Why The Fuck Is Swearing Fucking Bad?

Something pretty funny started happening yesterday. @landonator started saying, "Fuck!"

Coming from him it sounds more like "puck" right now because he has a hard time with his F's still. He also says "peet" instead of "feet" so it's pretty clear he's swearing and not wanting to play hockey.

For those of you who don't know, @landonator is my 2 1/2 year-old son. He's really at the 'copy every word that comes out of everyone's mouth' phase. Sometimes we don't even realize the things he's picking up until he's been doing it for a while. It sometimes takes a while before we even realize where some of things he's saying is coming from.

I think myself and @inkpixie have a little difference of opinion on the importance of teaching him NOT to swear. Honestly, I don't give a fuck if he swears, to an extent. @inkpixie sort of thinks he shouldn't be swearing at all, even though he hears it from us and probably from some of the shows we watch on tv - when we are not watching Paw Patrol; which is rare.

From what we can tell the last few days, he's picked the word up from us swearing at Ruggers, the dog we are watching. He's a good dog, he's just not trained the same as our two labs we've had since they were puppies. So there are some sentences that may be repeated over and over as we try and accommodate Ruggers.

"Awe fuck Ruggers!"

"Fucking Dog!"

"Fuck Ruggers, Stop Barking!"

"Ruggers, fuck!"

"Fuck Ruggers, go lie down!"

@landonator picked up the last one so it sounds like, "puck rujers, go lie down!"

Those sentences might also be used with our two dogs, but not near as much. There has certainly been an increase in the last two months while trying to get the new dog used to the way things should work around here. One thing I know is that dogs know very well what the word "fuck" is, too. Usually, if I break something or stub my toe and end up swearing, my dogs will cringe because they aren't sure if it was them or not, but they know something isn't right. Swearing works to control 3 dogs quite well, so it's used when necessary. Cheering and praising the dog to do what you want doesn't always work, and swearing usually has a slightly better effect so they don't do something like run out into the street.

"Come on Jax! Come! Come!...... GET THE FUCK OVER HERE, NOW!.......Good Boy!"

So, with @inkpixie thinking we need to completely cut out swearing and me not being sure, I did a little poking around on the Google to see what I could find about it.

What does the general public think?

I found a post on debate.org with people's opinions on both sides. It turns out 66% of the people who voted there are fine with swearing and only 34% against swearing. That pretty much aligns with what I thought.

Most people against swearing are only repeating what they've been taught to say. It looks like:

"It's not necessary"
"You sound unintelligent"
"It takes away our freedom."

I honestly don't think any of those are true and in fact, the opposite is usually true based off actual studies and common sense.

People who don't care about swearing seem a little more rational in their thoughts, but I could be biased.

"It's just another part of Language"
"Swearing is part of free speech"
"They're just ordinary words"
"If we started using them like normal, they wouldn't seem like bad words anymore"

Those two sides are just peoples opinions from that site. Nothing really scientific about it, but the majority of people don't even care, so why are they still considered bad?

After reading a few articles about it, both for and against, I really don't see how it's bad in itself to swear. It all depends how you use the words. It also seems that language may come from two different parts of the brain. One side being not so voluntary with how we express ourselves.

A swearing experiment

I took a small break from writing this just a few minutes ago to throw some wood in the fireplace. As I walked over to the stack of wood, I stubbed my baby toe on the leg of the coffee table. What was the first thing that came out of my mouth without me even thinking about it.....

"FFFFFFuu....."

I think the only reason I didn't finish the word was because I was in the middle of writing this and I was able to quickly realize what and why that word tried to come out of my mouth.

There are a few articles I ran across that were referencing a study about pain tolerance and swearing.

To sum it up, there was this psychologist, Richard Stevens, who conducted an experiment with 67 of his students. He came up with a number of words and allowed each student to use only one. Half of these words were used to express what you would say when you hit your thumb with a hammer (fuck, shit, damn, etc). The other words were used to describe a table (flat, wood, tall, etc)

He had the students hold their hand in ice cold water as long as they could bare. Each student was only allowed to use one word to express their pain as their hand began to freeze; either a swear word or a table descriptor.

