432: Was a booming market and it was relatively simple for individuals to smuggle hardcore material in from Europe or the United States, where it could be purchased legally, either for personal use or to copy it for distribution. This resulted in a considerable black market of poor quality videotapes. Meanwhile, people attempting to buy pornography legally would often be sold heavily censored R18 certificate material. While

3245-663: Was abandoned amidst derision from academics and the media . For visual works of art the main obscenity law in England and Wales was, until the 1960s, the Vagrancy Act 1838 which was successfully used in prosecutions against D.H. Lawrence for an exhibition of his paintings at the Warren Gallery, London, in 1929, and in 1966 against the British artist Stass Paraskos for an exhibition of his paintings held that year in

3304-509: Was judged to be obscene in a proceeding that put the book itself on trial rather than its publisher. Another was Kaplan v. California , 413 U.S. 115 (1973) whereby the court most famously determined that "Obscene material in book form is not entitled to any First Amendment protection merely because it has no pictorial content." In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice formed the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in

3363-694: Was only cleared in 1986. However, the film has not been screened because the only cinema that has tried to organize a screening was thwarted by the city council that owned the building's lease. Section 9 of the Criminal Law provide provisions against pornography , including creation, distribution and organizing public viewing. In 2016, the Ministry of Culture in China censored 23 companies for hosting obscene content online. The take-down included over 20,000 live feeds from 26 different websites that were hosting

3422-489: Was passed at the point when most Western countries were about to enter a new phase of sexual freedom . The trial of Penguin Books over their publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 failed to secure a conviction and the conviction in the 1971 trial of Oz magazine was overturned on appeal. An attempt to prosecute the University of Central England in 1997 over a copy of a library book by Robert Mapplethorpe

3481-694: Was presented as part of a reasonable plot with respectable production values. Some state authorities issued injunctions against such films to protect "local community standards"; in New York, the print of Deep Throat was seized mid-run, and the film's exhibitors were found guilty of promoting obscenity. According to the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated , films that include gay sex (even if implied) or female pleasure have been more harshly censored than their heterosexual, male counterparts. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) issues ratings for motion pictures exhibited and distributed commercially to

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