a boring debate re. swear words

I don't think the various posses of small feral schoolkids who prowl my part of old London town *know* any words I don't, but they sure *use* words I don't.

Rule: use em when it works. Poetically, comedically, tactically. And not when it doesn't.

Swearing at other people is a no no really.

(I did not swear AT ALL until my late 20s — and my friend P just a week ago was astounded at something I said because, as she insisted, she had NEVER heard me swear, which is just comical and odd... she has known me for nearly 25 years.)

His grandfather though is a working class Glaswegian who worked in a foundry all his life and uses fuck pretty much as his main adjective, much to my irritation though my lad amazingly hasn't picked up on it.

I think a lot of swearing on current music is cynical and gratuitous, though I can see how in a culture which gives it credibility it proliferates. A lot of it strikes me as being dishonest, because it is some kind of shortcut to being 'street' it gives the music some spurious suthenticity. Though it definitely works in some contexts, especially when it plays with the expectations of a genre e.g eels 'It's a motherfucker' Having said that I'll happily swear in selected company, but (and this may be my yokel upbringing) I still get shocked when I hear women swearing (except during sex of course).

On the other hand Kurt Vonnegut said swearing gives the person you're talking to an excuse not to listen.

I have made concerted efforts to reduce my swearing, but all they seem to do is introduce new words like "Freaking" and "feck" and "codrottle" into my vocabulary. Maybe the more you try to eliminate a word from your vocabulary, the more you are tempted to use it, like the Fawlty Towers "Don't mention the war!!!" sketch. Maybe human beings just have a need to show their frustration, and though the first impulse is to be physically violent (punching the wall) the impulse to be verbally violent is just as gratifying.

Creative swearing is good, though. Even though you're falling back on the same 4-letter Anglo Saxonisms, it still shows that you are stretching your imagination and linguisitic skills to scream something like "Fuck you, fuck your sons and your sons' sons unto the seventh generation of fuckhood, fuck your mother, fuck your father, fuck your congressman's psychiatrist's hairdresser's grandmother's mailman's DOG!!!"

I don't know if I will stop swearing around my kids. I will probably make a concerted effort to curtail some of my vulgar language. I don't know. I would rather curtail my kids' exposure to violence than simple swearing.

I love watching TV programmes where they've had to substitute expletives with words that aren't naughty, like 'Naff off' in Porridge. Did you know that in 1936, Music hall comedian Hector Thaxter was the first man to say 'arse' on the radio? I learned that here

Any other Correr star / pet looky likeys out there kids?

That would make Sarah lou a 10 year old mother dating a kangeroo which makes a year of shouting abuse at corrie from the kitchen worthwhile.

-Sexy Beast

Everyone in my offices swears, it's getting properly cuntish tbh

So proud of my state: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/lifestyle/study-finds-ohioans-use-more-profanity-than-any-other-state-in-us-also-among-the-least-courteous

As a school bus driver who drove middle-schoolers to and from school it was my job to enforce a rule against swearing on the bus. Whenever I heard someone swear loudly enough that I could hear it distinctly I would pick up the intercom microphone and my amplified voice would boom out saying:

"I would like to remind everyone on the bus to please keep their language and their subject matter appropriate for the bus. Thank you."

I was happy to repeat this verbatim every 30 seconds, if need be, until the whole bus got tired of the rigmarole and started to swear more quietly. Which was all I really wanted. As far as I was concerned they could swear themselves blue in the face, just not at the top of their lungs and not so reflexively that couldn't control it when necessary.

Our daughter now swears as much as I do, and a lot more than my wife ever has. Sometimes it's salty enough to make even me wince.

Here in Oregon, the native americans called the englishmen (who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company) "goddams", bcz they were saying it constantly.