RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: A clever mind and a potty mouth: I swear it's not unusual for these things to go together  Wed Nov 20, 2013 8:08 pm | |
| I like language. This may not surprise you. More unexpected, perhaps, is my especial love of bad language. Slang, certainly. I collect Yiddish, street-talk and any pidgin or patois I can find. I adored Russell Hoban's post-holocaust tale Riddley Walker for its ground-zero reconstruction of English. I even love how intra-generational argot preys on grammar. (Me and Poppy are heading out, that sort of thing.)
But it may sadden you to learn that my delight also embraces outright swearing. Oaths, curses, profanities and imprecations of all kinds: swearing gives me a pleasure quite out of proportion with its duration, intensity or effect. I worship the expletive.
Yet I'm comfortable with the Herald's sanction on swearing (I have occasionally had to be reined in) and I more or less forbid my own children to swear at table or page - unless, that is, it's funny or inventive. So, is this hypocritical? Does it make me a Bad Parent?
If so, which is worse - the double standard? Or loving profanity in the first place? Indeed, why does swearing so appeal?
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I think it's partly a feminist thing. I was tickled to find ''public swearing'' listed alongside pant-wearing and smoking as an early suffragette marker-right. Almost a century later, I was astounded when a high-profile feminist rounded on me for quoting her using the f-word. I thought it showed her as a kick-ass leader so my quote was intended, really, as a compliment. Yet she, presuming others would, took offence.
Swearing is funny. Sometimes, it's extremely funny. Just the title of Adam Mansbach's kids'-book-for-adults Go the F--- to Sleep makes me belly-laugh (though actually the title is funnier than the book). And a vast amount of the glorious Monty Python tradition of humour relies on a judicious sprinkling of linguistic filth.
There's also definite aesthetic delight in a good creative cussing, and for listener as much as speaker. Take the demure duo Folk Uke, whose tune Motherf---er Got F---ed Up has become a cult hit. Folk Uke comprises Cathy Guthrie (daughter of Arlo, granddaughter of Woody) and Amy Nelson (daughter of Willie). They come across like sweet, shoe-swing Dorothys - until they open their mouths.
''When I grew up, my parents said I couldn't swear,'' Cathy murmurs sweetly. ''But it was OK if I sang it.'' A previous song, Shit Makes the Flowers Grow - a thesis both self-evident and ecologically correct - earned a parental warning label for Folk Uke's CD.
Yet, Stephen Fry muses, frowned upon or not, ''swearing is a really important part of one's life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing - and without enjoying swearing''. The pleasure is crucial. Indeed, my User's Guide to Swearing clearly stipulates accessorising with style, inventiveness and rhythmic pleasure - of which more later.
But essential to all this is naughtiness. And you can't have naughtiness without rules. I do not exaggerate in saying that the vogue against rule-based parenting has been the ruination of childhood. Childhood used to be a cubbyhouse of whispered illicit desires (chocolates, comics and rudeness). Now it has no walls, infiltrated as they have been by the evils of negotiation and democracy.
A recent psychology lecture ran through the four no-nos of that invention known as Positive Parenting. These are guilt, shame, humiliation and lecturing; things that you must never ever, as a parent, do. Why? Not because they fail. Not - the shrink explained - because they're inherently evil or damaging. Rather, because ''nobody likes you if you do these things''.
When did popularity become the backbone of family governance? Answer: when democracy became the model of all interaction, human and otherwise. It's why you see people trying to argue their three-month schnauzer puppy into playing nicely with the other dogs. Why churches have almost universally adopted the ''ask-not-what-you-can-do-for-God; ask-what-God-can-do-for-you'' approach. And why people feel compelled to negotiate the preferred restaurant / movie / ice-cream flavour with their two-year-old.
But it's wrong. Democracy is dangerous because, in the end, it recognises no authority higher than what we want. This makes children of us all, and not in a good way. Positive Parenting, its ultra-upbeat website insists, is more rewarding, more effective and MORE FUN. (Its alternative to ''spanking and yelling'' is to ''model self-care'' by having a workout bubble bath.)
And I'm not suggesting you swear at your children. But I vehemently reject the persistent commonplace that swearing belies a small vocabulary. A greater threat to your child's vocab-size is exposure to the Macquarie Dictionary, which excludes all interesting words (susurrate, for example, or crepitate) and redefines ''misogyny'' to yank Julia Gillard out of a, well, hole.
Again, I refer to the famous Fry. ''People I know who swear most tend to have the widest vocabularies … and the sort of twee person who thinks swearing is a sign of a lack of education or verbal interest is just f---ing lunatic.''
Swear words have charisma. Time-honoured, patinaed by use and rooted in long linguistic tradition, they tend to be onomatopoeic monosyllables, satisfyingly consonant-framed (open-ended profanities are rare).
This feel-good factor makes cursing beloved of writers and actors. Try finding a ''bullshit'' substitute with anything like the same screen presence and you'll understand why much of the finest TV scripting - The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Justified - is also the most richly composted in profanity.
At its best, swearing exhibits creativity, elegance and heft. Which brings me to my User's Guide. It's this. Do not swear, children. But if you must, do it only in fun, not anger. Communicate fully, invent wildly, let it dance and recklessly elaborate the possibilities. Make it sassy.
Unconvinced? Look at all the f---s I give. (Can I say that, Ed?)
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/a-clever-mind-and-a-potty-mouth-i-swear-its-not-unusual-for-these-things-to-go-together-20131120-2xvu3.html#ixzz2lEoifDrH |
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