To swear or not to swear, that is the question

I have been asked an interesting question by one of my readers on one of my recent blog posts - he noted that I didn't flinch at all or step in when two siblings who were children started swearing at each other during an argument and he wanted to know how I felt about children using swear words like shit or fuck. I think this is actually a pretty interesting topic to discuss so I am going to dedicate a whole post to it today and look at both sides of the argument. I don't want to be a hypocrite - allow me to declare that I fucking swear a lot, regular readers of my blog will know that I won't hesitate to use the word fuck in my writing and it's not even like a watered down f###, no when I say fuck I mean fuck. But then again, I'm a 43 year old middle aged man and I get to decide how I want to express myself whereas with much younger children, there's an element of them not quite knowing what they are doing (say if they are merely copying something they have seen on the internet without realizing the full extent of how offensive it may be) so where do we draw the line when children and teenagers are involved? Even as an adult, do you know when it is appropriate to swear and when we must be more careful with our language? Please enjoy the rather puerile Youtube video below about Fucking (in Austria).

Learning to express yourself more clearly with a varied vocabulary.

Certainly, I am all in favour of training children to express themselves in a rich and varied vocabulary, this is vital for them to become articulate and eloquent young people. So here's the problem with the word 'fucking' - it is often used in place of the word 'very'. I was in a shopping center in central London last weekend when two young people looked at an item and one of them exclaimed to the other, "oh this is so fucking expensive" and the other echoed the sentiment when he looked at the price tag, "how much is it? Fuck, yeah that is too fucking expensive." That made me curious so I then took a look at the item they had just been talking about - it was a beautiful designer watch which came with a rather high price tag. So yes, the both of them thought the item was very expensive but I think there are better ways to convey that same piece of information because the word 'fucking' doesn't explain a lot - you could swap it for the word 'very' in this conversation and it would still make complete sense. However, I was more curious about how they felt about the price of the item and neither of them were clear about that - allow me to offer three possible interpretations of the situation with the designer watch and you could see how these three scenarios are all totally plausible but actually different in nature.

Scenario A: I am a watch expert and have a good idea how much this watch in question should cost - it ought to be around £500 but the price tag was £750, that is clearly too much for that watch. So even if I am rich, had the money and liked that watch, I wouldn't buy it there - I would go to another shop or shop online instead and pay a more reasonable price (around £500) for that same watch. I shall never shop here again knowing how utterly ridiculous their prices are.

Scenario B: I am broke, I am poor - £750 is a lot of money for me and I can't afford to spend that much money on a watch even if I really liked that watch (and if that was a reasonable price for that watch). Hence I can't afford to buy a watch like that and by that token, that makes it too expensive for me. Alas, I wish I was a rich man but I am not, sadly.

Scenario C: I know this brand really well and have a rather good idea of how much their watches should cost: their previous few models have cost in the ballpark region of £400 to £500 but for some reason, they have priced their latest watch at £750, that's quite a big jump in price for all their other watches and I really don't see why or how they can justify that big increase in price since it really isn't that different. Hence I think this higher price is unreasonable and unjustified.

Now given the ambiguity in the situation, I didn't think that the two young people could have instantly figured out exactly what the other meant when they thought that the watch in question was 'fucking expensive' - using the word 'fucking' in this case conveys a certain amount of stress on just how ludicrously expensive they felt the price was and it wasn't just slightly more expensive than normal. And even if the both of them were indeed very poor (scenario B), it still doesn't rule out scenarios A or C if they had a knowledge to express an opinion about the price (even if they didn't have the money to purchase the watch right there and then). This is the problem - many young people are inarticulate and do not use a wide enough range of vocabulary in their everyday speech, hence if we were to tell them to avoid words like 'fucking' to express themselves, this may indeed challenge them to be a bit more precise about what the idea they wish to convey. This is not about using big or complex words, but it is about learning how to convey your feelings and ideas a lot more clearly to those around you when you are having a conversation. So if you feel that the watch in the shop was expensive, can you explain clearly why you felt that way and justify your opinion? It's not that I am the kind of prude who freaks out the moment I hear the word 'fuck' or 'fucking', people should be challenged to express themselves much more succinctly.

