The case for cussing

How often do you swear or don’t you swear at all? Or do you only swear in extreme situations, like bashing your finger with a hammer, or worse, managing to fire a nail gun into your hand?

And what choice of words do you use? Do you have a variety to draw on, depending on the extremity of the situation and who you are in the presence of?

Some people claim that good swearing is a sign of intelligence, others see swearing as a lack of vocabulary to describe their situation or frustration. Others see swearing as a sign of general poor behaviour and sheer rudeness, verging on antisocial behaviour even.

I came to swearing a bit late in the piece, coming from a strict household that may have literally washed my mouth out with soap and water. Well, maybe that is an exaggeration, though a method used on some children once upon a time. I would have been sorely chastised and not spoken to for days. 

That’s the spirit

Many swear words began their day as blasphemous comments – usually to do with railing against God or prophets of various religions. 

Swear words have to be understood, of course, to have any real impact, then there is a slight  hypocrisy that happens, a faux shock that goes with outrage. Surely, they have heard it before and the shock is not in proportion to the telling, to the comment. More often than not, it is the context in which the swearing happens that causes the offense. It is always advisable to choose your audience carefully.

Words to do with sex and body parts were often the basis for early swear words. Kids in the playground cotton on to this early, chanting a range of semi-offensive words, and then graduating to quite sophisticated ones. 

The word ‘bugger’ has become so much a part of Australian vernacular as to be seen as commonplace and even vaguely affectionate in its rendering. It has certainly ceased to be shocking.

The same thing could be said of many other past swear words, you know the ones – they have the first letter and the last letter printed in articles with the next two letters blotted out or replaced with xx or !!, and they fool no-one.  

Swear bears

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to get away with swearing more than others? I am thinking of various comedians who make it part of their schtick to swear every second word. And they appear to get away with it. We even laugh uproariously and belly laugh at comments and words that most of us would never dare use in public, or at least with the frequency they do.

I am thinking about Billy Connelly and Ricky Gervais, two comedians who manage to swear their heads off and make me laugh until I wet myself. Swearing just rolls off their tongues; nearly every second word would once have been blanked out, but now seems commonplace, even clever.

Of course, if you say a word over and over again, it ends up being meaningless or even absurd. Have you ever chanted the, the, the, the, over at least 20 times? It begins to sound like gibberish and of course the same could be applied to swear words. They only really have value if we give them value.

Now, perhaps our tendency to swear is taking a detour and we are focusing on finding new ways to insult others, rather than to just rant to a deity or an outdated sexual comment. Insults at generations of cat lovers seem to be in vogue. 

Who would have thought?

What do you think of swearing? Do we do it too much? Why not share your thoughts in the comments section below?

Also read: Should I identify as a cat?