"F---'n What?": A Look Swearing and Communication in the 21st Century

Swearing is prevalent in many conversational venues, such as school hallways, bars, concerts, resorts, and even simply walking down the street. However, the types venues that swearing seems to be the most prevalent in (where swear words are used in almost every sentence and throughout the conversation) are, I would argue, not the older traditional settings many of us over the age of 30 grew up in.  I have noticed that the day-to-day and face-to-face conversations that I am a part of, whether that be my workplace (an independent school where openly swearing is not acceptable by students and definitely not be staff), my wife’s workplace (she’s a nurse at the local hospital, where swearing could get the employees fired, and is not tolerated by patients either), stores we frequent (I cannot remember a grocery person swearing at me ever for any reason, and I am confident  that there would be some form of disciplinary action if they did), services we hire people for, etc., do not condone swearing as an acceptable communication norm. However, when I look or converse in more modern and non-regulated areas such as online discussions and comment areas, I find that they can be wrought with profanity. Though not exclusively so, I do also find that most of the swearing I hear in any area I am in seems to be done by teens and young adults (and this seems to diminish as people get older).

Though some of the venues one would find swearing in might have changed or morphed in some way, the concept of swearing has not. Though the words have perhaps changed a bit since their inception, swearing has been around for a very long time. Granted, the history of swear words, and specifically the F-word, is clouded in historical obscurity.  As Geoffrey Hughes (2006) writes in his book An Encyclopedia of Swearing, much of the data has been “buried, hidden, or deliberately ignored” (p. 10). However, it is not the purpose of this writing to research the history of these specific types of words, but instead to look at why we use them in the contexts that we do.

There are a few obvious reasons one might use swear (curse) words in modern conversation. Firstly, these words can be used for “shock” value (thus the concept of the “F-bomb”) – saying something that is usually seen as taboo by the majority of the populace usually get people’s attention. As well, swear words are also used as emphasis (“Holy S---!”). As well, as a colleague of mine recently commented, using these words can actually create a sense of comfort and ease, since using profanity can have the corollary of bringing conversations down to a more simplistic or base level (to the level of everyday people). Finally, these words can be used as exhasperative expletives (“F---!”) that one might say when pain is felt (for example, the every painful hammer on the thumb scenario).

However, regardless of why we use them, there is a grammatical difficulty with the words themselves: many of these words have either no actual meaning (or unknown meaning) in these contexts or can have multiple meanings at the same time. For example, if one says “that was F----‘n awesome”, the F-word becomes an exclamation mark. For arguments sake, let’s say that in this instance, the exclamatory F-word is defined as meaning “really”, as in “that was really awesome” – better than a normal awesome.  If the F- word actually meant “really” in all cases, we should be able to take that same word and use it in other sentences and it would make sense. We could then say “Go really better yourself”. But this is the exact opposite of the sentence’s meaning “Go F--- yourself”. This can become quite entertaining if one were to ask what a person who uttered a curse word meant when they used that word in their sentence. In fact, they would probably increase their F-word usage from that point on.

Now, most people understand what the words mean in the context of the sentences themselves and the situation they are used in. However, with respect to communication itself, there is an issue with swearing which is this: swear words themselves actually contain no meaning, some meaning, or even changing meanings depending on what the user actually meant. If that’s the case (as it is), then these words by themselves are somewhat useless with respect to actually communicating an idea: they instead communicate nothing more than the listeners best guess is to their meaning which is extrapolated from the situation at hand. One could even argue that using swear words shows that the user does not clearly know what they are trying to say (they are exasperated); thus, they use a word that allows them to say nothing – thus getting away with not having to come up with an actual word that communicates an coherent idea. Perhaps, given time, this same person could have thought of an actual clearly defined word that better communicates what they were trying to say, but because of time constraints, they instead swore.

So, who cares? The issue for me is in the lack of clear communication, something that many argue is “dumbing down” our society. Words are quite powerful and are used to create our understanding of the world around us. This starts early in our upbringing: "Babies first bridge the gap between sounds and meaning as early as nine or ten months of age” (Elliot, 2001), but obviously continues into adulthood. Thus, unclear thinking and unclear words can result in an unclear understanding of the world around us. As George Orwell writes in his essay “Politics and the English Language”, the English language can become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” (1946). Thus, it can be seen as a downward spiral: we use words with no meaning because then we don’t have to think about the meaning of a certain event, which lowers the meaning of the event itself.