Allow me to give you yet another example of how swearing doesn't help describe a situation clearly. I overheard this conversation where a man said to his friend, "Julia texted me and said she would be ten minutes late so I waited for her, but she took fucking ages to show up. I was so angry with her." And his friend replied, "yeah, that's just so fucking rude of her." So from this short conversation, I can tell that the man was very angry with Julia for keeping him waiting - but I still have no idea how long this 'Julia' kept him waiting. So did he wait 10 minutes? 15 minutes? 2 hours? I don't know and what was puzzling to me was that his friend didn't inquire. I think it does make a difference: so if Julia texted him to say that she would be 10 minutes late, surely you're already expecting her to be late at that point by at least 10 minutes. So how much longer than 10 minutes did he wait? Clearly he waited long enough to make him very angry, angry enough to describe it as 'fucking ages' - but it still doesn't convey to his friend how long it took Julia to finally turn up. Why didn't his friend ask for that piece of information? Instead, he was just too ready to condemn Julia as 'fucking rude' - like what if she was 15 minutes late after having told her friend that she would be 10 minutes late? Was there enough information conveyed to condemn Julia as 'fucking rude'? Surely that wouldn't have been unreasonable but this is how using the word 'fucking' to describe a situation you're annoyed with doesn't help convey the details. All we know is that this man was annoyed at what happened because he swore - we still don't know what actually happened or indeed, if Julia had a totally valid excuse for turning up late. So some people end up swearing a lot but not conveying much useful information.

The difference between using fucking as an adjective and using it as an insult. 

Now in the first story above, I talked about the young person who described the designer watch as 'fucking expensive'. He used the word 'fucking' to convey how he felt about the price of the watch, he wasn't actually trying to insult anyone. Compare that to someone shouting something like, "go fuck yourself you fucking cunt" during an argument, now in that case, the swear words were definitely chosen to cause maximum offence. The guy who described the watch as 'fucking expensive' isn't trying to insult or upset his friend, it just happened to be the way he chose to express how he felt about the price tag he saw. Now I wouldn't take offence if I heard that as that's just how they chose to express themselves. But even when you do get into an argument, I really don't think that telling someone to 'fuck off' or saying things like 'fuck you' is an effective way to win an argument, that does tantamount to simply raising your voice instead of trying to find a convincing, persuasive argument. There are times when I think it is appropriate - for example, this drunk man was harassing a young woman on a train and she was being a bit too polite, though clearly she was uncomfortable with his unwanted advances. This older lady saw what was happening, so she marched over and said to him, "look here, she's clearly not interested, so fuck off!" Guess what? It worked. I don't think she would have been as effective in scaring him off if she said, "so please leave her alone." Yeah, there are times when you have to use words like 'fuck off' in order to be assertive and achieve a certain outcome - in this case, yes it worked fortunately because the drunk man did scurry away.

Choosing the right words for the right occasion and company

Another important facet of communication is being able to read those around you, quickly establish rapport and offer empathy. Thus I would try to pick up clues to see if how those around me would respond if I used the word 'fuck' in their company. If I don't think that they will be comfortable with it or if it would displease them, then clearly I would not use such language in their presence. I would much rather children learn this important skill to read the social situation they are in and then adapt their language to suit the company, rather than have this 'one size fits all' mode to their conversational skills. I would have to make a judgement call based on the evidence I can gather as I observe the other parties carefully. I remember many years ago, a client brought her son along to a business meeting to show him what mummy did for a living - I didn't have any objections to that as I thought the son was simply going to sit and observe, but his mother started trying to explain what was going on to him. At one point, he blurted out, "that's so fucking complicated." Now I didn't show any reaction then, but I was not impressed at all - this was after all a business meeting and I was not expecting to hear language like that. Clearly, he had been so focused on his reaction to something his mother had just explained to him that he had neglected to consider how I might react to his choice to swear at that point. It was wholly inappropriate but more to the point, it demonstrated very poor social skills on his part as there was no self-restraint at all and whilst that may have been a really honest response to what he had been told, he should have censored himself and said something like, "that's extremely complicated" or "that's unnecessarily complicated" instead.

