Today's Children Are Officially Potty Mouths 449
tetrahedrassface writes "When the Sociolinguistics Symposium met earlier this month swearing scholar Timothy Jay revealed that an increase in child swearing is directly related to an increase in adult swearing. It seems that vulgarity is increasing as pop culture continues to popularize vulgarities. The blame lies with media, public figures, politicians, but mostly ourselves. From the article: 'Children as young as two are now dropping f-bombs, with researchers reporting that more kids are using profanity — and at earlier ages — than has been recorded in at least three decades.'"
But (Score:4, Insightful)
If curse words become a part of normally accepted speech, what the hell will we use for curse words then???
Not really a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
When those children are adults, it will no longer be considered profane. Problem solved.
Adults too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame the media.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... blame the parents. The media just reflects what is acceptable to society.
I've always wondered though why Americans get so upset about bad language and sex, but violence on TV is ok for children to watch.
Swearing is relative (Score:5, Insightful)
Swearing is relative to a perceived base.
On the old people stodgy baseline it is all swearing, even "boobies".
On the young people base line "fuck" is emphasis mark.
Language changes. Swear words are something that change quite quickly.
Re:But (Score:1, Insightful)
Rape, murder, genocide, etc.
Pretty sad. (Score:1, Insightful)
I find this to be a bit depressing. Generally, I view swearing as a demonstration of a lack of emotional self control or evidence of a limited vocabulary to effectively express thoughts or feelings. From the larger perspective, it reflects a general lack of civility in our society. Little kids don't choose their language, they only reflect the language of those around them. Pretty sad when the supposed parents of a small child end up teaching this at such a young age.
Re:Adults too. (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I've noticed is that adults are less likely to call other adults out on profanity around children. I remember as a kid going to baseball games it was pretty unusual for someone to swear and not be called out on it. The swearing happened, as a kid I was aware of it, but I also saw the adults around me taking the time to ask the person to mind their language.
Maybe I'm just old and cranky, but that kind of thing doesn't happen as much anymore. Adults are either a lot more tolerant or much more timid in engaging the lewd individual and asking them to stop. I miss that.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oblig. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the opposite. 5 digits would indicate he's been here a long time and probably in his 30s (minimum)
DEFINE VULGARITY
Why is it vulgar to say "shit" but not "poo"? Or "fuck" but not "intercourse" or "sex"? Or "ass" but not "buttocks"? Or "I'm eating cow, pig, or deer" but not "I'm eating beef, pork, or venison"?
The answer, per usual, is the fault of the French. They were the ones who declared ~900 years ago that English words are vulgar and should be avoided, in favor of French substitutes.
Time to tell the French to sex off and shove their poo up their anuses. Let's go back to using the original English words.
Who the fuck cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never understood the stigma about swearing. They are words, just like any other. What really is the difference between saying "I took a dump" and "I took a shit"? They mean exactly the same thing, but for some reason shit is a dirty word.
It is all about how you use words, not the words you use. You can be just as vulgar and mean without using "swear" words. Is it really less offensive for me to say "The best part of you squirted out of your father's substandard size penis and rolled down that chunk of lard your mother called a thigh" than for me to say "Holy fuck that is cool"?
Words are just words, it's the meaning behind them that matters.
Re:Pretty sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
What? How?
What difference exactly does it make if someone exclaims Fuck! instead of Custard!
How is the latter displaying a more advanced vocabulary? And why should anyone care?
Re:Adults too. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the distinction between "private" and "public" language has decreased. It used to be that vulgar words weren't used in common discourse with strangers, or in public forums, or in mixed company. These words were reserved for use with your buddies, a "men's language" if you will, and were used only rarely, or for strong effect, by women.
A lot of these distinctions have decreased with the spread of mass-market media that depicts these words used commonly. I think this was initially a way to make movies and television shows feel more authentic and real, closer to the common language of people, with the result being that the spoken language of the US as a whole has become more common.