What he found was that the students that were allowed to swear were able to hold their hand in the water 50% longer than those that used regular words.

So this is a great reason to swear. It helps increase your pain tolerance, which is why it may happen involuntarily when you stub your toe.

Swearing vs Abusive Language

Another thing I'm thinking - there is a big difference between swearing and abusive language. It's one things to use swear words as your talking, and another thing to direct them at someone for the purpose of hurting them.

Is there really a difference between verbally abusing someone without swearing and swearing? I don't think so. In fact, not swearing in some instances might make you seem like a much bigger douchebag.

"Your sell your un-showered body for sexual favours to pay for your uncontrollable addiction to crack cocain!"

"Your a dirty fucking crack-whore!"

They both mean the same thing. Why is one more offensive than the other besides the conditioning we have all received? It's no different really, especially if you were to use those sentences against someone and it wasn't true.

I also found this great video that really describes a lot about why we swear, and why it's considered bad. According to the video, swearing can be divided into a few different categories:

Abusive - Like what I was just saying. It's directed at someone to cause harm. This also included Supernatural Swearing. All the, "Oh My God" variations were first used towards whatever god they were directing the words, in order to hurt the god. This, in my opinion, is not necessarily a problem with swearing, but a problem with what is said. Words can hurt, even if there is no swear word used.

Emphatic - This is where we've somehow decided what word to describe something is bad, and what one isn't. Urine and piss, defecate and shit, sex and fuck - they mean the same, but one is considered a swear and the other is socially acceptable.

Dysphemism - Used when you really want to convey how bad something really was. The kids didn't leave a "lukewarm paper bag of k-9 defecation" on your doorstep. They left a "steaming sac of dog shit."

Idiomatic - You know, the everyday kind of swearing. Used around friends and in a more relaxed environment. This actually can help people relax together because things are not so formal and it gives everyone the sense that they can relax around this group of people.

Cathartic - This is where the pain relief comes in. It allows your brain to break the concentration on the pain source, at least a little.

Check out the video if want more detail. It's pretty well put.

I especially like how that video sums it up.

Words Have Power

If everything in society seems fine, we've probably lost all control and are completely under the control of someone else. If we never swore, eventually, words we wouldn't consider swearing today would become swearwords of the future.

A perfect example of this is a certain someone trying to correct the word "mankind" and have the person he's talking to use "peoplekind" instead, because it's more inclusive to women. Don't laugh too hard if you're not Canadian and don't know what I'm referring to, it's real.

There might be another agenda here, or maybe this person is not subject to enough "vulgar swearing." Because the people around them only use proper, polite, and politically correct words, this person is now seeing everyday words as bad because, for them, words like "mankind", "humankind", and "manhole" somehow exclude women from the conversation. So to them, these common words are now bad swear words.

That's only if we let them tell us what's good and what's bad.

Swearing is used by the majority of the population because they want change and don't want to be told what they can or cannot say and do. This is where it starts but not where it ends. That's a post for another time, though.

Coming back to allowing @landonator to swear or not, I think it's important for him to understand when and why he should swear. Instead of telling him, "Don't swear because we said so," it's important for him to understand that the words he chooses to use are powerful and they may come with consequences depending on the ones he chooses to use. He needs to know this is true both with societies "swear words" and regular politically approved words. It's important to let him express himself, wether that be happy, mad, sad, frustrated, worried, or whatever. I also want him to be able to change things, if he wants, and using swear words to show his disapproval towards something when required is something he should learn how to do.

In the end, the only language that will be punished on my end will be the abusive kind - swearing or not.

A hilarious side note

One thing I didn't really come across on any of the articles I saw was the use of swearing for humour. I guess it would fall under the 'Idiomatic' category but there are people that can take it to the extreme and be successful with it.

I leave you with a compilation of Rickyisms from The Trailer Park Boys. If you don't know who these guys are, you've missed out on some crazy and hilarious antics over the last 2 decades. You may have to actually watch this twice just to catch them all. Ricky actually uses the swearing to distract from the fucked up sayings he comes up with. You probably wouldn't even notice what he was saying if you were busy being offended by the amount of swearing. There is a lot of swearing, but it's fucking funny.