The Joys of Swearing

To make two things clear right up front I love to swear and this blog entry is all about swearing. Furthermore since it’s impossible to write about swearing without actually doing it let’s get one thing right out of the way.

Fuck!

Oh yes there it is, the evil four letter word... Are you offended? If so, then ask yourself: Why? What is the big deal about it? Why are so many people offended by a simple four letter word? At its most basic level “Fuck” is just a collection of sound waves coming out of one’s mouth. On a higher level we start to attach a meaning to them. And at some point suddenly we judge and are offended by them.

Who has the right to say that some of these words are to be called bad or offensive?

If we had used today’s swears a few hundred years ago most of them wouldn’t have caused a stir at all. The same is true regarding the opposite way. Words like “humbug”, “blimey” or “scallywag” don’t offend us in the least anymore. Instead they make us laugh about how odd we sounded in the past. The thought that some people get offended by a simple word is, to say the least, strange.

I never understood what was going on in a person’s mind when he or she got upset for hearing a swear.  Stephen Fry once said that he “never met anybody who was truly shocked at swearing” instead “they were only shocked on the behalf of other people.” This leads us back to my question from the beginning. Have you come up with an answer yet? Have you figured out why you are offended?

I think in some ways we become more or less offended by swears depending on the people we are surrounded by. If we talk to our parents or grandparents, swears suddenly seem less appropriate than if we are hanging out with friends or even simply by ourselves. We adjust our vocabulary, voice and language as we are confronted with different people. But why is that even necessary? In my opinion swearing is such an important part of our language which in return is part of our culture. It’s a way to express ourselves, to emphasize, motivate and even a way to defend ourselves verbally.

In my opinion swears have something beautiful about them. They are a sign of true raw emotion, something that we should not hold back and should not be ashamed of. It’s part of our freedom of speech and so very much part of our culture.

The fact that so many people still frown at it makes it, if anything, even more exciting.

“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”  - Walter Bagehot