Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What do you think about profanity (swear words)?

I fucking love profanity!

Seriously, I’m not one of those people who’s offended by profanity. I think there’s a lot worse things a person can say than some swear words. Having said that, i do like the minimize the profanity around young children as much as i can. That doesn’t always work for me though. And now that Kid 2 is 10, he’s heard just about all of it now, between me and X2.

I think the thing that I forget, sometimes as an American, and one who even understands the differences between languages, and how people in other countries will hear profanity in English and think that they’re just other adjectives that we use

For example, this old article from the Huffington post talks about sales signs in Japanese stores that will say things like “big fucking sale“ not really realizing that the F word is generally considered one of the harsher swear words in American English.

But I suppose this shouldn’t be too surprising. This is how we speak in American English. There’s only the example about the day that Barack Obama announced the affordable care at when then vice president Joe Biden leaned in and whispered in Obama‘s ear “this is a big fucking deal”. For a brief time, BFD became something of a buzzed term.

Cultural differences 

Of course, on the other side of the coin is the fact that in a country like England, for instance, there are certain swears that are used and more common in every day discussion that Americans think are very taboo. For instance, the word “Cunt“. Here in America, that might very well be the worst swearword beyond the F word. However, in England, the C word is used much more casually. 

Profanity yes; hate words no. 

At the end of the day, swear words really are about the meaning behind them. Let me give you an example: years ago, I was teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to high school students. For those of you who don’t know, the story has always been controversial due to its heavy subject matter as well as its frequent use of the “N-word“.

In my classroom, I always told my students that I don’t want to hear any hate language, including the N-word. I don’t care if people are saying it to their friends. I don’t care what ethnicity someone is who’s saying it. I don’t want to hear it in my classroom from anybody.

It’s all about connotation 

So when we were reading various chapters of the book out loud, I would replace the N word with the word “blank”. And after uttering the word blank a few times in that context, it started to feel dirty to me. I don’t know if the students picked up on this or not, but I felt like that word literally took on connotation of the N word. At that point, I almost felt like I may as well Ben actually uttering the word. Obviously I wasn’t going to, but you get the point. It was the most unusual experience. I could’ve said the word Apple in its place in an apple would’ve taken on the same weight as the N word.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy

The article “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge“ first appear on Rebuilding Rob