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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.'"
as my toddler would say, that's fucked up!
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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My nephew just turned 4 a little while back. Sadly, he has a speech impediment that has made him difficult, if not impossible, to understand until very recently. Over over the past 6 months or so his speech has improved considerable and we finally know... that the kid swears like a sailor, he's probably been swearing for years and no one ever knew it. Seriously, we're all in the kitchen and we hear "Holy shit!" come out of the living room, go in to see what's going on and he's watching Sesame Street. Obviously we tried and failed to not laugh, so I can't imagine we helped the situation any.
I don't know how others feel, but I've never felt some sort of stigma against using swear words. The only time I refrain is when it's socially unacceptable (i.e. at a funeral) because then other people would potentially become upset towards me. At my funeral though? I'm going to encourage it. From the grave.
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
Many languages are actually like that.
Sotho is an example. While some words are considered "swearing" in parts with heavy English influence (i.e. in South Africa, all the words corresponding to English profanity), this was not traditionally the case and is still not the case in other parts (i.e. Lesotho). I'm still trying to learn the language, so I can't give much detail.
The Japanese language, since you mentioned it, has to take into account the complex social hierarchy (which is based on Confucian ideas). Once again my Japanese is not too good, so everyone feel free to add to/correct this.
A word such as "temee" (probably the "you" that you referred to) is considered rude not because the word itself is inherently evil, but because it does not properly reflect the relation between the status of the speaker and the addressed.
If I'm your senior (in age, in the workplace, or in basically any other way) your calling me "temee", "omae", "kimi", "anata" or any one of a number of words used for English "you" would be a very bad idea. Each of these does, however, have situations to which they apply.
Let's say that you and I are men, that we are very good friends, and that there is no relationship of seniority. "Omae" would fit perfectly.
Let's say that I'm some random guy of no real importance. "Anata" would do.
Things get even more complicated when you begin to include sarcasm. "Kisama" is a very formal form of "you". In fact, it's so formal that it is only ever used sarcastically. But you can not be sarcastic with any other word. Never. ;)
You can see where this is going.
As for the things normally used for swearing (religion, bodily functions, etc.), there is much truth to what you said. Example: "Kuso" may translate to "faeces" in some more formal contexts. It can also be used as an expletive ("Shit!").
Japanese does have words for sex, but they're not really used all that much. (Despite the fact that the Japanese don't share the Victorian mindset of "sex is dirty and no-one is doing it".) Merely having euphemisms doesn't make a word streng verboten.
Sorry for the core dump.
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.
What does low 4 digit mean?
That you are actually dead and your post was made by a highly evolved AI that you wrote many years ago.
Not necessarily highly evolved. Some of us were replaced by small shell scripts.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."