This fits into the wider topic of code switching when we copy the other party we are speaking to in order to establish rapport and make them feel a sense of connection with them. It involves not just changing the way you use your language, but you need to also change your accent and for me as well, I would switch languages if I am speaking to someone who doesn't speak English as a first language. Some people do this better than others but it does boil down to one very basic premise: are you willing to humble yourself before others and say, "my goal here is to establish rapport and to copy the way you talk, I am not here to talk about myself. This is not about me, I am not important, you are far more important than me." So if I am dealing with someone who does swear, then I will probably drop in a swear word or two into the conversation to let them know that I'm not fazed by that kind of adult language and I do swear too sometimes. Furthermore, it can be seen as a sign that the other party is letting down their guard and becoming informal with you because I would never ever swear when dealing with a customer at work - that would be completely unprofessional and inappropriate but I would swear if I am chatting with an old friend. So if someone uses the word 'fuck' when chatting with me, then it could be a friendly sign that they are clearly indicating to me that they feel very relaxed talking to me because we would naturally use far more formal language when talking to people we don't know very well.

Learning not to flinch when you hear the words 'cunt', 'fuck', fucking' or motherfucker'. 

Now you've heard the saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". You are bound to encounter people in society who will not agree with you or say the things you want to hear. Now since I don't flinch when people swear (since I do use words like 'fuck' sometimes), allow me to give you an example of another similar situation. I am obviously very anti-Brexit but I live in a country that has voted to leave the EU. Whilst the vast majority of my friends are anti-Brexit (welcome to the London echo chamber), once in  while I will meet people who will voice a pro-Brexit opinion. Clearly I would instantly disagree with them in my head, but how should I respond? Should I keep quiet? Should I challenge their position by asking them to explain their position? Should I point out the facts that they have gotten wrong? Do I need to inform them that I do not agree with them? Do I risk giving them the impression that I agree with them if I am too polite about the issue? When I was at an event recently, I witnessed an argument when a man expressed a pro-Brexit sentiment and this woman who clearly disagreed with him started arguing with him - neither of them were particularly articulate and resorted to raising their voices to try to make their point; it was clear that they had both become quite emotional, they weren't exactly calm and rational. That's hardly an ideal way to handle such a social situation but I know of another woman who will freak out when anyone uses a swear word in a conversation - she would protest that she was mortally offended by the use of that language. Then suddenly it would be all about her being so upset and demanding an apology, thus hijacking the whole conversation - again, not an ideal way to handle the situation.

Allow me to talk about my nephew - he doesn't swear and that's his choice; to be honest, I try hard not to swear in front of him because I don't think it is appropriate for me as an adult to swear in front of a minor though I probably have accidentally sworn many times in front of him in the past. My nephew is now 16 and he will be enlisting in the army in about 2 years and so I know he will be going into an environment where people do swear a lot; thus in this case, will he know how to react say if he is in a situation like this. It is lunchtime; a bunch of guys are sitting around the table chatting as they are eating and they are all swearing, what should my nephew do in this situation? Would he be able to join in the conversation on his own terms? Would he simply be stunned into silence? Would he challenge the others on their use of language? I don't know - but one thing I certainly don't want him to do is to freak out because let's face it, I don't think that there's any situation you could encounter whereby freaking out is a sensible or appropriate way to handle the situation. After all, you can't challenge someone's decision to swear - well, you shouldn't anyway. After all, once they have uttered the words 'fuck' or 'fucking hell' out aloud, they've already done it; it's not like people are going to ask you for your permission before they use a word like that. "Excuse me, I'm getting increasingly frustrated and am about to start using strong language but I thought I'd just check with you first if you're going to be okay with that as I don't want to offend or upset you? Yeah? Okay cool, thank you so much. Motherfucker, fucking hell, shit!" No, people are going to say what they want to say and you're just going to have to deal with it all in a calm and rational manner without freaking out.

