taste_is_sweet | Goofing Off, Fooling Around, Screwing Up or FUBAR?

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Goofing Off, Fooling Around, Screwing Up or FUBAR?

I swear a lot. I don't deny it. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I don't tend to think it's a big deal, either. My father was in the (Canadian and British) military, and even if he hadn't done it previously, he certainly learned some blunt ways of expressing himself while in the service. My mom...just kind of swears a lot. Maybe she got it from boarding school, I don't know.

My husband will occasionally say 'calice!', which actually translates directly to 'chalice' and refers to what traditionally holds the blood of Christ during Catholic services. This is the worst thing you can say in Quebec (most of their swear words tend to be focused around religion). Once as a child my poor husband was slapped across the face by his father because he said 'calice' at the dinner table.

As you can imagine, I was eager that Dom not teach this word to Javier, in case his father heard Javier saying it and slapped my son so I'd have to kill my father-in-law. Dom has been, unfortunately, only more-or-less successful, the same way I've been in not saying 'fuck', 'shit', or 'damn' where Javier can hear it. Javier sometimes will say 'calice', mostly just to see what we'll do about it. Luckily it's not very often.

Equally unfortunately, even the French speakers cheerfully say 'fuck' in Quebec, so Javier naturally learned it. He'll sometimes get a wicked gleam in his beautiful brown eyes and say fuck just for the hell of it. We've been teaching him to say, 'sac a papier!' ('paper bag!') instead--so now he'll occasionally say, 'sac a papier! Not fuck.' And smile.

I've been doing my, best to say, 'shoot', or 'darn' or the like since he started speaking, but sometimes the 'fuck' just slips out, and of course it's always when he's there to hear it....

Anyway, his occasional forays into the Big, Bad World of Limited Adult Vocabulary Under Stress has made me notice swearing in other venues, such as here on LJ. Some people just write out the words the way I do, but others might write out only part of the word (like, 'f**k'), or not use them at all.

So my friends, finally comes the thrust of this post: how do you guys feel about swearing and specifically, swearing in a public or semi-public forum like Live Journal? As you know, I've written out swear words here in the same kind of places and for the same reasons I've used them in my own speech. What I'm saying is real stuff (no matter how banal), so I use real language to express it. When I read other people's journals I always notice when they use swear words of course, but truthfully I notice it more when they use the more polite versions like word substitutes ('frack', 'darn') or only writing some of the letters. Being a child of the shared North American culture, I was also raised that swearing is bad, uncouth and lower class (blame my mom for that one), while hearing swearing all the time anyway. This means that I always get a small shiver of uncomfortableness when I either write or read swear words anywhere outside of pieces of fiction. Doesn't stop me from doing it, though.

What does swearing mean to you guys? Would you prefer if I didn't use swear words in my posts? Do you care? I'm curious and would like some freaking enlightenment. :)

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My parents both swore. My grandparents swore. My great-grandmother did not, and that's probably the only person I knew a lot as a child who didn't.

Naturally, I grew up swearing. The only word not used regularly in my house was "fuck," but I was in college in the 70s, so what didn't get said at home was definitely part of the vernacular of my age group. Thus I began to say fuck.

I once told a group of writing students that I thought "swear" words were simply words. That the only words I didn't use, and that I considered bad words were those which demeaned people for the color of their skin, their religion, or their politics.

That's pretty much where I stand on the whole issue.

So I don't give a good goddamn if you fucking swear here or in real life.

WP

Fucking A, babe. :)

I agree with you on epithets being far worse than swear words. Good point.

If you want to swear in your own journal that is fine by me. I swear in speech more than I'd like to, and I don't mind reading it.

However,
When I swear speaking it's usually unintentional, is just sorta comes out, ya know? So, when I read swear words sometimes it seems to have more impact, as if it's more deliberate when you have to type it.

I like sac a papier!, it sounds like you could spit it out with an attitude.

When my son was small we had a "bad word" jar. It really helped to train me to rein myself in. "God" and "damn" were exempt. And, I declared an emergency blanket exception once when someone backed into my car on a downtown street.

I love the emergency blanket exemption idea. I can see how that would be necessary sometimes.

I also agree on the impact of written swear words. They somehow seem like a bigger deal in print, don't they?

Fuck if I know.