I think as the words have become more common and less laden with shock value, adults concern about their children hearing or using them has diminished. So I suspect adults are just less shocked to hear others use these words in public and realize the futility of trying to prevent their children from hearing them when they are likely to hear them in movies or on television anyway.
Re:Pretty sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that swearing is often very effective at expressing my thoughts and feelings.
Re:Not really a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
just like when kids i the 60's would make marijuana legal when they got into politics.
Please.
Re:Don't blame the media.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The world is a dynamic place full of unfathomable joy, and unrelenting shittiness. We should have a full vocabulary and worldview to express and conceptualize this.
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh Belgium, not this again.
They're words. As many bright people (including Frank Zappa and George Carlin) have pointed out, getting worked up over the words is silly. Getting worked up over the meanings, hatreds, etc behind the words is appropriate, but the words themselves are harmless.
A big myth related to children in general is that they're innocent creatures ignorant of all things biological. They aren't, and they never really have been.
We now idolize the prison and degenerate cultures (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't much of a surprise to me anymore. In previous generations we idolized decent, intelligent, articulate and educated people. Somewhere it was decided that nobody can or should have to aspire to be any of those things and we should just aim for mediocrity because EVERYONE can be mediocre!
At least in the US I am seeing this perpetual dumbing-down of the culture (some will argue here that the US culture was pretty dumb to begin with hehehe). Instead of "dressing for success" kids now wear these pants that sag down to their knees. This is a holdover from the prison culture where clothes are baggy and ill-fitting. Reality TV idolizes people who are often foul, vulgar, have no education and oh yeah, don't have any kind of gainful employment. What do we learn from shows like The Hills or Jersey Shore? Instead of keeping rigid and tough education requirements, public schools in the US have been dumbed-down so that "everyone gets a chance." Well I have some news - in the real world, nobody gets a chance, you have to work your ass off to get anywhere.
Re:Don't blame the media.. (Score:5, Insightful)
my sister is quite possibly the most selfish and arrogant person to walk this planet
This is the kind of unnecessarily wordy language that confuses young kids. It's much easier and more accurate to say "my sister is a bitch" which everyone understands more clearly.
Today's children aren't potty mouths, they're just much more efficient in their usage of words. Why sugar coat something when the efficient bad words are commonly accepted?
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
A side effect of being a potty mouth. (Score:4, Insightful)
What do people who use foul language constantly say when they are really angry. You can't use foul language because there is no difference from the way you normally talk. I'm saying that swearing is OK but keep it to a minimum. I quickly take notice when people that rarely swear actually do swear, I know immediately that they are really ticked off.
I once say a movie that used the F-bomb so often that it ruined the movie. The percentage of vulgarity was over half of the dialog. It was so bad that you couldn't tell if the actors were supposed to be angry.
Im sorry but this is not new, history repeating... (Score:1, Insightful)
For what i know (my grandparents and its grandparents and so forth) the public/people have always been potty mouths, it was with the 'boom' of the 'media' that everything started hiding behind political correctness and hypocrisy embezling itself with 'fancy' misapropriated words/terms to try to project rightousness over thyself.
Swearing in films (Score:5, Insightful)
Annie Wilkes: It's the swearing, Paul. It has no nobility.
Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that.
Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! At the feedstore do I say, "Oh, now Wally, give me a bag of that F-in' pig feed, and a pound of that bitchly cow corn"? At the bank do I say, "Oh, Mrs. Malenger, here is one big bastard of a check, now give me some of your Christ-ing money!" THERE, LOOK THERE, NOW SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!
