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Today's Children Are Officially Potty Mouths
tetrahedrassface writes "When the Sociolinguistics Symposium met earlier this month swearing scholar Timothy Jay revealed that an increase in child swearing is directly related to an increase in adult swearing. It seems that vulgarity is increasing as pop culture continues to popularize vulgarities. The blame lies with media, public figures, politicians, but mostly ourselves. From the article: 'Children as young as two are now dropping f-bombs, with researchers reporting that more kids are using profanity — and at earlier ages — than has been recorded in at least three decades.'"
If curse words become a part of normally accepted speech, what the hell will we use for curse words then???
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
When those children are adults, it will no longer be considered profane. Problem solved.
Monkey see, Monkey do. I have noticed an increase in the amount of swearing that adults do too. I'm guessing also that parents aren't beating their children (spanking) or rinsing their mouth out (with liquid dish soap) as much either.
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... blame the parents. The media just reflects what is acceptable to society.
I've always wondered though why Americans get so upset about bad language and sex, but violence on TV is ok for children to watch.
Swearing is relative to a perceived base.
On the old people stodgy baseline it is all swearing, even "boobies".
On the young people base line "fuck" is emphasis mark.
Language changes. Swear words are something that change quite quickly.
I find this to be a bit depressing. Generally, I view swearing as a demonstration of a lack of emotional self control or evidence of a limited vocabulary to effectively express thoughts or feelings. From the larger perspective, it reflects a general lack of civility in our society. Little kids don't choose their language, they only reflect the language of those around them. Pretty sad when the supposed parents of a small child end up teaching this at such a young age.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Just the opposite. 5 digits would indicate he's been here a long time and probably in his 30s (minimum)
DEFINE VULGARITY
Why is it vulgar to say "shit" but not "poo"? Or "fuck" but not "intercourse" or "sex"? Or "ass" but not "buttocks"? Or "I'm eating cow, pig, or deer" but not "I'm eating beef, pork, or venison"?
The answer, per usual, is the fault of the French. They were the ones who declared ~900 years ago that English words are vulgar and should be avoided, in favor of French substitutes.
Time to tell the French to sex off and shove their poo up their anuses. Let's go back to using the original English words.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I have never understood the stigma about swearing. They are words, just like any other. What really is the difference between saying "I took a dump" and "I took a shit"? They mean exactly the same thing, but for some reason shit is a dirty word.
It is all about how you use words, not the words you use. You can be just as vulgar and mean without using "swear" words. Is it really less offensive for me to say "The best part of you squirted out of your father's substandard size penis and rolled down that chunk of lard your mother called a thigh" than for me to say "Holy fuck that is cool"?
Words are just words, it's the meaning behind them that matters.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Oh Belgium, not this again.
They're words. As many bright people (including Frank Zappa and George Carlin) have pointed out, getting worked up over the words is silly. Getting worked up over the meanings, hatreds, etc behind the words is appropriate, but the words themselves are harmless.
A big myth related to children in general is that they're innocent creatures ignorant of all things biological. They aren't, and they never really have been.
I am officially gone from
This isn't much of a surprise to me anymore. In previous generations we idolized decent, intelligent, articulate and educated people. Somewhere it was decided that nobody can or should have to aspire to be any of those things and we should just aim for mediocrity because EVERYONE can be mediocre!
At least in the US I am seeing this perpetual dumbing-down of the culture (some will argue here that the US culture was pretty dumb to begin with hehehe). Instead of "dressing for success" kids now wear these pants that sag down to their knees. This is a holdover from the prison culture where clothes are baggy and ill-fitting. Reality TV idolizes people who are often foul, vulgar, have no education and oh yeah, don't have any kind of gainful employment. What do we learn from shows like The Hills or Jersey Shore? Instead of keeping rigid and tough education requirements, public schools in the US have been dumbed-down so that "everyone gets a chance." Well I have some news - in the real world, nobody gets a chance, you have to work your ass off to get anywhere.
What do people who use foul language constantly say when they are really angry. You can't use foul language because there is no difference from the way you normally talk. I'm saying that swearing is OK but keep it to a minimum. I quickly take notice when people that rarely swear actually do swear, I know immediately that they are really ticked off.
