Swearing and You

Recently, I read a report that I found very interesting:

"Teens are more likely to drop casual expletives, or "fillers" than the generation before them. Timothy Jay, author of Why We Curse and Cursing in America, estimates that the average teen uses roughly 80 to 90 swear words a day."

Now, I for one am appalled. But of course, it's not necessarily in the way you might think. You see, swearing used to mean something; it used to be a special way to express yourself. Back in the good old days, to swear was to briefly express a fit of passion about a subject, and the words you used, as well as how often, made other people see you in different ways. If someone went around swearing all the time, they were typically the average 1950's big bully who beat up on little guys and rode around in a convertible until some joker on a skateboard steered them into a pile of manure. Someone who never swore was either the goody two shoes or the honorable religious man who was above such things. But those in between, who swore occasionally, but not profusely, were the handsome, debonair, dashing yet roguish guys who all the girls wanted. But even so, it was just the right kind of swearing. It wasn't anything outlandish or vile; in fact the basis upon which a swear word was chosen was its placement in the sentence. It had to not just get the point of passion across, but also had to sound good doing so. Today's swear words don’t sound good, they just sound vile, and when used so often they sound lazy, as if the speaker really doesn't have that big a vocabulary and must revert to certain words that they remember best. Like a kid who can only describe objects as "things", only replacing "things" with "shoot" or "fudge" (well, you get what I mean.)

Think of historic moments in swearing. Rhett Butler's memorable and beloved "Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!" Rat in Wind In The Willows saying, "Toad, you ass." Mark Twain's various swears and remarks on swearing which would be too numerous to count. Benjamin Franklin's parable of the Man and his Jackass used to explain the inherent flaws of the requirement to own property to vote. Even God's Biblical prophet referred to what the people were selling for sacrifices as "mere refuse", essentially saying they were selling crap.

Compare to modern man's accounts of swearing. Rap songs like "Shake That ____" and "Back That ___ Up". The replacement of Give a Damn with Give a Sh__. Steve Martin's string of the F-word 19 times in a minute in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; historic but undignified. South Park's goal at breaking the record for number of times the F-word could be used in a single 30 minute episode. The steady progression from "Gee" to "Stinks" to "Sucks" to "Blows". Even Tina Fey's remark during the last presidential campaign, declaring "B__ch is the new Black". Well, okay, that last one had alliteration and is kind of funny, but it still does not have the same dignified manner of swearing that Clark Gable and talking animals retained. If you can dress a rat in a suit and still seem classy when it swears in a kid's book, then modern swearing can be pulled off correctly.

It seems that today the most popular words are F___, Sh__, and B__ch, the three which I consider the most offensive and least attractive aurally. Sh__ and B__ch sound garish and jarring, they contain very sharp and biting sounds in them and offend the ears as much as the mind. F___ is simply overused, and beyond the nasty definition it actually has, is more or less an adjective for when you're too lazy to come up with a real one. The worst of all offenses is when the two of the three are combined, such as "That F___ing Sh__," or "That F___ing B__ch," or "That F___ing B__ch talk Sh__." Such words and strings of words are foul sounding and undignified, adding no personal passion in the statement and only striving to be as sharp, jarring and offensive as possible, the verbal equivalent of a Beastie Boys song. I for one am sick and tired, and outraged at going around to school and public places and having my ears assailed with such travesties of the English language. Where are the good swear words, like "Damn", "Jackass", and "B_____d", words that preserve a sense of personal interest, innovation in language, and maintain an affront to the subject's reputation, not their ears. I call for reform in the way we as a generation curse, I call for integrity in swearing!