It's a great scene, mainly because Kathy Bates is so convincing as the mentally deranged Annie. But it does bring up the sort of cognitive dissonance about swearing. What does it really damage? From a philosophical standpoint, it's kind of odd that we humans make words that are considered taboo in the first place. Words have only the power that people give them. For example, others have already mentioned how what's acceptable has changed, and on that subject, I recall talking to my grandmother once about movies she saw when she was a kid. One of them was Gone with the Wind, and when Clark Cable uttered his famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line, she said there was audible gasp in the theater. I can't even imagine the string of profanities needed to make a modern movie-going audience gasp. Actually, I think a string of profanities would have the opposite impact today, people would likely find it absurd at start laughing. So yes, language evolves, but so does society. Perhaps we've moved beyond assigning such power to words. The only exception I can think of is racial slurs, those are more offensive today to many people than they ever were in the past. It's not uncommon to find elderly folks that drop the N-word, not out of hatred or malice, but because that was just what "everyone" called black people when they were growing up. Granted, some elderly folks that use racial slurs are also racists, but it's not necessarily the case either. Things change, and not everyone can or will adapt.
Re:Oblig. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think certain words carry a certain weight, and overusing them dilutes them. Fuck is a perfect example of a word that has no weight anymore (IMO) - my mom would (and did) literally wash my mouth out with soap for saying that word (shit or crap was about the best I could get away with growing up). Bloody in England had a similar path - it once was taboo to say it, now people use it constantly.
Remember that some words are derogatory, though - nigger, bitch, cow (to a fat woman), etc - even if you don't consider them a big deal, another person might, and they may vocalize it by popping a couple of caps in you (heard of that happening more than once). Food for thought.
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But (Score:3, Insightful)
Curse words really have no purpose.
There are two common uses of curse words:
(1) An expression of spontaneous bad emotion.
(2) As way of hurting someone else without really thinking.
The first purpose already has an international language. If someone in any culture hits their hand with a hammer, they all use the same sounds whether or not they ultimately say a curse word. Curse words add no value.
The second usage is just plain laziness. If you really want to put someone down, you should put some thought into it. For examples, take a look at all the Winston Churchill or Mark Twain put downs. They could insult you using your own opinions in such a way that you're defenseless, or make an insult sound like a complement that everyone except the person listening would understand.
Re:We now idolize the prison and degenerate cultur (Score:1, Insightful)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.
Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953)."
Re:Oblig. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep nigger is actually one of the strangest words today I think. It actually is a pretty cool word, ie works well in rap songs, etc, but if a white person says it, they're in trouble. The world is a very strange place.
Re:We now idolize the prison and degenerate cultur (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't much of a surprise to me anymore. In previous generations we idolized decent, intelligent, articulate and educated people.
Seems to me your biggest problem is the presumption that dropping an f-bomb means the person isn't decent, intelligent, articulate, or educated.
My entire circle of friends has bachelor degrees or higher. All are intelligent, thoughtful, upstanding individuals. And all of them, given the right setting (say, a few drinks at a bar, or a night of brutal coding) will swear like sailors on leave.
So... who's the unintelligent one? The one who drops the f-bomb, or the one who assumes that swearing equates to some stereotypical archetype of the lowerclass, under-educated bumpkin?
That is true of all non-European languages... (Score:2, Insightful)
....and the clue is in the word "vulgar." Vulgar language was the language of the people you had conquered. The original words that fuck and shit derive from were the normal everyday equivalents for copulation and deification. Look up the origins of "acceptable" words and their vulgar equivalents and you will see who conquered whom.
Re:Don't blame the media.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eloquence. This is a weapon of the vocabulary knights. Not as random or as clumsy as your profanity, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1, Insightful)
It's kind of like that saying, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I posit the corollary, which I saw some time back:
"Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate."
Re:Don't blame the media.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The media just reflects what is acceptable to society
No it doesn't. The media reflects what sells. Any correlation with social values is purely coincidental.
One thing you have to keep in mind, when reading the OP, is that this is the perspective of someone who watches a lot of TV, and hangs out with other people who watch a lot of TV.
No, the censors are the ones who determine what appears before the audience and what does not. The MPAA is an unaccountable body that considers views of the sex act, or even references to it, to be less acceptable than views of someone getting his head blown off. What the market actually wants has very little to do with it.