I once say a movie that used the F-bomb so often that it ruined the movie. The percentage of vulgarity was over half of the dialog. It was so bad that you couldn't tell if the actors were supposed to be angry.
For what i know (my grandparents and its grandparents and so forth) the public/people have always been potty mouths, it was with the 'boom' of the 'media' that everything started hiding behind political correctness and hypocrisy embezling itself with 'fancy' misapropriated words/terms to try to project rightousness over thyself.
Kids swearing reminds me of a great scene in Misery. If you haven't seen the film it's worth watching, it's both intringuing horror and somewhat comical (both intentionally and unintentioally). Anyway, romance novel writer Paul Sheldon is being held captive by his insane fan Annie Wilks. She reads a manuscript for his as yet unpublished novel with a more serious tone, and this is her reaction:
Annie Wilkes: It's the swearing, Paul. It has no nobility.
Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that.
Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! At the feedstore do I say, "Oh, now Wally, give me a bag of that F-in' pig feed, and a pound of that bitchly cow corn"? At the bank do I say, "Oh, Mrs. Malenger, here is one big bastard of a check, now give me some of your Christ-ing money!" THERE, LOOK THERE, NOW SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!
It's a great scene, mainly because Kathy Bates is so convincing as the mentally deranged Annie. But it does bring up the sort of cognitive dissonance about swearing. What does it really damage? From a philosophical standpoint, it's kind of odd that we humans make words that are considered taboo in the first place. Words have only the power that people give them. For example, others have already mentioned how what's acceptable has changed, and on that subject, I recall talking to my grandmother once about movies she saw when she was a kid. One of them was Gone with the Wind, and when Clark Cable uttered his famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line, she said there was audible gasp in the theater. I can't even imagine the string of profanities needed to make a modern movie-going audience gasp. Actually, I think a string of profanities would have the opposite impact today, people would likely find it absurd at start laughing. So yes, language evolves, but so does society. Perhaps we've moved beyond assigning such power to words. The only exception I can think of is racial slurs, those are more offensive today to many people than they ever were in the past. It's not uncommon to find elderly folks that drop the N-word, not out of hatred or malice, but because that was just what "everyone" called black people when they were growing up. Granted, some elderly folks that use racial slurs are also racists, but it's not necessarily the case either. Things change, and not everyone can or will adapt.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I think certain words carry a certain weight, and overusing them dilutes them. Fuck is a perfect example of a word that has no weight anymore (IMO) - my mom would (and did) literally wash my mouth out with soap for saying that word (shit or crap was about the best I could get away with growing up). Bloody in England had a similar path - it once was taboo to say it, now people use it constantly.
Remember that some words are derogatory, though - nigger, bitch, cow (to a fat woman), etc - even if you don't consider them a big deal, another person might, and they may vocalize it by popping a couple of caps in you (heard of that happening more than once). Food for thought.
Most everybody I knew in college, in an exclusive Honors Program no less, swore like sailors, myself included. Sorry, but don't buy the hype that swearing is somehow correlative with education. It's not.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.
Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953)."
Yep nigger is actually one of the strangest words today I think. It actually is a pretty cool word, ie works well in rap songs, etc, but if a white person says it, they're in trouble. The world is a very strange place.
which is totally what she said
This isn't much of a surprise to me anymore. In previous generations we idolized decent, intelligent, articulate and educated people.
Seems to me your biggest problem is the presumption that dropping an f-bomb means the person isn't decent, intelligent, articulate, or educated.
My entire circle of friends has bachelor degrees or higher. All are intelligent, thoughtful, upstanding individuals. And all of them, given the right setting (say, a few drinks at a bar, or a night of brutal coding) will swear like sailors on leave.
So... who's the unintelligent one? The one who drops the f-bomb, or the one who assumes that swearing equates to some stereotypical archetype of the lowerclass, under-educated bumpkin?
....and the clue is in the word "vulgar." Vulgar language was the language of the people you had conquered. The original words that fuck and shit derive from were the normal everyday equivalents for copulation and deification. Look up the origins of "acceptable" words and their vulgar equivalents and you will see who conquered whom.
