Why I Don't Swear
Channel: Daily Insight
Date: 2017-10-20

I’m not against swearing. I’m not one of those people who think that swearing is the devil’s work. Words are just words. They’re just distinctive sounding utterances that come out of one’s mouth. If you swear in front of me, I certainly won’t be offended.

So why don’t I swear? Well sure, you’ll find that I’ve probably sworn a couple of times in my other videos, either as a result of quoting people, or to add emphasis. When I was in high school, I used to swear a lot. One of my Christian friends even approached me and asked me to tone it down a little. He even offered for me to go speak with his church’s pastor to help me overcome my swearing.

I was using every swear word under the sun. I even created my own words which were simply combinations of other swear words. I remember once referring to a particular chemistry class as a real “C$%@f&*k”, that is the c-word and the f-word combined.

But I don’t swear anymore, at least not in my everyday life. And it all comes down to a single event that happened a couple of years ago.

I was driving through the city with my wife and then two-year-old son in the backseat. Another driver cut me off and then I screamed, “Watch the f%#@ing road you f***wit!” (of course, using the real words). We arrived at the shops and I went to unbuckle my son. As I did, he then said, “f***wit”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! The shocked look (and probably the slight smile) on my face obviously encouraged him to say it again. He started laughing. Because it was so outrageous, I found it hard to contain my laughter.

Over the next few days, he said it quite frequently. He was using it completely out of context. For example, he was watching the teletubbies on TV and just suddenly said f%*$wit. He was eating his cereal and looking at the back of the cereal box and would just say f%*$wit. I was in the shower with him, and then he would just out of nowhere say f***wit. I had to force myself not to laugh and try to teach him not to say it, but that just seemed to encourage him.

So in the end, I found the best course of action was to just ignore it. After about one or two weeks, he finally stopped saying it. I made a promise that day not to swear in front of him again, at least, not while he’s young.

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I’ve always found it funny that some parents swear like troopers, but expect their children not to swear. Pot calling the kettle black, perhaps?

Anyway, you probably know that I am against censorship, but I simply can’t have my children going around saying the f-word and so on. This isn’t because I’m trying to “silence free speech”, but because I’m trying to protect them. We live in a society where you can get into trouble for swearing. At school, kids can get into a lot of trouble. Out in public, people can and do get offended.

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I don’t want to be a Nazi parent, but I have to be realistic. Some words are taboo in society, for whatever reason. I have to teach my children that if they wish to get on well with the other humans, they have to obey (sometimes silly) societal rules. There’s nothing really wrong with that. As long as people are allowed to express their views in a free and open way, who cares if a couple of words are off limits?

Actually, there are many words that are not taboo that are probably more offensive than some swear words. If I called someone a “troglodyte”, or its short form “trog”, for example, “You trog!”, then that would probably have more impact than calling them a “motherf***er”. I think simply because the f-word is used much more frequently than troglodyte. The f-word has somewhat lost its power as it’s become more mainstream. Just do a search on Google Ngram and you’ll see how popular it has become (see the link below). Actually, the f-word has become more popular than they word “tidy”. I’m not joking – check it out for yourself.

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In summary, I don’t really care if people swear. However, if people swear too much, it means those words will slowly lose their effectiveness. Ultimately, any word can be used to offend. It’s not the individual words that hurt, it’s the intention behind them.

I don’t swear anymore, not because I find it offensive, but because I have a couple of parrots in the house who copy everything Daddy says.

RELATED LINKS
Search frequency of words and phrases – https://books.google.com/ngrams

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