Monday, July 20, 2009

What the ^%$#!! I never swear!

"It was a Beeeeeeep argument to begin with."
"What the ^%$# is happening?"

Yeah, profanity in our regular conversation. Call them curse, derogatory, dirty, strong, abusive, obscene, racist....broadly politically incorrect.

Swearing diminishes your character......... its immature.............it sets a bad example.................its cheap.......Its bad for the society..............it dangers your relationship.......... its for whiners.............

Being rude, cursing, using strong language has become 'socially' acceptable now a days in our culture; that people have been using them royally and its a fad. We really don't need a communication course or language class to learn how to use them. We all know what those dirty words are. Anyways, learning things colloquially always stays with us for longer time than those learnt in a classroom!! Age plays a part too. It is less profane for an adult to curse than a child.

Even if its being widely used by people, they are a taboo in most cultures. Its a social taboo, religious taboo(blasphemous words) and hence a linguistic taboo. So its actually complex. Swearing is mostly associated with anger and frustration. But there are various other types of swearing. Its become so rampant that people swear to harbour negativity, to demand attention, to express violence, when anything unexpected happens, to emote, to exclaim, to sigh........everything is prefixed with a 'beep' word.

Use of these words are considered cool; thereby giving a new dimension to the usage of these words. So people use profanity for a variety of reasons and in a number of situations.
If someone wants to learn a new language, the first thing they would ask is to teach them few of dirty words. Why is it so interesting to learn dirty words first in a new language? Is it that it helps in social interactions? Most common usage of profanity is to show emotion and relieve frustration. An effective way to do that is to cry. But we cant weep in public, can we? Yet......

What made me write about this is for the obvious reason. I've been hearing lot of swearing around me and I have sort of got influenced. Human tendency to pick up things that's happening around them. Work, frustration, stress... takes a toll and we resort to venting out.
Swear words have greater impact to express extreme emotions and actually achieves the result otherwise tried through a legitimate way. One thing I have discovered is that I am prone to these stuff only at workplace. Profanity is impacted by situations and places huh? hmmmm.

Sometimes, people swear just to fit-in as its supposedly a cool thing and it becomes a habit. But it seems that swearing does relieve pain. The taboo surrounding such words are declining and hence usage of certain crude words are considered milder now than they were few decades ago. A perfect example is D H Lawrence's sexually explicit novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. It was published in 1960, nearly 3 decades after it was first written. The book contains swear words that are considered to be few of the most offensive ones in English and publishing it was a great step in liberation of the so called swear words.

Print media 'asterisks' swear words and television beeps utterances of certain words that are deemed to be offensive, but if you watch English movies now a days on TV with sub-titles, such words are replaced with acceptable milder form of swear words.

I used to not swear, but lately, I have got myself into the habit....got influenced. I personally don't like to and feel terrible after I swear.

Must QUIT!!

21 comments:

  1. nice post

    I still remember there was a girl in my class who used to swear for every little thing...once she swore on her unborn baby ( unborn refers to kids after her marriage ) it was disgusting..everyone hated her..
    and this f word..my gawddd..even innocent kids are using it in their regular conversation that too with a chutzpah!

    keep writing :D

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  2. Hi AS,

    That's really sick. You are so right, kids have started to using these words as if its a divine thing to do.

    I recall once my mom punished me severely becuase I picked up a derogatory word from my neighborhood. And I never ever used any such word later.

    Now, I need to stop whatever little I am influenced with.

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  3. Nice Blog. Why go to the English movies. Even in Indian movies, without even knowing what is the meaning, men and women both say very often, the word SH**.

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  4. Hi Mano,

    Oh yeah. I forgot to write about them. Thanks for reminding.
    Indian movies have started using such words in dialogues and songs now - Be it Hindi or any South Indian movies.....

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  5. Yeah.. its a trend and in fact these words have now mingled into out vocab so badly that one cannot get away from these at all..
    I can say that after 10 or infact just 5 years from now... when a kid will say his/her's first word it will not be maa. it will be maa ki!

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  6. Nice one. Using profanity in Indian movies is not that bad when you compare with many sentences spoken have double meaning. Audience laugh. Kids ask the parents why they are laughing. English movies may have profanity here and there but they never speak double meaning sentences.

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  7. hahahah

    Abhinav ke comment ki last line is just ...lol!!

    ma ki!!

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  8. Hi Abhinav,

    Hahahahaha...That was too good. Imagine a baby learning to talk utter 'maa ki'...

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  9. Hi Vivek,

    Yeah true. To add about Indian movies, disgusting stuffs are spoken and tagged as comedy. The so called comedy in Indian movies most times involve talking sexually explicit stuff or things which could intimidate/insult others and they expect people to have a hearty laugh over it.

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  10. i stopped swearing and using fowl language a couple of years back.. now i am at peace

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  11. Hi Chriz,

    Oh yeah? That's really a prudent decision. :-)

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  12. Using profanities has become a way of life in India.
    I remember when we were young, We were castigated for using the word 'saala'. Now that word has become a part of a song's lyrics.
    Even the school kids are swearing these days, their talk is full of 4 letter words. Sad.

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  13. Hi Aparna,

    Thank you for the comments. I agree with you. Yeah, forbidden words has made its way into songs and those songs are chart busters. Sad.

    And yeah, thanks for visiting my blog and please keep visiting. :-)

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  14. i could'nt agree more, I tend to swear most of the time, but realised that its a sick feeling and refrained from doing so. So many people swear often ... i'd say the movies take a big part in being the spoiling brat! All the youngsters should think abt self respect before anything else. Nice eye opener post! :)

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  15. exactly swearing is one thing which is regarded cool. Worse is when a woman uses words that are used for female anatomy...that's the most derogatory thing to happen...sad, shows like roadies has made the cuss words an 'in' thing...i detest it completely!

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  16. Hey Hary,

    Yeah you are absolutely right on the self-respect part. It really feels good not to swear :-)

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  17. Hi Gayathri,

    Yup, right. Most women just use it without even knowing what they are meaning. The in-thing you see..Its sad however.

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  18. Swearing is so common and thanx to reality shows, even kids find it stylish to use words which were prohibited earlier. Now we have a 'Kaminey' to go by too..

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  19. Hi JD,

    Yeah. its a common thing to swear nowadays. There's 'saala', 'kaminey', 'kambakht ' doing the rounds....

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  20. In my trip to north india i have been amazed of how many bad words people keep using as conjunctions all the time. it is just amazing. you could imagine how many people i would have met in 50 odd days. not one person i have met has spared them.

    some times it is annoying how often the f word is used nowadays, but i try to think of it as a word that does not mean anything and when a person is saying it, more often that not he does not mean anything. i think i am so used to hearing that word now that it does not affect me one bit.

    but the hindi bad words that these people speak, i feel that they mean it when they say it. i need not bring out the list of words here, i believe.

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  21. Hi Gautam,

    This is news to me. Do they swear so much? And to think that they really mean it!!
    Yeah most times, the f word, the b word are all used without meaning anything at all!

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I'd love to know what you thought :-) Please shoot!