I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone left who actually understood the subject.
It's kind of like that saying, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I posit the corollary, which I saw some time back:
"Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate."
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
The OP is factually correct and does not even discuss race. Watch any documentary about gangs. The guys that started the trend tell you it comes from their lives spent in prison. You are projecting your own racism upon the comment.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Yes, because we should all learn how to behave like children. Children never lie, after all, just as they never do anything else that we anachronistic adults tend to not tolerate from others.
Why don't we just treat everyone like they're just big, stupid kids that never learned anything from their peers? ... Oh... wait... we didn't learn anything from our peers, we all learned what we know from our elders, or the elders of our peers... those anachronistic people who "fail to account for the fact that society's functional parameters are changing" ... those same people who have recently (as in "over the last 40+ years"), and increasingly let the children dictate what is and is not acceptable in society...
Anyone who thinks that the children should be the guiding light of society should really pay attention to what children will naturally do: anything they can get away with doing, especially if they know that nobody wants them to do it.
So, this study should instead be used to highlight the fact that more and more adults are acting like children. And instead of the claim that "pop culture is influencing children," it should be pointing out that "over-aged children seem to be behind the controls of pop culture."
Yes a product of prison culture, but a product of culture. People are amazing things and they're always evolving. The current fashion has been exported around the world, and some say hip hop may just be the BEST product of US culture, in that it is truly american, original and artistically appreciative. Many of the other cultures and traditions here have built on western, native, eastern, et al roots. In this case, the baggy clothes and the rap style music, it's highly american. Be proud, motherfucker.
... That said if you play any MMO game that is simple enough for kids to play, you will likely read or hear the worst language you have ever had the misfortune to be exposed to.
I've never seen any language in an MMO I wouldn't want my children exposed to. OTOH, I've seen racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and worst of all, incredible levels of misogyny that I would want to see anyone exposed to.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Calling people "idiots" is offensive. Swear words are also offensive because that's what they are supposed to be.
If there were no offensive words, you'd never be able to offend someone who cut you off on the road or wanted to punch you in the face to prove they're tougher than you etc. In fact, if there were no offensive words, people would invent them.
There is also context and culture and other things to consider.
For example, when I went to school there was a "special" school across the road called Barkuma. At our school you could offend someone by calling them a Barkie (which was the term used to describe the pupils are Barkuma). It was basically the equivalent of calling them a "Retard".
Calling someone an insult/offensive word directly is a form of one up man ship. It is a direct form of offending people.
Using offensive words not directed at a person is an indirect form of one up man ship. It is a way to say, 'I can use these offensive words because I'm tough enough not to care whether I offend you or not.' The only course of action open to counteract that one up man ship is to either 1. Start using them yourself as a way of saying, 'I'm just as tough as you.' or 2. tell the person to stop using them, which is like telling them they're not as tough as they think they are. Any other course of action places you in a subordinate position.
When I used to look after juvenile delinquents (when I was with the police as a civilian) they often used the same argument that they were just 'words' and as such couldn't offend. One kid insisted that the 'n' word was not offensive to black people (no Afro-Americans where I live) because it was just a word, and as such he insisted he was allowed to use it. He loved to use racist words to peoples faces (calling Chinese people "Chinkies" etc) and insisted that the problem lay with the people he offended. He also used to get beaten up a bit for constantly offending people (not just with racist slurs, but swearing at them and calling them anything he could think of). The fact that he was always in trouble for actually starting fights at schools whenever anyone called him a name was proof enough that he understood that offensive language is designed to offend and hurt peoples feelings.
As for context, if you were to do something stupid and one of your friends called you a "F***ing D*ckh**d!" in a jovial way with a big smile on their face, they aren't trying to offend you (at least I hope not). If they saw someone they didn't like do the same thing they'd probably use the exact same words in a derogatory way in order to deliberately put that person down.
But, in general, using offensive words are part of ordinary conversation will offend someone somewhere because it is an indirect way of putting them down. If you bruise egos, expect the person to react.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)