In Quebec a lot of our modern taboo words are religious themed. Unlike many other cultures however, it's not religion that made them taboo, but rather the fact that we had a heavier than most religious presence in our political and education systems up to the 1960s, and when we 'woke up' as it were, a lot of religious terms became swear words. Today the province is much less religious than say the US, on average, and most of our swear words remain that way.
All those swear are in violent reaction against the Catholic Church which was prominent at the beginning of the century. This is before, nowaday, people just use these words by habit and as a cultural identity. I'd say that a vast majority of young Quebecers are agressive atheist.
There's a conjecture (I hesitate to call it theory because it's not very well fleshed out) that profanity tends to reflect the taboo and/or sacred things of a society.
Quebec used to be a highly religious society heavily controlled by the Catholic Church until the 1960s. Quebec profanities are full of slangy modifications of terms that, translated literally, mean things like "chalice" or "eucharist". English used to be like that as well. Damn and Hell were harsh words. With the decline in our religiosity has come a decline in the severity of the words. Most societies have taboos about sex and bodily waste, so little surprise that there's a profane term for those things in most languages.
And what about today? Some of the most profane words in contemporary English are slurs used against racial and sexual minorities. N-word, F-word (no, not that one, the other F-word), and so on. Speaking these words invokes transgression of the most sacred values of society. Some are considered so powerful or dangerous, that simply saying them aloud is believed to have the ability to cause psychic harm, which is more than a little reminiscent of the old beliefs about the risk of supernatural destruction being inflicted on communities by God that tolerate blasphemy.
As you note, I think this is likely a universal human tendency. There's always going to be the sacred and the taboo. And taking a big fat verbal shit on them will always outrage people.
The swear words in Quebec originate from old religious principles, yes. You can differentiate between "good" and "bad" (swear) use of it purely from written context or verbal cues. The verbal cues are a lot easier to pick up on. Sarcasm, angry face, crass conversation amongst friends, etc.
In the 90s in Montreal it was a very common expression. Haven't heard it in a while. I avoid it because people might think 1940s, and that would be disrespectful.
These days: "on s'en câlisse" (most cursing is church-based because it is unlikely to offend anyone).
I was told by a Canadian anglophone that the French Catholic tradition was strict about cursing, so what happened over generations was that actual Church words turned into the cussing words.. the example given was the French word of "Tabernacle" if you say it with loud outrage by itself, it is definitely cussing..
Although it may be true that "les sacres" (swear words derived from religious terms) were a form of insurgency against the power of the church, their usage extends far back into the beginning of the 19th century: http://www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca/fr/musee/chr-20.php
I think that in America today, it's less a religious thing and more of a social status thing. Saying "fuck" and "shit" a lot is a social signal that you are low-class and probably not college-educated. "Swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary" is a phrase I heard a lot growing up.
Not religious, but young enough that I still worried about using swears. But yes, US. I generally thought "hell" was considered a low-grade swear everywhere in US but could be wrong.
I don't think this is all that unprecedented. I think a fair number of curse words today were perceived as much worse in the past, especially when they invoked a sense of blasphemy in some contexts, or dishonor in another.
Fuck is not much of an effective curse word in many contexts as people don't care if its said.
US is a far more religious society. At least my religion expressly forbids cursing and swearing. I still kind of have a visible reaction when people curse, but I think it makes people regard me poorly, so I am trying to correct it.
Swear words seem to be such a necessary part of language that I'm pretty sure new ones would arise if we ever completely legitimised the old ones. When you wake up at 2 am and discover that your balcony is on fire(^), it's nice to know that your language has a word set aside specifically for situations like that.
In the last few decades, it seems that the C-word has become more taboo even as the F-word has become less so, thanks to the efforts of feminists who like to bitch about it. (Come to think of it, "bitch" seems to have got slightly more taboo during my lifetime as well, for similar reasons.) And then there's a whole new class of newly-taboo words like the N-word -- admittedly nobody shouts that word when they hit their finger with a hammer just yet, but perhaps they will in the future.
(^) That happened to me the other week. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was neither intelligent nor graceful.
Spoiler: "the history of swearing is one of a movement back and forth between the holy and the shit. At different times in the history of the west, the primary taboo has been to do either with God, or with the functions of the human body."
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