To swear or not to swear, that is the question.
Of all the choices we have in life, one that we constantly overlook is the words we use to express ourselves. Generally speaking, we do not know how to communicate properly nor precisely. Most of us fumble sentences like one long streaming voicenote bustling with filler words like um and like.
Let’s take swearing on for size. Defined ~ swearing /ˈswɛːrɪŋ/ noun: as the use of language regarded as coarse, blasphemous, or otherwise unacceptable in a polite or formal speech in order to express anger or other strong emotion.
Swearing, when used sparingly and poignantly, can be weaponized for effect and impact. Seinfeld has a great bit on this.
Lately I’ve clued into my conversations to develop an unconscious counter of how often my counterparties swear. If you go back through time, it is only a recent cultural trend to use profanity in everyday parlance.
Remarkably, the handful of popular “bad words” we use are quite versatile and will convey extraordinarily different meanings depending on how you present them. Take the f-bomb for example. If we say, “f*ck you”, it is generally accepted that we are not happy with the person we are speaking to. However, if we add three simple words “I want to f*ck you,”, well now, game on baby.
Swearing in English has a very Puritanized context where the landing of these words seems to hit harder than in other languages. Oh gosh no, you didn’t say that did you? Conversely, in Spanish swearing is quite casual and used even affectionately in everyday banter. In Italian, you swear simply by gesticulating with your hands.
So why do we swear?
It began, like so many things, with Latin obscenity. Originally most of this taboo language was around sexual innuendos. Swearing in the Bible refers to oaths, promises before God that your words are the source of truth. Today we still view blasphemy in this negative light, but we have added a whole range of meanings. Swearwords are processed differently in our minds from other words which are generally composed in our left brain. Conversely, these bad words come mainly from the right hemisphere - “the limbic system records the emotional content of words, which is why swearing really does work to relieve pain and frustration and to praise or insult other people.”
In our current state of affairs swearing is tolerated. While it is still censored on television, you overhear f-bombs everywhere from the workplace, to Twitter, to your local supermarket checkout line.
That being said, you rarely hear someone who is articulate expressing themselves with swear words. All too often we use them as careless substitutes for real words. Prior to the megaphone that we all have at our fingertips, there was a time when a written or spoken word had a lasting meaning. It would take a letter weeks and effort to arrive at its destination so the writer chose their words with care. If you had the privilege to speak to an audience, you spoke with intent, knowing that a spoken word would have an impact.
It is no great coincidence that this laziness in language coincides with the lethargy with which we express ourselves. Everyone has something to say without actually thinking about what they are saying. The irony is not lost on me that I am waxing prose at length on this topic. Funny enough, I often write these posts and try my best to avoid using the ultimate lazy adjective, the word interesting, but have yet to find a good substitute for it.
To summarize, I leave you with this. Last Friday I participated in a temazcal ceremony outside of Lisbon when I heard a striking phrase about vocal expression. In the heat of the moment the temazcalero said, “in here you speak about yourself simply, but out there you simply speak about yourself.”
Funny how that works.