As society speeds up and our lives get busier, the ability to quickly communicate in an accurate fashion becomes more and more important. Many of us have had emails or texts misunderstood because of their innate lack of being able to clearly communicate ideas; these can cause issues that then take time to fix or apologize for. We (and youth especially) are being asked to do more and more, faster and faster, and with other people, even to the point of having to collaborate with individuals from other cultures and countries. We need to learn to be clear in our increasingly faster and shorter communications with each other.

Therefore, in this highly technological and multicultural world that we live in which is shrinking daily due to our ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time , perhaps we should begin looking at swearing as something to be avoided in most (if not all) communication. If we want to have others completely understand what we are saying and feeling, perhaps we need to use words that are easy to understand in the context they are used in. Yes, I am not naive enough to think that swearing will disappear altogether (it hasn't yet), and I do believe that there will be years when people will use it for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this writing, but I feel that, if we know the truth about why we use them, then perhaps they can be used more sparingly and perhaps disappear from our vocabulary quicker than it is now. This, I believe, will help us to both better understand the world around us as well as to better interact with those in it.

Eliot, Lise (2001) Early Intelligence: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life

Orwell, George (1946), "Politics and the English Language.” Https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Hughes, Geoferry (2006). Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World.

When Students are Given New Tech, The First Thing They want To Do Is...

Don Tapscott (2009) is the author of the book Grown Up Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Our World." (Toronto: McGraw-Hill) and in it he lists eight characteristics of what he terms the "net generation", the first generation who have grown up in the digital era we teachers are now teaching. One of the characteristics of this generation that Tapscott writes about is the push to customize themselves and the things they use. He writes that net gens like to "modify products to reflect who they are" (p. 78). This goes not only for devices, such as phones, laptops, pads, etc., but also for work, jobs, cars, and almost anything else that can be modified to reflect their personality (p. 79).

As a case in point, the school I work at has recently made a purchase of a class set of iPads for classroom use. I have been spearheading a committee of teachers and administrators whose purpose is to make a plan for successfully implementing the iPads into the grades and classroom (K-12). I have been using a document from the London Knowledge Lab 2013 (http://pdf.thepdfportal.com/?id=61713) that looked at classroom use of the iPads during a three year study both in the UK and globally to help structure our plan.

We recently had a couple of teachers use the iPads in their own classroom settings so far (as trial runs). The grade 5 class used the iPads to work on writing reports using Apple's Pages program, while the grade 7 class used the iPads to do web-based research on certain elements in the periodic table. When the iPads came back from the grade 5 class, they were in exactly the same condition as they went out with no added features, pictures, or customization (something that the grade 5 teacher specifically mentioned she did not want them to do or they would lose the privilege of having the iPads). However, when the iPads came back from the grade 7 class, there was a lot of individualization of the iPads themselves (background pictures were changed, iMessage was used to send information, sharing of pics between iPads, etc.).

This seems to indicate a couple of things. Firstly, the type of task that students were asked to do with the iPads could play a role with respect to keeping the students interest up. Secondly, the trend to customize at the older grade level does suggest a confirmation of both the London Knowledge Lab report and Don Tapscott's book with respect to a student's drive to customize their experiences with the technology.

This raises some interesting discussion points. Firstly, the London Knowledge Lab report does suggest that having personalized access and individual ownership of devices like iPads is "highly motivational" and even a "crucial element in successful adoption and effective use of the iPads" (p. 11). Thus, perhaps the best model is to have a more 1:1 iPad to student ratio. But how does a smaller school with limited income do this? Also, if you are not able to do the 1:1 ration for the entire school, could you do this with upper age groups? Are the iPads the way to go with this type of technology use (they can get quite expensive as well, sometimes even rivaling the cost of a laptop)? Finally, is there a way to lock down the iPads so that there isn't the ability to customize it as easily (of course, anything you do to such a device to try to lock it down simply creates a challenge for students to try to figure out a way around it; furthermore, crippling such a device does go against the ease-of-use aspect of the device itself)?

I end with this: one of the other net gen norms that Tapscott mentions in his book is freedom. Perhaps we, as teachers, are asking students too much when we try to bring a technology in and get them to use it the way we want them to instead of allowing them to have the freedom to use it the way they see fit; in fact, is this not where innovation, one of the key aspects of a 21 Century learner (www.bced.gov.bc.ca), takes root?