Since when is bad language fashionable?
February 8th 2011 00:05
Picking up the current issue of AdNews, its blatant cover wrap for Nine would have us believe that being welcome in the home of laughter includes being excited by a show that has an expletive title that can’t actually be printed. It brought up a question that has been bubbling around in my head for a while now, which is - when did profanity become not only acceptable, but fashionable?
I come from an era when “naughty” words included the likes of fanny, and dropping a real swear word was a punishable offence. To this day I can’t swear in front of my parents, and my dad is the old-school kind who will ask young men using the F bomb in close proximity not to swear in front of his wife.
While we all have to accept that language is a changeable beast and reflective of the times and the mouth from which it comes, does that really mean we now need to accept profanity as an intrinsic part of our ability to express ourselves? I am regularly horrified by the regularity in which I overhear the use of the c and f bombs, particularly when it comes from the mouth of a (and I use the term loosely) lady. Call me sexist, but for some reason, hearing vulgar language spout from a female is somehow even more offensive than an onslaught of it from male counterparts.
The increasingly blurred lines between street culture and what used to be considered the middle class and above has resulted in a melding of language, and it’s evidenced by terms like “hater” now appearing in the dictionary. But telling someone to f*ck off on the street as a defence mechanism gives the word a very different context to when it’s used by a guy in a suit at a bar suggesting to his mates he can f*ck that b*tch if he wants to.
I don’t think many of us can profess to being completely without fault when it comes to use of less than desirable language, and there are times when only the big daddy seems to be adequate to express complete outrage or anger, but the point of the swear word used to be its infrequent and specific use, therefore heightening its impact. When much of what was once considered taboo is now thrown around namby-pamby, it seems we are having to use increasingly vulgar terms to provide the same impact.
Language is constantly evolving, and there has always been a “bad” element to it. The likes of Shakespeare pushed the boundaries in his day as far as themes and his ability to wordsmith goes, and for the late 1500s and early 1600s, a lot of what he proffered was controversial, and way ahead of its time. But I do suspect the Bard would be turning in his grave to know that today, despite all the advances we have made as people, our language appears to be regressing. Rather than raising a level of sophistication in prose that he made possible hundreds of years ago, we are instead singing along to F*ck You and watching $#*! My Dad Says. Even French Connection’s attention grabbing FCUK branding was lapped up when it launched, not due to the love of the label, but because French Connection was the last thing people were thinking about when they saw it.
The proliferation of the likes of Twitter and Facebook show that we are a world full of people that love to communicate. We are constantly finding new ways to do it, and new ways to be in touch more often – almost constantly in some cases. Language is clearly king. Even kids who deplore traditional English classes are tweeting and FB’ing their days away. It could be days filled with emoticons and misspelt words, but that’s a technological language that is evolving the same way language has always evolved. So when we generally appear to love language, it’s a sad indictment of us that the most vulgar side of it appear to be taking over.
I come from an era when “naughty” words included the likes of fanny, and dropping a real swear word was a punishable offence. To this day I can’t swear in front of my parents, and my dad is the old-school kind who will ask young men using the F bomb in close proximity not to swear in front of his wife.
While we all have to accept that language is a changeable beast and reflective of the times and the mouth from which it comes, does that really mean we now need to accept profanity as an intrinsic part of our ability to express ourselves? I am regularly horrified by the regularity in which I overhear the use of the c and f bombs, particularly when it comes from the mouth of a (and I use the term loosely) lady. Call me sexist, but for some reason, hearing vulgar language spout from a female is somehow even more offensive than an onslaught of it from male counterparts.
The increasingly blurred lines between street culture and what used to be considered the middle class and above has resulted in a melding of language, and it’s evidenced by terms like “hater” now appearing in the dictionary. But telling someone to f*ck off on the street as a defence mechanism gives the word a very different context to when it’s used by a guy in a suit at a bar suggesting to his mates he can f*ck that b*tch if he wants to.
I don’t think many of us can profess to being completely without fault when it comes to use of less than desirable language, and there are times when only the big daddy seems to be adequate to express complete outrage or anger, but the point of the swear word used to be its infrequent and specific use, therefore heightening its impact. When much of what was once considered taboo is now thrown around namby-pamby, it seems we are having to use increasingly vulgar terms to provide the same impact.
Language is constantly evolving, and there has always been a “bad” element to it. The likes of Shakespeare pushed the boundaries in his day as far as themes and his ability to wordsmith goes, and for the late 1500s and early 1600s, a lot of what he proffered was controversial, and way ahead of its time. But I do suspect the Bard would be turning in his grave to know that today, despite all the advances we have made as people, our language appears to be regressing. Rather than raising a level of sophistication in prose that he made possible hundreds of years ago, we are instead singing along to F*ck You and watching $#*! My Dad Says. Even French Connection’s attention grabbing FCUK branding was lapped up when it launched, not due to the love of the label, but because French Connection was the last thing people were thinking about when they saw it.
The proliferation of the likes of Twitter and Facebook show that we are a world full of people that love to communicate. We are constantly finding new ways to do it, and new ways to be in touch more often – almost constantly in some cases. Language is clearly king. Even kids who deplore traditional English classes are tweeting and FB’ing their days away. It could be days filled with emoticons and misspelt words, but that’s a technological language that is evolving the same way language has always evolved. So when we generally appear to love language, it’s a sad indictment of us that the most vulgar side of it appear to be taking over.
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