Is the acceptance of profanity into our language good?

Post Reply New Topic

Over the past 30 or 40 years, especially over the past 20, profanity has become almost fully entrenched into our language. It's not quite there yet, as you still have to be careful about using swears in public company, especially around children, but pretty much everyone I know, aside from my goody-two-shoes 17 year old sister (and even SHE uses profanity among her friends, I think ha) and my kid siblings, and maybe some elderly people I know, swear regularly or at least sometimes. Not just 'ass' and stuff either, straight up to f*ck. The only word I don't hear much of is the c word because it's still taboo in America even to people who have no problem with 'f*ck', plus I just don't think the c word is commonly used in the United States to begin with, it's more of an Anglo-Australian thing.

Anyway my question is: do you think it's a good thing we're accepting profanity as normal, acceptable language? Or is it a bad thing? Do you think it's evidence we are becoming an angier, ruder, more aggressive society? Or is it simply the progression of words? After all, religious profanity like 'damn' and 'hell' used to be seen as being as bad as the mostly sexual/scatological slang that dominates our secular era. Nowadays damn and hell aren't even seen as profanity, or at most, as extremely mild swears, even by religious people.

Will words like f*ck, ass, sh*t, etc eventually be seen as having as little power as 'screw', 'butt', and 'poop'? And do you think a new kind of profanity will replace them? I've heard that racial profanity might be the new taboo. Certainly 'n*gger' is more offensive than f*ck to most people.

Languages do change over time. In French, the verb "foutre" has become an ordinary, everyday word.

I think it's a cultural thing, I don't see it being 'accepted' where I am; But I think people should be more laid-back about language.

Where are you from? Just curious. It seems like profanity is accepted well in Australia, less so in Canada, less so than Canada in America, and less so than the rest of America in the South.

Here is a humourous little ditty about the acceptance of certain words in different countries

[Mod edit: video link redacted.
There is no reason to post examples of what people are already aware of and to do so looks like an excuse to swear on the forum - which is not permitted on WP]

CAUTION: the song contains the kind of words we are discussing.

Israel, where I'm practically considered a nutjob for being blunt.

Not in Asian societies, I think. Swearing in public is frowned upon.

I'm against swearing on the principle that it betrays a bad vocabulary; why learn more colourful vulgarities when the f-bomb is so ubiquitous?

Stephen Fry said it best, and I need not add any more:

"Swearing is a really important part of one's life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing and without enjoying swearing... There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary -such utter nonsense. The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies and the kind of person who says swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary usually have a pretty poor vocabulary themselves... The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest or -is just a f**king lunatic... I haven't met anybody who's truly shocked at swearing, really, they're only shocked on behalf of other people. Well, you know, that's preposterous... or they say 'it's not necessary'. As if that should stop one doing it! It's not necessary to have coloured socks, it's not necessary for this cushion to be here, but is anyone going to write in and say 'I was shocked to see that cushion there, it really wasn't necessary'? No, things not being necessary is what makes life interesting -the little extras in life."

^While I think Mr Fry called me out in theory, what he proclaims hasn't really come true in my experience.

The thing with swearing is that it's the most basic form of language engraved into our brains. It has a lot of emotional resonance and it's good for releasing anger and so on. There have actually been studies to show that this is true. In fact, if you watch the episode of Stephen Fry's Planet Word where he discusses swearing, he goes into this in a lot more detail.

The point I'm making here is that, for this reason, making swear words taboo will only increase their power to offend. And I'm sure experience can tell you that's true. The act of repressing such language, on the other hand, does very little to really handle anything.

In all honesty, whenever anyone complains about something with swearing being too offensive or whatever, they should be shown this video until they learn to shut up about it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7gP1xgRDJ4[/youtube]

Profanity is f*****g great

Donnie Darko wrote:

Which "C" word? I can think of three "C" words that are vulgar. One of them was originally two words but has been welded together with "sucker" since they compliment each other so well in speech.
I use all three of the "C" words daily right here in the U S of A.

Canadian.

Swearing is part of our national lexicon; "f****n' eh" for example