Potty(mouth) train your kids!

Off-topic
1

I was just chatting to Mr Boogiejuice, who informed me that the uni fora are generally accepted to be a swear-free zone (i’m a newbie, so dont know the rules as yet).

He mentioned that this was due to the fact that a lot of kids surf/contribute to the fora.

I made a hilarious comment along the lines of ‘F’ing kids!!’…

and then i said:

‘we rely on the youth of today to give us new swear words. if we dont swear to/at them, we risk a massive swear words deficit in the next decade!’

It was a joke comment at first, but i realised that perhaps it had an element of truth to it. After all, we are constantly told ‘the children are our future’. I for one would hate it if our future is full of the same old swear words we were using as kids, or (God forbid!) we have no swear words at all!

So i’d like to propose a discussion… nicely sidestepping the issue of whether or not to swear on this site (i’m one for free-speech, but also respecting other people, so am quite happy to tone it down)… a discussion on whether or not we should ‘cover the ears’ of our kids.

some interesting factors in the issue are:

Do ‘swear words’ impoverish or enrich our language?

Are we essentially depriving our children of a whole area of expression and thus (to some degree) controlling their thought when we do not allow them access to certain areas of our language.

If we are depriving them, can we defend this?

Why do we think of certain words as ‘swear words’ and thus ‘bad’ when others are fine? Why, for instance, is it perfectly ok to say ‘murder’ in front of children, but not ‘f**k’, which after all means sex? are we in such a perverse society that we actually consider it preferable to expose our children to the concepts murder/war etc instead of concepts of making love/procreation etc?

Are we subtly depriving ourselves by cutting off certain forms of expression from our language?

For extra credits, we could get into a debate about how much language informs/constructs our reality. but that’ moving a bit far away from swear words, and i have a rather smutty sensibility.

enjoy, you motherlovers!

x

2

F’ing philosophy students…

Good to have you on the fora Metrotramp…We’ll make a unicyclist of you yet…

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One small point, adults have always strived (stroven?) to ‘cover the ears’ of their children, their children have always learned all those words before they get to the age of say 15 anyway. If you’ve ever met teenagers in perhaps the more neglected areas of Britain (and i’m guessing all over the world) who don’t seem to know any other adjective than the ‘f’ one then maybe you’d agree its a word to be saved for proper usage rather than just bandied about all over the place. It does rather diminsh from the power of swearing at someone if it’s something that you would have used in that sentence anyway, even if your mother was present.

As for the whole ‘why say murder infornt of a child but not f***’ (not a direct quote), this taps in to the whole psyche involving keeping children safe from themselves (in theory) and has little to do with the specific language.

Dave

4

Yeah. I forgot to mention that kids pick up on words anyways…

i suppose the post is a bit tongue-in-cheek… obviously, we cant really expect to keep children from words (especially in this modern age of media-frenzy). but i was hoping to perhaps explore the more subtle (deeper?) implications of how we choose to form the language we use.

i don’t think ‘neglect’ has much to do with swearing. i’m a nicely middle class kid and swore (swear) more than most. the statement seems a lttle judgemental (tho unintentionally).

I have always liked the ‘dimished power’ argument. i agree that swear words have less effect if used all the time, but i think this argument is more an aesthetic argument than the moral one i was pointing at. saying 'we should teach our childrean to swear in an appropriate manner is quite different to 'we shouldnt expose our children to this language.

wthe ‘why say murder in front of a child…’ thing, i think, is more a point about how we, as a society, choose (chose?) to ‘outlaw’ certain words as ‘swear words’, when their meaning seems a lot less ‘bad’ than words such as murder which we use in everday parlance.

I agree that a lot of the isssues here are of the ‘protect children from themselves’ category, but i wonder why we see certain words and concepts as being ‘damaging’ or ‘bad’ for our children…

5

The below, after a rereading is somewhat rambling, but I think more or less accurate.

The reason we keep those words from children is built into the meaning of those words.

When discussing the “facts of life” with kids you explain to them about the organs involved and describe what they are doing as “intercourse”, “love making” or some other neutral or pleasant activity. If we started teaching our children about sex and said, "You know when two people get down for some good fcking", then eventually fcking would no longer have the “nasty” context and connotation it has and hence would cease to serve as a curse.

