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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.'"
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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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.
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
Eloquence. This is a weapon of the vocabulary knights. Not as random or as clumsy as your profanity, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.