Over five years ago, I wrote a post about swearing on my blog. I was a proponent for the judicious use of swear words that served as a point of emphasis or humor. These days, when politicians and pundits regularly use profanity, when prime time television is littered with it, the adolescent novelty has worn off. It is no longer serving much purpose, nor does it give me the joy it once did. People eventually ruin everything. I, too, am people, and have definitely ruined swearing for myself.
Perhaps it is that I hear myself in the car or muttering anywhere public and I have begun to sound as trashy as our current politicians. It is a reminder that neither money nor power nor platform is evidence of human decency or compassionate intelligence. Profanity is the least of it, but perhaps a sign post that bad logic, mundane evil, mendacious lies, and atrocious grammar is sure to follow. I’ve begun to conflate them and question if I need to make a change.
To say that I can be a contrarian would be an understatement. This is why, for the first time in my adult life, I’m considering giving up swearing altogether. I’m not all that confident that I would be able to do it, but if public, political, and entertainment conversation is trending in that direction, I feel the compulsion to go the other. It has gotten so much worse since that election three years ago – the need to express frustrations and fears in the form of cursing. I find that I do it most when I feel powerless or anxious. Sometimes it feels like the only thing that carries any venom.
We’re in the age of words, drowning in opinions and reviews and pundits, flooding our brains with unfiltered information, much of it false or hyperbolic. The language itself is mutating through the lens of liars until words are rendered meaningless. Profanities have been baked into the mix, no longer raw or shocking, only slightly jarring.
Language is a beautiful system of communication and the English language, with 171k+ active words, provides us with so many options. The individual alone knows approximately 20-35K words. I’ve begun to think about the words I haven’t used instead of curse words. Like rapscallion instead of douchebag. Or stinkard instead of shithead. Even the North Korean dictator introduced us to a good word – dotard. As a writer, it would behoove me to expand my vocabulary, instead of using old standbys that made me snicker as an adolescent.
While I was down and out with a cold, I re-watched a goofy science fiction series called Farscape. All the cursing was comprised of made up words (frell, yotz, dren, drelk). And it worked. I realized that it was all tone and context that gave the words their meaning, not the choice of the words themselves.
Profanity itself is not an intelligence marker, nor does it seem any longer to be indicative of my working class roots or my stint in the military. There is not a moral argument to be made. Words designated as profane have always been a cultural construct, but it is their suppression that makes them useful for emphasis or humor. Being common renders them essentially ineffective.
It’s time to choose differently. I tend to be judicious in my writing and I prefer no limits, but I definitely need to clean up my conversational skills. My first step will be practicing at home. My cat might finally learn his real name. Then I can level up in public with friends, and the final mastery of the game, driving in metro traffic. I need to look up some better words.
What’s your favorite non-profanity?
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