Polite Profanities
Polite Profanities
There’s no such thing as a polite profanity. If you’re prone to imprecations, maledictions, and naughty words, you may include them in the Great American Novel you’re writing. But they have no place in polite conversation.
It’s not that swearing is “bad” in the sense that if you do it, you’ll go to H-E-double-toothpicks for eternity and never be able to watch MTV again, but there are three reasons why it’s a bad idea:
First, excessive swearing makes your mind go soggy. People who swear all the time are tiresome to listen to. A nine-word vocabulary doesn’t allow for the expression of much insight, wit, intelligence, or empathy. If your speech is lazy, vague, and unimaginative, your mind is sure to follow.
Second, excessive swearing takes the shock value out of profanity. The whole purpose of swearing is to have a few words available for those occasions when all others are insufficient. If you say “&@#&!” when you drop a sandwich, what do you say when an airplane drops a 300-pound block of frozen waste on your foot?
Third, swearing in public is considered impolite because it’s insensitive to the feelings of others. Many people find profanity offensive. It wasn’t that long ago that nobody (except the most vulgar people imaginable) ever swore. To do so in the presence of a lady was unthinkable. Children had their mouths washed out with soap for saying “damn.” Some of us learned very young that Dial tastes better than Ivory Soap.
What’s that you say? “But it’s only words?” Yes, but the images those words conjure up--things one might be full of or be asked to do to oneself or a close relative-- aren’t what most people want playing on their mental multiplexes.
There’s no such thing as a polite profanity. If you’re prone to imprecations, maledictions, and naughty words, you may include them in the Great American Novel you’re writing. But they have no place in polite conversation.
It’s not that swearing is “bad” in the sense that if you do it, you’ll go to H-E-double-toothpicks for eternity and never be able to watch MTV again, but there are three reasons why it’s a bad idea:
First, excessive swearing makes your mind go soggy. People who swear all the time are tiresome to listen to. A nine-word vocabulary doesn’t allow for the expression of much insight, wit, intelligence, or empathy. If your speech is lazy, vague, and unimaginative, your mind is sure to follow.
Second, excessive swearing takes the shock value out of profanity. The whole purpose of swearing is to have a few words available for those occasions when all others are insufficient. If you say “&@#&!” when you drop a sandwich, what do you say when an airplane drops a 300-pound block of frozen waste on your foot?
Third, swearing in public is considered impolite because it’s insensitive to the feelings of others. Many people find profanity offensive. It wasn’t that long ago that nobody (except the most vulgar people imaginable) ever swore. To do so in the presence of a lady was unthinkable. Children had their mouths washed out with soap for saying “damn.” Some of us learned very young that Dial tastes better than Ivory Soap.
What’s that you say? “But it’s only words?” Yes, but the images those words conjure up--things one might be full of or be asked to do to oneself or a close relative-- aren’t what most people want playing on their mental multiplexes.