The Vulgarity of Common Language

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." - Plato

Profanity is an interesting thing. There are people who are offended by it, people who are indifferent to it, and people who use it intertwined with every word they utter. I’m not necessairily sure there’s anything wrong with falling in any of those camps, I get all three, but I’ll tell you about the camp I fall into. I’m actually not against profanity. Well placed vulgarity has a definite function. Profanity has meaning and, used currectly, can help to emphasize a point.

You run into a problem when you have middle school and high schoolers that use profanity as frequently as common words, who think that cussing is an obligatory part of a cool factor, and that those who don’t are some goody-two-shoes weirdos. When you swear every two seconds, profanity no longer has a meaning, it’s just kind of gross vulgarity that doesn’t really serve a function. It’s gratuitous and annoying.

When I swear from time to time, it’s because I’m really mad, or I really want to drive a point home. On the rear occassion when I let an F or an S go on someone or in passing, people usually step back and listen.

There’s a phenomenal scene from the book The Freedom Writer’s Diary which is made into something equally fabulous in it’s movie. Teacher Erin Gruell works at a high school in the projects of Los Angeles in the 1990s, with kids who are daily exposed to gun violence and just waiting to drop out at the first experience. She shows love to her students and motivates them so that many actually start caring. At one point she has the students do a self evaluation, capped off with an “overall grade.” One student gives himself an F. They go into the hallway and have this conversation.

“What is this?!?!?” - Mrs. Gruell

“It’s what I thought I deserved.” - Student

“Do you know what this is?!?!? This is a FUCK YOU to me, to everything we’ve done in this class, everything we’ve worked on…”

Sweet Mrs. Gruell who has worked so hard for her students, let’s it go on this kid who doesn’t think he can do it. And the kid gets the message on a personal level, ends up much better for it, and actually lives a productive life. It’s a shocking transformation brought about by some well timed profanity. Had one of Mrs. Gruell’s more vulgar students decided to have this same conversation with the same inflections and everything, it would not have had the same effect because their profanity is so routine that it doesn’t mean anything.

But let’s be real, this isn’t an essay about only swearing when it’s appropriate. I painted a little picture. Swear with a purpose and you have an impact, swear with regularity and you are a gong. I contend that this concept applies not just with our vulgarity, but with every word we utter. Speak with a purpose and you have an ipact, speak with regularity and you are a gong.

We live in an era where the opinion of the individual matters more than ever before. With social media, every person has a voice to say whatever they want, whenever they want it. Sometimes this is good, but the vast majority of the time, it’s people posting useless stuff about their lives and expecting to be heard so that, when they actually have something to say, I don’t really care. People make valad points on social media from time to time, but I have to scroll through so many low quality photos with dozens of filters of people’s faces, or reverse slow-mos of dishing out a bowl of icecream, that I don’t even bother.

It’s the same thing with our physical voices. We are expected to treat everyone’s opinion like it is gospel truth, and all of us, myself included, love to hear the sound of our own voice. Sure there are introverts and extroverts and we have different personalities. But we are all just competing to be the loudest noise in the room, and don’t you get so tired of it? We all jabber about so much useless crap so that when we have something to say, our words don’t even matter.

There’s a place, with friends, to talk, to be social. There’s a place in the world to speak your mind and make a difference. But there’s a much more frequent place to just shut up. We just keep going. Blah. Blah. Blah. To any person in the world who will listen we love to hear ourselves talk and our words mean nothing. It’s why we’ve all become so good at nodding our heads and smiling without hearing anything. We don’t really care because we’ve heard so many words, seen so many words that we are just indifferent. As long as people feign hearing ME, I don’t care what they have to say. It just contributes to the overall rugged individualism of American society, and it’s a huge problem.

Make your words matter and listen to the people around you. Please talk less. Please don’t post a picture of your desert, tour food, or a corny meme that nobody needs in their life on social media this week. Just don’t. Because quite frankly, nobody cares what you have to say until you make what you say matter. And if you never shut up, how is anyone going to know the difference?