This is a matter of having the right kinds of social skills to deal with people from different backgrounds - right now, my nephew has a relatively sheltered life as a student, he is facing only his classmates at school along with a small circle of friends and family members, none of whom are particularly potty-mouthed like me. In order to prepare him for national service, somebody has got to at least make some effort to educate him about people from other sections of society who will use strong language regularly as part of their everyday communications. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that my nephew should learn to swear regularly just to fit in - I'm talking about exposing him through media to films, music, TV programmes and other mediums where adults do swear frequently and creatively. A good example I would use is the brilliant drama BBC series 'The Thick Of It' which is about the inner workings of government and the lives of inept civil servants - there is a character called Malcolm Tucker in that show who swears like a trooper. The Youtube clip below will give you an idea of how that character talks; there are people like that in the working world - here's the challenge with my nephew. Right now everyone is treating him like a child and we default to the 'children shouldn't use such language' mode with him but in just two years, he's going to step into a very adult world indeed when he commences national service and he needs to learn to function like an adult quickly. Learning to keep a poker face when someone starts swearing in front of you is just the beginning of it, NS will be a challenging environment. I want my nephew to be prepared to face whatever humanity can throw at him there there like a calm, rational adult rather than a kid freaking out.

What happens when you swear? Does your brain implode?

Children learn that when they break the rules at school or at home, they get punished. Imagine if a child got caught swearing at a teacher in a classroom, oh there would be serious consequences for such an offence. That would be a highly disrespectful gesture designed to cause maximum offence - so students learn quickly not to do things like that because they don't want to be punished. Some parents may apply the same rule when children swear at home. So let me go back to the year 1989 when the 2 Live Crew hit the US charts the song 'Me So Horny', oh I remember how my sister was so innocent back then that she had no idea what the song was about and she actually sang along to it because the chorus was very catchy. For those of you not familiar with that song (or weren't even born yet in 1989), 'Me So Horny' was a rap song whereby the rapper boasts about how much sex he has and it contains a lot of swear words. Now such songs weren't that new but they had always been too rude and offensive to mainstream but the 2 Live Crew actually recorded a clean, radio-friendly version which did chart in the US and then suddenly everyone was trying to get hold of the uncensored version. Back in 1989, it wasn't just a matter of watching a video on Youtube; no there was one cassette tape making its way around the school and that cassette must've been copied hundreds of times. So yeah, I patiently waited till it was my turn to get a copy of the 2 Live Crew tape and I must have heard it several hundred times that year - I was a rebellious teenager then. If you told me, "you can't listen to the 2 Live Crew because they swear and talk about sex - it is very vulgar and offensive", then yeah you bet I am going to get my hands on that 2 Live Crew album.

So what actually happened after I listened to 'Me So Horny'? Actually nothing. Mind you, the teachers at school found out about copies of this 'rude rap music' being circulated and they told us this story that rules were there to protect us and help us grow up to become productive members of society. And if we listened to this kind of music, our minds would become corrupted (oh they used that word a lot - corrupted), we would cross over to the dark side, lose interest in our studies and it would then be a slippery slope down to a life of casual sex with prostitutes, drugs, criminal activities and ultimately long periods in jail. Guess what? None of that happened. Boy I was disappointed. I expected consequences for being such a rule-breaking rebel but nothing happened. I was still the same geeky teenager after I listened to the 2 Live Crew. The novelty of them swearing and talking about sex wore thin after a while and I actually got bored with it. There wasn't a switch in my brain that was somehow flicked the moment I heard them sing about having sex in graphic detail. Now a whole generation later, we're still facing the same thing with Azealia Banks going mainstream with her song '212' and I remember hearing it for the first time in my gym - I wasn't exactly paying attention to the lyrics at all as I was training, I just remember liking the song as it was very catchy and then asking my friend Dario who the singer was so I could look it up on Youtube at home. When I then actually listened to the lyrics I realized, yeah she made the 2 Live Crew look tame when it came to swearing. Yet this is all in the age of Youtube and social media, so all kids have to do is to listen to her online without even having to spend any money at all - I was able to embed the music video for you below.