If nothing is a curse, one socio-aspect of which is to try to keep kids from hearing, using them, then there is no language available to express the hard edged concepts that they do. It is a good thing that we view children as more innocent than adults and it follows that we’d try to “protect” them from language used to express ideas that are not in keeping with their innocence. Of course, they’ll learn about those things and the words to express them, but there’s no reason to accelerate the process.

And frankly, I believe it is right to say that the language takes on the meaning of the concepts it is used to express not the other way around. Or put another way, our world view informs our language much more than our language informs our world view.

[Edit]: And to follow up on this idea, when you call a woman a “bitch”, for example, you are not merely referring to a “woman” but with a different word, you are revealing and expressing a state of mind about women. What you mean by the word “bitch” is determined not solely by what you think it means but by the common understanding of what it means. A child may hear the word “bitch” used to describe women but may have a very incomplete understanding of its complete meaning. However, when that child goes about using the word very few listeners will actually bother to evaluate the context of that child’s life to try to understand why he or she is using it. Most will simply make judgements, often and not necessarily unjustifiably so, harsh, about the child. That is a bad state of affairs all around.

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Yes i accept that this thread is perhaps meant to be fairly light, sorry if i came over a little serious with my argument. I agree about the term neglect, but i can’t think of a more PC, or more importantly, accurate term for the people i’m talking about, any grouping i can think of has obvious exceptions and is unfair. The thing is, you’ve always got to have words for certain things, if f*** is taken on as a wholey acceptable and reasonable word for the act of making love, then another word will come along to replace it, otherwise what else will people graffiti public toilets with? At a slight tangent, the phrase ‘making love’, call me old-fashioned, but aren’t you meant to be already in love before you engage in such activities?

Dave

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I agree. However, i wonder why we consider a sexual act, such as fucking to be a “nasty” thing. The large majority of our swear words are inherently moralistic; that is, they contain a judgement within them (ie bastard, fag, fuck, etc.) While i agree that the meaning of a word is a part of its use (duh), i feel that the is not necessarily a part of the word itself. I can say i want to fuck my girlfriend and it will be a loving, caring and slightly fun thing. O i can say ‘f*ck you!’ to someone and be angry - be using it as a curse.

I feel our ‘banishment’ of certain words seems rather arbitrary and needlessly puritanical. I think it creates more of a stigma about a word to call it a ‘bad/curse/swear’ word than to accept that we can use ceratin words in an offensive way at times, and not in others.

I can call somebody a ‘Bald-headed, Snipe-nosed, self obsessive fatuous turkey’ and create a helluva lot more impace than if i had just called them a ‘f*cker’. So i’m not sure that the ‘if we allow swear-words, how will we curse?!’ argument follows through.

Is it a good thing? :stuck_out_tongue: I’m being glib, and i agree that children should be maintained as innocent for as long as is reasonably possible, but we need to keep our moral judgements in check…

The argument could go on forever about which words are ‘innocent words’ (ie why can we talk of ‘making love and sexual intercourse’ but not fucking?) do we create non-innocence by making ‘bad’ and ‘nasty’ words? does morality help to take innocence away? i’m not suggesting i know… but they’re important questions.

And if, as you seem to be saying, words themselves carry their meanings, how is it that we can get away with saying ‘the traffic was murder’ in front of the kids and not 'the traffic was fcking horrible’? Are we really saying murder is a ‘better’ thing than fcking? or is there a subtler element of how our language works at play here?

I’m not sure i agree? How can we have a ‘world view’ without language to, if not create it, inform it? Can you explain to me a concept that doesnt use language? Would it be similar to an emotion? ‘language takes on the meaning of the concepts it is used to express’ What do you mean by this?

Parhaps our world view informs our language too (how could it not?) But would it not be better to say ‘our world view informs how we use the language that we use to express it’? if we have a world view beyond expression, we cannot talk about it, so i would say that our world view is largely defined by the language we use.

[B]

[QUOTE]
And to follow up on this idea, when you call a woman a “bitch”, for example, you are not merely referring to a “woman” but with a different word, you are revealing and expressing a state of mind about women. [/B]

[QUOTE]

Exactly my ‘snipe nosed…’ point… But to think that the word itself determines that state of mind is the kind of assumption which leads to comments like ‘Bitch is a Bad word’… which is what the whole debate is about.