Really.
Sweets....do what makes you comfortable. If you feel like letting loose a blue blaze of bad bad words in your journal, then do it, it certainly won't bother me.
But as you've probably noticed I've got quite the mouth. I manage to be good at work around my clients, I don't think I've ever cussed in front of a preacher or anything, and the few instances I'm around children, I mind my words. Other than that...well...I actually cuss more in life than on my journal! Hubby's a cusser too (the Navy taught him some interesting phrases)
I only view swearing as uncouth when it's done in a completely inappropriate forum, to be needlessly cruel ( I heard a woman call her kid a stupidass bastard once), or just to shock someone who would absolutely find it offensive.
I view LJ as a place of friends and for myself a theraputic exercise.
So I'll probably cuss, rave, rant and whine alot.
How do you feel about whining?

Whining? Hell, I have a whining tag. Bring it on. ::g::

I'm pleased that I've never called my son anything like what you heard. What a horrible thing to do to a child.

I think I could use a whining tag.
Fer real.

I grew up learning that cursing was no big deal. Curse words are still just words, and while my parents don't swear much themselves, it was just never an issue. These days I rarely curse in my native language, not because I find them jarring or anything, but because I want to save those words for when I'm really angry. In which case I very have a large vocabulary. :D

It's a bit different in English, because I realise I don't have quite the same cultural understanding to really "get it". They don't bother me and sometimes they slip out, but I try to be a bit sensitive about it.

As far as I'm concerned you can curse as much as you like, in whatever language you want. :) Sac a papier sounds utterly delightful! I've never heard of that before - is it an actual faux swear word or just something you made up?

May I ask what your native tongue is? You write so well I assumed it was English.

'sac a papier' is an actual faux swear, as you put it, along the lines of 'fiddlesticks!' or 'dang it!' One of the reasons I love it. :)

That's very nice of you to say! I'm Swedish, but I'm in a very multi-lingual environment and I have family in the US, so I probably speak as much English as Swedish most days. :)

I was brought up not to swear, but I swear a lot. My artillery consists mainly of the bog-standard 'bloody', 'bugger', 'shit' and 'fuck'. I sometimes say Christ Almighty, and immediately feel guilty even though I haven't been to church regularly in a million years. (I actually don't know why that's swearing. I mean, I know 'not taking the Lord's name in vain', but what the bloody buggering hell does that actually mean?)

I never use the c-word as a matter of course. I've always had difficulty with that one. I think I can probably count the number of times I've uttered it on one hand, and three of those were during a performance of 'The Vagina Monologues', where the audience was invited to scream it at the top of their lungs. :P I used to have difficulty with other people using it too - my sister used it on me once, and shocked me to the core - but nowadays not so much, probably because I've heard it so much and got a bit immune to hearing it. (It gave me a bit of trouble when I was first learning Dutch too, because one of the conjugations of the verb 'kunnen' is 'kunt', and for the longest time I chickened out and said 'kan' instead. It's not really pronounced the same though, so I got over it eventually.)

I am trying to cut down on my effing and blinding now that Emrys is learning to talk. I will be mortified if the first thing he says clearly is a swear word. I make up my own funny swearwords/phrases and try to use them instead, like 'fudgeknuckles', or 'great snapping trouser buttons'. Also, there are lots of words in Dutch which are perfectly innocuous in that language but sound wickedly swearworthy to the English ear, like 'geitenkaas' (goat's cheese) or 'wandelstokjes' (walking sticks) or 'ruitenwissers' (windscreen wipers). Those ones get me odd looks from my colleagues, but they're very satisfying to blurt out in a moment of frustration, so ... :P

As for other people swearing in their journals, I don't mind it at all, so go right ahead! I seem peculiarly reticent to swear in my own journal however, which is completely at odds with my speech. I use f*ck a lot. I think it's because I'm worried what people will think of me if I say fuck-fuckitty-fuck. Especially seeing as I'm a writer and there's this idea going around that people who love language shouldn't resort to swear words to express intense feeling. Yeah right, as if I'm going to scream 'OH MY GOODNESS ME, WHAT SWEETLY EXQUISITE PAIN I'M FEELING IN MY DELICATE AND WINSOME PHALANGES' when I drop a hammer on my foot.

