Yes, I know... any daily mail readers will be appalled by my language. But that's all it is: language. And, to prove that I'm not just choosing the title to shock, I have the following few paragraphs, a Shakespeare reference and the book of Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary series, open on the "uses and abuses" chapter, beside me.
Writing this down in a post, I believe it would be useful to add at least an element of chronology... so bear with me if I don't. I won't pluck anything from thin air though. I shall endeavour to give it some sort of fanfare or other, as it were: (Ladies and gentlemen, new element to the tale!) might do the trick-- I'm feeling flamboyant. I am going to have to find a place to start though, so let's try this:
I love swearing. Obviously, like everything else from pizza to Sherlock Holmes, it has a time and place, but in the right situations (and for me, that's quite a lot of the time) it can be freeing, amusing, de-stressing and emotive. But very, very rarely can they be far more insulting than words like incompetent, obsequious, condescending, narcissistic, or even (dare I say it) the dreaded C-word: Conservative. So what is it that makes them unacceptable to say in front of, for example, teachers? If we're using any words to offend, it's not nice; but that doesn't apply to just swear words--words like the above (quite a way above) are also not nice. But, we'd get pulled up for dropping something and saying "Oh, fuck", whereas "Oh, dear" would be fine. According to Planet Word (well worth a read if you haven't already) this is cathartic swearing, and in my view it should be wholly acceptable. There's also idiomatic "I was pretty fucked up", dysphemistic "I need to piss", emphatic "I'm fucking annoyed" and abusive "Fuck you!” Obviously, abusive isn't so great, but in my opinion that's purely because of the intent behind it. The problem is that some people mistake all the other four for abusive... and that's where I get pissed off. Talking to someone and going "...and it's fucking irritating...", is using it to express opinions. Who are they to then go "Don't you swear at me!"? It's a choice of language, and it wasn't used to offend anyone...
But the approach to swearing I find most tiresome is summed up by Oscar Wilde: "The expletive is a refuge to the semi-literate". How can he presume to think, let alone say, that the intelligence of a person is diminished by swearing? It's part of the English vocabulary, Oscar, and not to celebrate it; not to use and enjoy it is to block yourself off from a whole world of expression and humour. Besides, in practical and scientific terms, he can't know everyone on the Earth who swears, so how can he imply that he knows all of their IQ's? And whether it is indeed "the expletive", which is after all a word of some variety of four-lettered-ness, that has lowered them?
"But words are words. I never did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear." (William Shakespeare)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, a new element to the tale!
My IT (Information Technology) teacher, fuelled by a strong belief that the current education system is too much like an assembly line (producing products suitable for jobs), decided that we were going to do lessons in IT that wouldn't be so much actual computing (heartfelt hallelujah from a technophobe) as projects exercising initiative, passions, and all sorts of things. I feel I should put in here that when he explained it to us, I was sat at the back of the classroom thinking "shit, I've no idea what I should be doing... he's been too vague, except for where he was telling us that the education system, that we've been part of for a decade now, is wrong...". But it turns out he hadn't actually told us what to do yet, so it was all fine. We ended up doing a mind map of passions. Mine included things such as "Anything of Stephen Fry's creation" connected to "making people laugh (or at least giggle)" connected to "Puns". Also "Learning" connected to "Geography", "Physics" and "anything of Stephen Fry's". And also included was, yes, "Swearing". This meant that I had a fucking fantastic time thinking of a plethora of swearwords, from sodding to bollocks to crap...
Anyway, shaking myself out of this plethora of profanities, the final intention of these mind maps was to chose our favourite topic, and entrust it to someone to do a presentation on. And I've been egged on to my friend, on the condition that she will present it, to chose swearing. I decided it was probably a good idea to ask my teacher if I could do it first, and he said it was brilliant, so here goes... And I'm sodding excited about it.
But this means I have to decide where I want the line to be drawn. Not that I'm so presumptuous as to think that it's up to me to decide, but I've made it clear that I believe that swearing in a cathartic, dysphemistic, idiomatic and emphatic is fine, and even abusive is no worse than non-curse words. But obviously there's age of and relationship to the swearee to consider. And the fact that, although I believe that they should be acceptable, it would be awful if they lost their impact. Four-hundred-odd years ago in Shakespearean times, insults like "False caterpillar" had a measurable effect. Now, an English lesson studying them reduced us all to giggles; I'd hate it if the multitude of swearwords we use now ended up like that. Imagine a classroom in 400 years time (if that is indeed still the preferred teaching technique, you never know, it might all be telepathic. Unlikely.) where a sniggering pupil puts up his/her hand and enquires "Really Sir? They actually got offended if you said fucker? Pansies..." So where do we draw the line? Is there a way to retain the impact of the swearwords if we were allowed to use them freely, or would that ruin it? Is the friction between "swearers" and "non-swearers" what makes it so delightful to use them? Is the taboo of the subject what gives it its humour? And most importantly, what is "false caterpillar" supposed to mean?
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