Express your (fucking) self

I swear. It's a second language to me. Colorful language was part of my everyday vocabulary even as a child. Our parents, who had passed on the potty mouth tendency, did not react with shock to the foul language that my sister, brother, and I used in the house. They did have a rule that we could not swear at each other. This was of course violated frequently, but then what kid doesn't break rules? We at least were raised to see a difference between an expletive and a vocative use of a swear - as in "Shit" versus "You shit".

My father had a swearing style that made curse words into something of an art form. Two of his most frequently uttered expressions were "owl shit" (with the "owl" really drawn out) and "bat shit" said in an extremely staccato manner. Some other hits from his top ten were "piss up a rope" "shit in a swinging beer bottle" (as in "it's harder than trying to..."), "shit on a shingle" (the occasional answer to "what's for dinner?"), and "Gee Dee fucking Christ!" (it's almost poetic that he abbreviated the "god damned" only to add in "fucking"). With language like that, who could doubt the expressive capacity of curse words?

I can't say I wasn't aware of the effect my language had on some people outside of our home. I always just figured they were pussies, raised in some kind of pristine house where there was plastic on furniture, smurfs on TV, and Tang on the breakfast table. Our parents did occasionally issue warnings to my siblings and me that "someday you're going to use language like that outside the house and get in trouble." Sure enough, we did. Or I did at least. My sister just kicked people's asses. My brother, well, he's a whole other story. Once, after a fight with Tanya that my brother and sister jumped in on because she was kicking my ass (she was fighting very dirty...pulled out my earrings, scratched my face with her barbie pink nails), a girl in my class was badmouthing me to her friends. I heard this girl saying "Well my parents said that it was unfair that her family beat Tanya up..." So later I passed her a note that said "Hey Michelle. My parents said your parents should get fucked with a loaded shotgun".

Of course my parents had said no such thing. Not about Michelle's parents at least.

Michelle gave the note to my teacher. My fourth grade teacher took me into the hall and gave me a lengthy and very passionate lecture about how she knew I could express myself better than that. She was correct, somewhat. While I knew I could express myself differently than that, would it really have been better? On my way through my adolescence and early 20s, I did learn that sometimes the social climate of the situation is such that swearing will detract from your point or your credibility. If you want to tell your boss that you think the new unstated office policies are unfair to the employees, you might find your point better taken if you don't add in "dickweed" at the end of every other sentence. However, sometimes the social climate practically necessitates a colorful strong word. Take "douchebag". I mean, what other word can really sum up the feeling I have for my division head? If I say in casual conversation to my friend at cjblue "my division head is such a douchebag" she knows a couple of important things immediately. First, that I feel very strong dislike for him. Second, that he is probably prone to fits of petulance, imperiousness, and inappropriate petty insults. Granted, this is a connotation, but I believe it is valid. What if I had said "My division head is an ass goblin". They are just worlds apart.

I have very little regard for the folks who advocate the notion that swearing means you have no real ability to express yourself. This seems a limited and dumb ass view of the world of discourse. Here's a quote from a recent news story about the prevalence of swearing:
"What we hear, it's gross," says Kramer, 67. "I tell them, 'I have a dictionary and a Roget's Thesaurus, and I don't see any of those words in there!'..."

My advice to this woman would be to get a new fucking dictionary. These words are just as much a part of our linguistic heritage as any other noun, verb, modifier, or sanitary content word of English. Moreover, swears comprise a set of words that allow language users to flex their verbal muscles in linguistically interesting and creative ways. Take infixing. In English, we are taught in school, there are prefixes like "un-" and suffixes like "-ness". But there are also infixes, like "fucking", as in "unbefuckinglievable". Further, people's choice and use of particular swears can tell you a lot about their values. Some folks display an interesting gender tendency with swears that have no overt gender marking, such as "asshole" and "bastard". There is a sizable number of people who use these words almost exclusively for men. "Slut", which isn't considered a swear but should be since it is as potent as one, refers exclusively to women although ask any college student and they will agree that there can be "male sluts". In fact, according to Wikipedia and Etymology online, Chaucer used "sluttish" to refer to a man (c. 1386).

Returning to the issue of swearing as a vocabulary crutch...consider the quote from the news story. It struck me as unintentionally ironic. The use of the word "gross" not only sounds like a foolish neologism when it comes from a 67 year old, but also appears to be a remarkable indication of a genuine vocabulary insufficiency. Or, in the apparently preferred mode of discourse, I think she talks stupid.