'OH MY GOODNESS ME, WHAT SWEETLY EXQUISITE PAIN I'M FEELING IN MY DELICATE AND WINSOME PHALANGES'

I think I love you a little for that. :)

I love your Dutch faux swears! Those are fantastic.

A kid I knew growing up was actually encouraged to swear, so that he would not grow up to be afraid of expressing himself on his own terms. I am partially a fan of this approach, but will not use it on my own child(ren).

I don't understand why some things are still taboo. Everybody poops. We're okay with saying poop but we're not okay with saying shit, even though it refers to the exact same thing. It does not make logical sense for us to teach our children that referring to poop using 'poop' is more virtuous than referring to the same thing using different letters and sounds. Sure, there's a history behind it. Aren't we a bit old for this? 'Fuck' is more understandable because it really describes something in itself. Plus then you have to explain to a three-year-old what it means other than I-just-hit-my-thumb-with-a-hammer.

The long and short of it is, I like swearing. It conveys a certain emotion that substitutes don't. Censoring oneself at the risk of offending someone doesn't necessarily seem like something I would do, and I appreciate it when people don't censor themselves with me.

They're just words that sound mean because of some outdated precedent.

I think that it is tough to explain to a child that s/he shouldn't use certain words because they simply aren't supposed to do so.

What I'm going to try to do when I finally do get around to having kids is to try to explain to them that there are certain words that have consequences and to explain the consequences of using those words in certain circumstances. "This is the word. This is what it means. This is when I use it, but if you use this word at school, you will get in trouble, because ____________________." I remember being bewildered as a kid because there were words I just wasn't supposed to say.

I think that this takes the rebelliousness out of the equation and it also allows the child to make his or her own decisions as to whether using the word is worth it. Sometimes they have to figure this out for themselves.

Well put.

I've been trying that with Jav, too. It doesn't always stop him from swearing just to see me react, however. Mostly I ignore it. ;)

I like what you're saying, but I haven't actually had to explain what Fuck means to Jav. He just knows that it's not a good word to say. Luckily. :)

It's interesting that there are certain words in every language that have been labeled as inappropriate for hundreds of years.

I think you should cuss in your journal if you want to. But I cuss a lot in my journal and in real life, which slants my opinion. :)

I do think that plain ol' cussing shows a lack of originality or creativity in vocabulary, and I don't know what that says about the base satisfaction I get from saying "fuck" or "fucking fuck" or "fuckity fuckity fuck." Hrm. I think it's speaking for itself, actually.

When in doubt, I go with the Judy Blume defense from Blubber, right? (Which is basically the whole "let your kids cuss so they don't feel compelled to scream the words in rebellion" strategy.) But I don't have a kid.

Certainly if you don't make swearing a big deal the hope is that the kid will be less tempted to. On the other hand, you don't want him casually saying it in school, where they tend to care a great deal. I was once denied recess for spelling fuck, because one of my classmates asked me. Bastards.

Thank you for weighing in. :)

Oooh, interesting!

I swear like a sailor (so I have absolutely no problems with you swearing). I find myself toning it down in LJ land a bit lately, and I'm not sure why... I think there may be a few reasons: (a) I know it offends/bothers some people, and I'd really rather people not read what I write because they aren't interested/etc rather than they are made uncomfortable by some of my word choices, (b) I'd like to be taken seriously (upon occasion, at least), and I have the perception that coarse language gets in the way of it.

I do also think that swearing might make you seem less credible, or at least more crude and less interesting.

You're so polite in LJ--I'm curious as to how you sound in person, now. ;->

I don't give a rat's ass if you swear.

My sister and I both swear like crazy. Our parents generally do only when they're pissed about something. Once we hit a certain age, it was no longer inappropriate and we received validation when we DID swear.

My parents' nickname for my sister is Sarah Bug. My mom's best friend, knowing the my sister is a deliberate stinker, calls her "Bugger." She has called her this from the time she was a little girl. We all know exactly what this means and think it is hilarious.

I think sometimes people go way overboard and it is unnecessary, but they are words meant for emphasis. I love words, including curse words. I use them liberally. I think the hang-up over them is ridiculous.

Fair enough, and I tend to agree, except I'm still very aware of the general feelings about swearing. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm in an extremely conservative town. I'm sure that if I were back in Toronto I'd be less mindful of it.

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Goofing Off, Fooling Around, Screwing Up or FUBAR?

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