When stupid parents resort to using scapegoats to simplify problems they can't solve

I am beginning to see a theme here - in a post I had written a while ago, I talked about the mother of one of my readers who would not let him go to university unless he promised her he would never have a relationship until he graduated. She funded his studies on a strict "no girlfriends" rule, I thought it was ridiculous of course because I thought that a far bigger threat to his studies would be something like computer games and I would have encouraged him to get a girlfriend but enforced a strict "no computer games" rule. Let me break this down for you: this is what happens when a parent feel inadequate about delivering the desired result - for her son to graduate from university with great results. She is probably not educated enough to help him with any aspect of his studies at university but still she wishes to do something just to feel useful and in control of the situation. So she invents a threat - this imaginary dangerous slut who wants to seduce her son at university and thus she has fulfilled her duty as a mother in rescuing her son from this imaginary threat. That doesn't exist. Whilst ignoring all the other threats which are far more real. Somebody tell this mother to wake up and have a dose of reality, please. The same problem can occur with anything you choose to use as a scapegoat - are all your problems going to somehow resolve themselves and disappear just because you choose not to swear? That's why I get very skeptical and cynical when I encounter people who get very offended when they get really worked up over the issue of swearing because I can sense that they are simply using it as a scapegoat whilst ignoring so many other issues.

When I was a teenager, my parents were adamant that me and my siblings should not have sex before marriage and they went out of their way to stop us from having friends of the opposite gender. They used sex as the bogeyman that they had to save us from and it was insane how far they took this belief - I have this memory of my mother kicking up a huge fuss when she thought she could smell perfume on my sister. My sister protested, no I don't use perfume, that's not perfume. I had just had a shower and washed my hair, that's the scent of the shampoo. My mother marched to the bathroom and sniffed the shampoo in disbelief - for a moment, I thought she was going to throw it out as it had a scent but her working class instincts took over, she saw the price of the bottle of shampoo then declared, "we're never buying this brand of shampoo again!" So here's how it works in my mother's head: teenage girls shouldn't wear perfume, the only reason why teenage girls wear perfume is to seduce boys and that would lead to casual sex, a drug addiction, a life of crime and teenage pregnancies before ending up in jail. Now it seems crazy to think that using a shampoo with a nice floral scent would lead to my sister ending up in jail, but clearly my mother has chosen shampoo and all perfumed soaps, shower gels and shampoos as the scapegoat, it was her mission as a good mother to save my sister from all perfumed products. Needless to say, my mother feels the same way about swearing and that has contributed hugely to the fact that my sister and I both swear quite a lot today. And we both love perfumed products - that just shows you just how fucked up utterly dysfunctional our relationship with our mother is. Oh but that's a whole other story for another post.

Do you understand the rationale behind your choices?

