Following on from certain posts on this site concerning swearing and an article in yesterday’s Telegraph about the fact that students will lose marks for poor grammar, you will be delighted to know that I have decided to give my attention to the use of language in its various forms.
In broad terms, the purpose of language, I hope we can all agree, is for the communication of ideas, feelings and information. Leaving aside signing (and possibly other forms), language falls into two main categories, spoken and written. Within this context, we have several tools at our disposal that enable us to communicate more effectively.
Both forms make use of words. The greater the vocabulary, the more explicit, subtle and impactful are the ideas that can be expressed. Other tools that apply to either or both forms of communication, include, punctuation, spelling, grammar, figures of speech – alliteration, similes, metaphors, irony etc. styles, font, capitalisation, accent, pronunciation, tone, volume and so forth. To this list one can add slang, swearing, text-speech, emoticons and no doubt other less formal methods of expressing oneself.
While each of these tools is valid when used appropriately, their efficacy declines when overused or misused.
A poorly punctuated sentence can convey the opposite message to that intended. An officer to his troops:
‘Gentlemen, the French. Fire first!’
‘Gentlemen, the French fire first.’
Likewise with spelling:
Did the best man say of the bride:
“What a waste!” or
“What a waist!”
Irony and sarcasm have their effect when used sparingly. Used excessively, however, and things can backfire. A man who says to his wife who has kept him waiting for half an hour while she gets changed, ‘Right on time as usual. You look very pretty.’ The second statement may easily, though unintentionally, be taken in the same context as the first, obviously sarcastic, which could lead to a frosty drive to the party.
Slang, when used in an appropriate audience can be very effective. If I were to say, to a visiting team of Zimbabwean or South African rugby players, ‘come braai later. We have hobos of boerrie and vleis. It will be a lekker jol’, they would feel welcomed. On the other hand saying it to a parliamentary delegation from Canada, for example, would probably lead to some blank stares.
Text speech can also be misconstrued. To many ‘lol’ means ‘laugh out loud’. To others it means ‘lots of love’. Some know that ‘book’ means ‘cool’. To others it just means ‘book’.
The other day it was suggested that one of the posters might be more effective at communicating his real thoughts, which have apparently been misconstrued on occasion, if he were to make use of ‘smiley things’ when he was attempting to be humorous. Of course, emoticons are a perfectly valid way of conveying the mood that is intended to accompany the text that has been written. But they too are open to misinterpretation, misuse and down right abuse. Calling somebody a ‘daft twit’ accompanied by 🙂 is probably ok if the ‘twit’ has done or said something obviously silly. But, if the poster has just torn to shreds the argument of another blogger and called him ‘an ignorant slime ball’, adding a 🙂 is not going to couper la moutarde.
So now we get on to swearing. It is my belief that, by definition, swearing is offensive. It is intended to express disdain, contempt, disgust and any other negative sentiment. The question is that given the diversity of various English speaking nations, the use and meaning of words evolves from one country to the next, so when does a word cease to be a swear word and become acceptable in polite society? Julia Gillard, addressing the Australian Assembly may ( I stress, may) very well feel comfortable using the word ‘bugger’ in reference to a colleague or a member of the opposition. I doubt very much that the Queen or even David Cameron would use it when addressing Parliament. Cameron might say ‘damn’, but I doubt the Queen would.
(Incidentally, did you know that Anne Boleyn was convicted of having breached the Buggery Statute, introduced by Henry VIII in 1534, for having induced her brother to have sexual relations with her brother? Buggery covered a multitude of sins including sodomy, bestiality and incest. (According to Catherine Arnold in her book, City of Sin.)
Swearing is commonly used as an expletive. A frustrated boss may berate his wayward subordinate such: ‘You are no bloody use to man or beast’.
Here, the word ‘bloody’ adds nothing to the actual meaning of the sentence but may convey a degree of personal contempt on the part of the speaker. That level to which the impression is interpreted by the junior may depend on how often his boss curses. If he says ‘bloody’ or uses some other coarse epithet every second word, the impact in the above example may be lost. On the other hand, if it is a rare occurrence for his boss to swear, the ‘swearee’ may take its use, in this instance, very seriously.
Swearing can also be used as an interjection as in ‘Bloody hell!’ to express surprise. The degree of surprise on the part of the speaker can better be interpreted by the listener depending on the frequency with which speaker is known to curse. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to use that phrase, I would imagine he was genuinely taken aback and that a jackdaw was sitting in his chair. (Sorry, the jackdaw sat in the Cardinal’s chair not the Archbishop’s.) If Kevin Wilson were to say it, it would probably mean that his beer was nearly finished.
The point being that swearing has currency only if it is used sparingly. Excessive use reduces its value and shows the speaker to be on par with those illiterate teenagers who intersperse every word with ‘like’. As in, ‘shall we like go to the mall? Or, ‘I like like you!’
This is all just a pompous way of saying that I am with Soutie. I believe in rules rather than laws. So, if we would not want our children, or grandmother, the Queen or our confessor, to read what we write, then perhaps it would be a good rule to think about what we say and how we say it and thereby avoid offending anybody. But, I hasten to add, nobody should be shot for breaching that rule, least of all me.