Re:We now idolize the prison and degenerate cultur (Score:2, Insightful)
The OP is factually correct and does not even discuss race. Watch any documentary about gangs. The guys that started the trend tell you it comes from their lives spent in prison. You are projecting your own racism upon the comment.
Re:But (Score:3, Insightful)
Turns out that swearing is a natural analgesic: Scientific American article on the subject [scientificamerican.com]
Thoughtless use is not the only use. Nobody could 'cleverly' refer to the case of Arkell v. Pressdram if Pressdram hadn't replied "fuck off".
Re:Oblig. (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, because we should all learn how to behave like children. Children never lie, after all, just as they never do anything else that we anachronistic adults tend to not tolerate from others.
Why don't we just treat everyone like they're just big, stupid kids that never learned anything from their peers? ... Oh... wait... we didn't learn anything from our peers, we all learned what we know from our elders, or the elders of our peers... those anachronistic people who "fail to account for the fact that society's functional parameters are changing" ... those same people who have recently (as in "over the last 40+ years"), and increasingly let the children dictate what is and is not acceptable in society...
Anyone who thinks that the children should be the guiding light of society should really pay attention to what children will naturally do: anything they can get away with doing, especially if they know that nobody wants them to do it.
So, this study should instead be used to highlight the fact that more and more adults are acting like children. And instead of the claim that "pop culture is influencing children," it should be pointing out that "over-aged children seem to be behind the controls of pop culture."
Re:We now idolize the prison and degenerate cultur (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not in the movies (Score:3, Insightful)
... That said if you play any MMO game that is simple enough for kids to play, you will likely read or hear the worst language you have ever had the misfortune to be exposed to.
I've never seen any language in an MMO I wouldn't want my children exposed to. OTOH, I've seen racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and worst of all, incredible levels of misogyny that I would want to see anyone exposed to.
Re:Oblig. (Score:2, Insightful)
Calling people "idiots" is offensive. Swear words are also offensive because that's what they are supposed to be.
If there were no offensive words, you'd never be able to offend someone who cut you off on the road or wanted to punch you in the face to prove they're tougher than you etc. In fact, if there were no offensive words, people would invent them.
There is also context and culture and other things to consider.
For example, when I went to school there was a "special" school across the road called Barkuma. At our school you could offend someone by calling them a Barkie (which was the term used to describe the pupils are Barkuma). It was basically the equivalent of calling them a "Retard".
Calling someone an insult/offensive word directly is a form of one up man ship. It is a direct form of offending people.
Using offensive words not directed at a person is an indirect form of one up man ship. It is a way to say, 'I can use these offensive words because I'm tough enough not to care whether I offend you or not.' The only course of action open to counteract that one up man ship is to either 1. Start using them yourself as a way of saying, 'I'm just as tough as you.' or 2. tell the person to stop using them, which is like telling them they're not as tough as they think they are. Any other course of action places you in a subordinate position.
When I used to look after juvenile delinquents (when I was with the police as a civilian) they often used the same argument that they were just 'words' and as such couldn't offend. One kid insisted that the 'n' word was not offensive to black people (no Afro-Americans where I live) because it was just a word, and as such he insisted he was allowed to use it. He loved to use racist words to peoples faces (calling Chinese people "Chinkies" etc) and insisted that the problem lay with the people he offended. He also used to get beaten up a bit for constantly offending people (not just with racist slurs, but swearing at them and calling them anything he could think of). The fact that he was always in trouble for actually starting fights at schools whenever anyone called him a name was proof enough that he understood that offensive language is designed to offend and hurt peoples feelings.
As for context, if you were to do something stupid and one of your friends called you a "F***ing D*ckh**d!" in a jovial way with a big smile on their face, they aren't trying to offend you (at least I hope not). If they saw someone they didn't like do the same thing they'd probably use the exact same words in a derogatory way in order to deliberately put that person down.
But, in general, using offensive words are part of ordinary conversation will offend someone somewhere because it is an indirect way of putting them down. If you bruise egos, expect the person to react.