Thursday 25 March 2010

Swearing


I consider myself to swear far too much. But i really don't think i swear anywhere near as much as other people. my swearing vocabulary tends to be confined to "bollocks" "tool" "feck" or, quite rarely, "shite". And no, i'm not irish, i just like Father Ted. A lot.

I was brought up not to swear, by my parents - who swore a lot, but didn't tolerate swearing from us. By my school, too, where there were only thirty children and knowledge of swearing would get around FAST - and then there'd be trouble.

I know people who use the word "fuck" pretty much every other word. And i don't really see the point. Swearing is for the purpose of making a point, shocking people or emphasising a strong emotion - see the very interesting article on why we swear here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-swear. If you're going to use a very strong swearword pretty much 4 times for every sentence, it sort of loses its shock-factor and becomes normal - thereby losing the whole point of swearing in the first place.

Time was when the big F-word was the strongest swearword there was. Now it's the BAD C-word, the one which even the commonest of ladies shudder at and the most sweariest of guys use just maybe once a week. This is because swearwords come into use and overuse and then suddenly it's gone again. In a few years' time, we'll have a complete new set of swearwords that have no root from the ones we have now - what about using the word "door" to mean a complete idiot, for example?
Swearing is the source of hilarity in languages across the world. So it isn't just to emphasise a point, it's to make people laugh. For example, http://www.youswear.com/ translates swearwords into almost any language you want - why? because it's funny! Stephen Fry, the great linguistic comedian, takes great pride in thinking up great strings of swearwords to shout at people, which are very amusing indeed.
I leave you with this very funny article by one of my favourite comedians, David Mitchell, who airs his opinions on swearing. in the meantime: feck off, you bollocking tools!

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