Swearing Should Be Illegal in Public Places

Swearing has been considered rude and insulting for millennia. In recent decades, use of bad words has gone up exponentially. People swear for a number of reasons; to insult people, to rebel, or just because it's part of their habitual vocabulary. Because of swearing's history as being disrespectful, insulting, and rude, usage of bad words nowadays still has those sentiments at their core. If this were not the case, people would swear in front of anyone and everyone, even those they respect most. If there was nothing inherently wrong with cuss words, children would be allowed to use them as they wish in public schools, in front of parents, and wherever else they'd like. Because the act of swearing has such a past where it underlies rebellion and disrespect, those are two things that it teaches. As swearing increases in younger and younger kids, it has caused, along with a lot of other factors, a less respectful AND respectable generation of children and teens. Parents have more problems trying to control their kids and as an act of rebellion, those swear words which for the most part get left outside of their parent's earshot, get brought into the house. When a child or teen swears at their parents, they are proclaiming a lack of respect for them. *Parents will feel angry, disrespected, and as if they've lost their control as the leaders of the house. This can lead to punishments, yelling, and insensitivity for the emotions that brought the swearing around in the first place. All of these frustrate kids and teens and cause them to want to rebel all the more. They will continue to swear when their parents aren't around and curse them behind their backs. I believe this is all stemming from an inner turmoil, feeling like they haven't been paid enough attention for the way they feel. Their parent may have been more receptive of those feelings if swear words had not come between them and caused the aforementioned tensions between parent and child. Where did these kids learn these words? From a variety of sources. They may have learned them from the internet, from their parents, or, most likely, from someone saying them in public without thinking of or caring about the ears that are hearing them. This in itself is a lack of respect for those around us. A lot of people swear regularly, but many people don't and don't want their children to learn these words and think they're okay. When young ears pick up on these words, they may not actually use them because their parents may have taught them that they're unacceptable. Once they get older and they start to have more conflicting and rebellious emotions due to growing up, they might begin to use them when no one is listening. This leads to using them around friends as they get older and become preteens, and often times, if they haven't been taught that it's completely inappropriate and disrespectful to do so, around adults they see at places like school or the store or anyone else that happens to be nearby. I don't think taking bad words out of public society will completely remove them from our country but if it is laid out in plain terms that it's disrespectful to do around people you don't know, teens and children may take on the opinion that it's not okay anywhere or that they need to keep these words to themselves. This will make future generations more accepting of a law like this, since they wouldn't be raised in an environment so openly accepting of swearing, and then they in turn may teach their children that it isn't okay to use them at all and that they need to find less hostile alternatives. While swearing can sometimes be, like I mentioned previously, a permanent fixture in some peoples' vocabulary that they use without malice, I think the usage of swearing often brings about a hostile nature in people. I've found through personal experience that those who swear regularly seem to be less satisfied with their lives and more hostile towards others. On the flip side, I've noticed that most people I know who don't swear at all are much more friendly and satisfied with what they've got. Maybe this is all based on those rebellious roots. Swear words are basically the extremes of all of the appropriate adjectives and interjections that convey emotion. Using them frequently can cause your emotions to go to those extremes. This can have a bad effect when someone is a moody teenager using these words in every sentence. By using these extreme words, they can unknowingly make themselves irritable. After all, when you swear and rant to yourself, does it make your harsh feelings go away, or stick around? While having a bad attitude can extend outside of people who swear, it seems like it's easier to rationalize with people who don't, since they haven't got those intense insults and vulgar opinions floating around in their heads that they hold onto with a vice. While I think it's everyone's right to be able to swear in their own home or somewhere private where the only people around are those who know them, I think it's also peoples' right not to have to listen to it if they don't want to. And when it comes to freedom of speech, people are perfectly free to express themselves as they please without these words. There are appropriate words that can replace every single swear word there is. When it comes to subjects like movie or music content, I think it should be okay to swear as people please in their movies or music, so long as those forms of media with swearing aren't played in a public place, not including places like movie theaters or concerts where people enter by choice. *This sentence is not including parents who raise their kids to believe that swearing is okay. Those types of families would probably be omitted from the familial examples.