Recently I was told to not swear so much, particularly using certain “four-lettered words”.
I don’t see why we can’t use profanities.
Does it change who we fundamentally are? Does spouting fuck and shit make us bad people?
From a linguistic point of view, for the lack of a better word, that’s bollocks. Words in a language like English is arbitrary, that is, its form (pronunciation, spelling) has nothing to do with its meaning. So why is it that fuck is profane, and copulation not? Is there something in the palatal plosive /k/ that makes fuck an undesirable word? That’s a pretty big claim, isn’t it?
Then they may say that it’s the idea and concept that’s put across that’s bad i.e. I shouldn’t be talking about sex when I’m trying to express exasperation. Meaning shift anyone? Just like how the word gay, which innocently meant “happy” in the 50’s has now acquired a more negative meaning, the sense to a word can change. Fuck need not only mean sex. From what I see, and what corpus evidence will duly prove, fuck has multiple senses and functions that are unrelated to the sexual act, like fuck being an interjection of speech. I don’t see what’s so different between “fuck I dropped the bowl!” and “oh no I dropped the bowl!”.
Oh then we can look at the sociolinguistic point of view, that the use of fuck and other profanities indexes undesirable values, which is, in simpler terms, the use of profanities equates a person to the likes of baddies. Which brings me back to my first question, does using profanities fundamentally change who we are? Perhaps gangster were the ones who started using profanities, but who’s to say that anyone who uses fuck is a gangster, or condones the act of being a gangster? To make such loose arbitrary connections is being pretty narrow-minded and subscribing to stereotypes, no? It’s just like claiming “all blondes are stupid” or “all girls like to cry”. Just because they co-occur doesn’t make them facts.
So I still don’t see why we can’t use profanities. Or why in the first place those words are singled out to be called profanities. What’s so different about them? Isn’t this some kind of discrimination? Who decides, anyway? Some stuffed-up clergy? Seriously. It’s the same thing with Singlish isn’t it? Always fearing that it’ll spill over to the oh-so-sanctified “formal” contexts of language that we can’t be left alone to codeswitch in peace. Who’s to say that I can’t keep my fucks out of my essays? (Oh, but I did write an A essay with fuck.)
So as crap as this shit is, it’s worth all da spunk in this fucking world, so suck it. (Or for the innocent eyes, for as weak as this argument may seem, it’s still worth everything I stand for in this world, so take it or leave it.)