So the one thing that gets me somewhat worried is the fact that my nephew doesn't swear - don't get me wrong, that's his personal choice and of course I respect that. But I am not sure he totally understands the rationale behind that choice. When I was last in Singapore, he told me about a classmate who did something to try to impress the girls at school as if it was a bad thing - that left me puzzled, why did my nephew take such issue with his friend's antics? Okay, maybe his friend didn't succeed, maybe the silly ploy didn't impress the girls but at the end of the day, I think it is perfectly natural for teenage boys that age to take interests in girls - or guys, if they happen to be gay. To completely show no interest in any kind of relationship of a romantic and/or sexual nature is unusual to say the least. Being a businessman of course, I take a very pragmatic approach to the matter with a cost-benefit analysis. Now my parents' theory is that if my nephew ever gets a girlfriend, he will be distracted from his studies and end up failing all his exams, leading to a life of criminality and ultimately a life in jail. Oh yeah, they used that theory on me. But the way I see it is that if my nephew wants a girlfriend, he would have to make a genuine effort on being charming, he would have to develop a lot of new social skills to learn how to talk to people, become a better listener. He would need to also make a greater effort when it comes to personal grooming and fashion. Basically, if he resolved to do whatever it takes to get nicest girl in school to go out on a date with him, then I think whether he succeeds or not, he would have reaped so many incredible benefits in the process that it makes me think, "oh yeah. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose; and if you do succeed, what makes you think this girlfriend will somehow lead him down a slippery slope that will end up with him locked away in jail?"

I have a huge problem with parents who say things like, "if you do _______, then your whole life will fall apart." Now you can fill in the blank with anything from drugs to casual sex to using words like 'fuck', but what I think is far more important is to try to get children to understand why they should not do certain things and to get them to make their own minds up on the issue without all the unnecessary scaremongering. I don't believe that children should blindly follow rules without understanding why they are doing so - instead, I think we should give them the knowledge and wisdom to allow them to make their own choices in life and exercise judgement in this complex world. Since my nephew goes to church, I don't think religion lends any clarity on the issue either because it has this simple black and white approach to very complex issues when it comes to morality. It is very "if you do this, you will go to hell, so follow the rules." On the issue of swearing, I think a lot of it depends on context, if a close friend uses the words 'fucking expensive' in a conversation to describe the price of  a watch, then that wouldn't upset me and I don't think any harm is done if I don't take any offence. Now compare that to a racist who shouts something like, "fuck off back to Africa you black monkey" at a black person walking down the street, that's very racist, very offensive and a lot of harm can be inflicted. Yet in both instances, the word 'fuck' is used but the context is very different. The problem with religion is that they would often treat both issues the same way because simply using the word 'fuck' even within close friends who are perfectly comfortable with that kind of language would tantamount in breaking a rule - there's little or no room for any kind of common sense or flexibility when it comes to trying to reason with religious people about how the context can be vastly different in those two circumstances.

To conclude, I would like to share some of my personal experiences. My earliest memory of the word 'fuck' was when someone had written the word on the wall of my primary school - I must've been about 8 years old then, like the innocent kid I was, I merely read it out aloud only for my classmates to say, "oh you say bad word!" Clearly they had been taught that word before but not me - I remember my eldest sister having the habit of using the word 'shit' a lot when she got frustrated or angry, but she drew the line at using the word 'fuck'. When I went to an all-male environment in secondary school, the word 'fuck' became a lot more common because you were surrounded by all these teenage boys desperate to prove that they were grown up and swearing seemed to be a way for them to prove their masculinity. But that was nothing compared to my time during national service, where your social identity was defined by whether you swore in English, Hokkien or in my case, both. Mind you, I actually still swear a lot in Hokkien these days merely because I think it is less offensive for me to swear in a language that the white people around me can't understand so I get to let off some steam, express my frustration but not upset or offend those around me. But moving onto the UK, you'll be amazed how often people swear at work here and it's not like I work as a truck driver or in a supermarket - I work in corporate finance for crying out aloud. It is merely considered informal but not that offensive, I would never use informal language with a client but I would with a colleague. I feel confident today about knowing when to relax and be informal and when to switch to formal mode of communication depending on the situation. I've been swearing now for over 30 years and no, my head didn't implode, I didn't end up in jail and my life didn't fall apart. The kind of people who end up in jail for serious crimes have all kinds of other awful shit going on in their lives and whether or not they swear is the least of their worries.

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? Do you swear and what words do you use when you swear? If you do swear, at what age did you start swearing? Do you get offended when people around you use language like that or does it not bother you? At what age do you think swearing should be allowed or tolerated? What about children, how would you deal with children who use swear words? Do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.