[B]

surely the child is only frowned upon if a. he was being nasty or b. social veiw of language lead to an assumption that the word itself was inherently ‘bad’… go figure…

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Yes, dave, you’re right. I’m sorry if i came across as advocating sex without love!

haha! I just reread the abopve quote… keep it light indeed!

i make myself soo sick sometimes…:frowning:

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Hey that’s ok, you didn’t invent the phrase, it just always seemed an odd phrase to use, particularly as i should imagine the people who use it are more likely to agree with my personal views on this issue. I do think that creative critisisms are far more effective than out-right swearing, they show wit and sophistication. Funny how things change, as a child i was annoyed that certain words were off-limits for no aparant reason, now i cringe when i hear parents swear at their young children. I think that part of the argument here is that children shouldn’t learn these words until they’re mature enough to understand both exactly what they mean and the affect that saying them will have on the people around them.

Dave

10

Sorry not to be more focused in my “snipping” (but I’ll try to be in my “sniping” :slight_smile: )

I think it is safe to say that we agree that the treatment of sex in our modern western world view is not a good thing. Given the assumption that sex is viewed as it is, however, the question of the language that develops around it is a separate matter.

Calling somebody a “Bald-headed…” as you suggest above is not cursing him or cursing at him. You are insulting them. Calling them a “f*cker” is both cursing at them and insulting them. But because you have insulted someone does not imply that you have used a curse word or profanity.

As for the sex vs killing argument, again, I agree that our treatment and views of violence and sex are pretty twisted, but given their respective status the acceptability of language regarding each should come as no surprise.

And as far as the language forming worldview vs worldview forming language the scoop is, as far as I know, that linguistic research and data have largely discredited the idea that language is the stronger force. Google “edward sapir” and “benjamin whorf” two 19th century linguistists who posited that language strongly affects world view. I believe you’ll find that their work has largely been discredited.

And ask yourself this. Do you believe that tying ones shoelace is an acceptable topic for public discourse because there are no curse words to describe it, i.e. no language to make it an unacceptable topic for discusion? Or is it more likely that because there is nothing (considered) shameful, distasteful, or obscene about tying ones shoelace that there are no curse words to describe it.

Now ask the same question about sexual intercourse.

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I yanked my wet eaglets through those nasty grommets with a force that would shoot my cuboid through the bloody sole.

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Nice try Greg, but not one of your better efforts. Try wearing a certain something while tying your laces, though, and…

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Pardon me for going slightly off-topic, but I can’t wait until the “F” word goes out of vogue.

Not because I’m offended by it, but because it’s used by EVERYONE to describe EVERYTHING, especailly in today’s dominant hip-hop culture. (as if Rockers weren’t saying it enough)

To me, when someone uses the “F” word, they’re basically saying “I want to be offensive, and I’m not willing to be more creative to do it.” It’s very much a lowest-common-denominator word.

I think the current generation is going to over-use that word until they’re bored of it.

I can’t f***ing wait. (BTW, I LOVE how everyone disguises the word.) Asterisks are the black bars of the language world. Almost as if “F” is the breast, and “uck” is the nipple.

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If the television show “Deadwood” was researched as well as its creator says it was, the “F” word is going to last a lot longer than the smiley.

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nobody said fuck

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I think that English speakers around the world should embrace swear words as part of their cultural heritage, since so many stem from the Anglo-Saxon (old English) era :smiley:

If you’d like a breakdown on the “F” word, enjoy this link :smiley:

Monty Python on F***k

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somehow I’m not surprised that you’d have reached such a conclusion after having a chat with Kit :roll_eyes: .

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angelic little moi?
I don’t use swear words:D

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As I read your post I heard the “F” word emanating from the TV several times reminding me how it sounds. A quick glance confirmed it was Deadwood on Sky One.

Coincidence or something more sinister?

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(Off topic)

Deadwood: Hahahahahaaa!

I live 20 minutes from deadwood. I drive through there on my way to go snowboarding.

You can believe they’re milking that show for all it’s worth over here. I wonder how many of the city fathers who are so roundly commending it/naming days after the producers/etc. have actually watched it?

I watched it once. It was crap, as far as I could tell. I don’t have a tv, though, and as far as I can tell all tv is crap, so I suppose I’m biased.

It’s definetely one of the most curse-filled shows I’ve ever seen. Not that that means much.