E and OE
Boadicea's Chariot 
So I went yeah, like, right. It’s cool.
Writing as a bit of a Luddite who still refuses to employ ‘txt’spk’, I do always try to make contributions here carefully so as not to offend. It is a difficult medium though and I have unintentionally come unstuck on a couple of occasions over the past eighteen months when a comment I had written badly was not received in the spirit intended. Hence my sole concession to digital communication is the occasional use of a 😀
OZ
Broadly speaking, Sipu, I agree with you.
It’s not that we are utterly shocked by swearing or other terms used pejoratively, it’s more to do with context.
I agree with Soutie, too, their use is escalating on this site, and in cyberspace generally. It becomes meaningless and pointless.
Smilies and winks can help in this communication business, but are absolutely useless if the person to whom they are addressed is determined or pre-disposed to find one’s utterances offensive!
Thank you Araminta, Janus and OZ, assuming you all actually read the entire post, long and boring as it is.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but often I just write for the hell of it. It is nice to be read, but it does not really matter. It is simply therapeutic being able to let rip with one’s thoughts.
I have just realised that ‘the smiley things’ came out as ‘J’. I have edited and with a bit of luck it make a bit more sense.
Did anybody read the Jackdaw of Rheims? I learned it when I was very young; only half remember it now.
I read the Jackdaw of Rheims too, Sipu, but I don’t remember much either.
I write for the hell of it too, or sometimes just to present an alternative viewpoint, or promote discussion. I certainly don’t presume to try to convince others of my version of reality, but rather to attempt, sometimes unsuccessfully to try to find some common ground.
It’s not a way of life or a crusade, but I do find it interesting, informative and often amusing.
Swearing, slang, dialect and sloppy grammar are usually features of spoken language; formal registers and Standard English are, on the other hand, usually found in written language,although this will vary according to context, class and geographical location. One obvious example would be the difference between the formal register used by, say, the speaker of the House of Commons, and the – ahem – more colloquial, pejorative language used by his wife, on Celebrity Big Brother, for example…
One major feature of spoken language that you have not mentioned here is that speech, unlike the written word, is accompanied by non verbal communication – facial expression, pauses, grunts, fillers such as ‘um’, ‘like’ and so forth. Speech is – owing to its spontaneity – married to the emotional, unpredictable side of us and is, perhaps, the closest thing to true self expression. I much prefer the written word since I have an accent that could shatter pint glasses.
Excellent point, Claire. There is, to my mind, a distinct difference between features of spoken and written language.
Hence, I may swear at home, in the “right” company, but I rarely find it necessary to do so in writing.
Oops, sorry, I perhaps should have addressed you as Bleuebelle.
Apologies.
Oh…I can swear in writing, when have had a few… 😉
But the problem, as I see it, is not so much the deluge of informality and colloquialism as the overall decline of the formal register. There has been a lot of press coverage of the return to more traditional standards – penalising GCSE pupils for poor grammar and so on – which is obviously a step in the right direction. However, I think that Standard English is so underused in England now that barely anyone below twenty knows half of its basic rules. So, faced with the proliferation of informality and multi modal language online, we are likely to see the demise of Standard English sooner than we may have thought. I don’t know what the answer is – ban the internet ;), go down the route of the Academie Francaise and resort to a national campaign of protecting the language of the masters… I don’t know. But the problem is that more than half of the population does not know what Standard English is now.
Frankly I’d rather have a decent ‘fuck’ than those damnably stupid, utterly moronic, yellow smiley things.
🙂 😉
I tend to write tangentially, that is, trying to avoid the obvious and believing that good writing is a combination of ‘wit and wisdom’. Luckily, since self-satisfaction is the chief criterion of success, it matters not a jot whether I succeed!!
I think that warrants a ‘touché’.
Sipu, regarding your comment about Anne Boleyn and the Statute of Buggery, I am puzzled. As far as I know the lady had only one brother, so my mind is definitely boggling.
Sipu – I too have read your entire piece – and you have constructed a very fair and interesting article. The hardest part for me, as a interweb novice joining this site was indeed, the difficulty of ensuring my reader understood what I actually meant. Swearing and smilies all help that in this written cyberspace, but still frequently fail for all of us. I do agree that moderation is the key, but one has to adapt to one’s audience. In Australia I do swear more, but not in NZ funnily enough as it is a much politer verbal culture.
I see a distinct difference too between the written word and the spoken – I wish my teenagers were taught to write proper grammatically correct English at school. How they talk is not so much up to the school but the parents. Having rules at home are vital as well as the classroom. When I pick my girls up from their mother’s house they shout and swear at her and each other like a gaggle of fishwives. As soon as the car door shuts, they find their ‘Ts’, loose the ‘innit’ and ‘like’ and don’t swear. All they are doing is adapting to their audience, bless them. What and how they write on Facebook, I dread to think!
Also, as a fellow charioteer suggests, non-verbal communication is vital, which of course can only happen away from the written word. This is a subject we are all experts in without realising, and some academic studies show communication is as high as 70% non verbal. So to expect us all to understand each other on written words alone is unrealistic and almost futile!