Gratuitous use of curse / swear / vulgar words.

[ethanhopkin14]

I am not referring to hanging out with my friends or with a co-worker and both of us are using foul language (although frankly I wish we both wouldn't use foul language).  I am not talking about intimate settings, I am talking about very very very public settings, not a bar or any other establishment very drunk adults are congregating at.  I am talking about a festival geared toward children and there is some belligerent jerk using the F word repeatedly.  I am talking about going to a baseball game and listening to people yell profanity.  I am talking about going to Target to pick up a few things and there are two guys that are F-bombing loud during their conversation to each other in the store.  Now, I get offended, but I think you have this vision of me making a scene or something.  No, I don't think anyone knows (besides my wife) that I get offended by random useless cursing because I don't talk about it.  I usually move on, think to myself "I really wish people would clean up their langue in public" and that's the end of it.  I don't fan myself as I pass out on the floor holding my hat or go full Karen on anyone cursing.  I don't get around my foul-mouthed friends and get on my soapbox about their cursing.  I just in general would rather people just clean up their language. 

[kphoger]

Usually, if I get that strong of a reaction to a swear word, I take it as a signal that is someone I probably shouldn't keep too close to me anyway. If someone is going to be offended by my using the word fuck, then they're probably going to be offended by any number of a long list of things about me that are more important aspects of me than my word choice (like my political opinions, my lack of religious belief, my sexual orientation, my choice of hobbies ...), so better to just nip it in the bud and let their offense over word choice flag them for self-exclusion. Likewise, if someone is willing to judge my intelligence level based on my word choice, that's someone who is only going to cause me problems if they think I'm smart.

It's not just that foul language causes offense.  It's that your word choice conveys a message you might not intend.  For example, if I have my family over at your house and you don't watch your language, then that would tell me you don't think we're worthy of your respect as guests.  Just as cleaning the trash off your couch and coffee table shows hospitality to your guests, so does cleaning the trash out of your vocabulary.  And that has nothing to do with your politics, religion, sexuality, or hobbies:  believe me, I know very open-minded, left-leaning individuals who would say the same.

I work with cable guys, whose general vulgarity of thought and speech rivals only that of sailors.  There are two residential field tech supervisors who work out of this office, and I can imagine each of them griping behind closed doors about the same thing in two different ways:

1 – Oh, that shit pisses me off to no end!  These motherfuckers–oh, they know how the fuck to do their job.  They're just too lazy to actually do their fucking job, so they pull this kind of shit in order to get away with it.  They know exactly how to rig the fucking system to do as little as goddamned possible without getting their ass kicked to the fucking curb–and fuck the customer!

2 – Oh, don't even get me started on that!  These guys–it's not that they don't know how to do their job, it's that they're just a bunch of lazy bums.  So, in order to get away with being lazy, they pull this kind of... shenanigans.  They've learned how to game the system to get away with doing as absolute, utter, bare minimum possible without getting kicked to the curb–and who cares about the customer!

I'd have no doubt both of them felt strongly about the issue.  Even if that intensity and passion weren't conveyed by their tone of voice, body language, and other nonverbal cues–which it certainly would–both of them had similarly terse phrases and provocative word choice.  But supervisor #2 managed to do so without resorting to profanity, while supervisor #1 appeared to lack the ability to do so without it.

But then, whenever there's an all-tech meeting (which happens at least once a week), supervisor #1 is able to get his point across without swearing–for the most part, anyway.  When he's facing the field techs, he can communicate without resorting to profanity.  And those cable guys who were just cussing up a storm in the parking lot before the meeting manage to communicate their thoughts during the meeting without resorting to profanity as well.  They do so because a meeting calls for more respect than casual chatting during a smoke break, so the supervisors show the techs respect by cleaning up their language and the techs do likewise.

Of course, I moderate myself when I'm in a semi-formal setting like doing a business transaction or interacting with a government official or something like that. But I also don't feel like I'm being myself in that kind of situation, either; I'm running formal_interaction.exe over top of my regular programming.

As much as I know you dislike the government where you live, then, it would be a poor choice to convey to someone by your language that you respect them even less than that.

You're not being less yourself in those situations:  you're just code-switching from your "informal self" to your "formal self".  We all do that.  It's part of the human experience.  We speak to our children differently than to our spouses, to a police officer on lunch break at Subway than to the same police officer standing at our car window with ticket book in hand, to employees than to customers, to siblings than to elderly in-laws, etc, etc, etc.  But leaving profanity as your "default self" conveys the message, I'm going to assume you deserve as little respect as possible, and I'll only give you more than that if there's a convincing reason to.

Or, in other words, I don't feel like I'm being myself when I speak politely is just a lefthanded way of saying I'm fundamentally an insolent person.