studies have shown that people who swear do so oftentimes out of self-confidence. i personally don't have a problem telling someone to f-off if that's exactly what i mean to say. i, too, curse a thousand times a day. and guess what? people i know in real life usually confuse me with an intelligent person because between all the cursing there's sometimes a thought mixed in.
i find it hilarious to see the words 'intelligent' and 'educated' within close proximity of each other. lemme tell y'all something, some of the dumbest, and i mean truly stupid people, i know have the pieces of paper to prove their dumbassedness. where i work it's mandatory that management have degrees, and i'll be flat-out honest when i say there's literally not a single one of the fools in upper management (most of whom i know personally) who i'd let run my car wash. some swear, most don't, though. odd, that, eh? those who don't swear don't swear because they're too intelligent (oh, far from it), but it's the culture they're a part of. they don't swear because that's not a part of how someone thinks they're supposed to act. you don't find salesmen swearing because they're afraid of blowing a deal. when you spending the majority of your waking life not swearing at work, it's easy to see how that carries over. am i offended by swear words? hah! wanna know what offends me? when a president gets in front of a national audience and avers, 'i did not have sex with that woman.' when a person who can't run their own lives tries to run mine. when a single mother of four children lives off their mother, but won't get a job or on some kind of assistance, all the while looking down her nose at me because i don't go to church three times a week (true story).
in real life, if someone swears to make or emphasize a point, there's no problems on my end. by the same token, if i know it offends someone, i'll *try* not to swear, but, hey, don't ask me my opinion on my union boss if you don't want to hear a colourful list of select words. it's like putting your hand on a stovetop, know what i mean? then again, i also don't trust people who 1) actually has a desire to be my boss (a more flawed personality trait i can hardly imagine) and 2) someone who doesn't have any prejudices. sorry, but to me, if you don't hate someone or something, you're not a real person.
i say all that because those are my experiences based in real life and i expect characters to be real. my WIP uses blue language profusely not to shock or emphasize. quite the contrary. i use them so often they have absolutely no meaning. still, though i know it's not always the technically correct thing to do based on real life, i'll refrain from my more 'intelligent' characters using swear words just because most readers have a misunderstanding of them and their psychological realities. 'dumb people swear' is pretty much the erroneous rule. that 'rule' has absolutely no basis in reality and not a single legitimate leg to stand on. then again, if you judge a person's intelligence based on the work they do (or don't do), you've got serious problems, lol. the manner in which they speak, cussing notwithstanding, is a more accurate judgement, but, still, it's hardly more than *indicative*, and not to be confused with rock-solid fact. but, idiots often confuse 'intelligence' with 'education,' i presume because they possess neither, lol.
high-moral fibre. i scoff at that very notion and dismiss it out of hand when comparing non-swearing people and their righteousness. anyone who wants to IM me ( brandysno1guy -- don't laugh, my wife made that up while i was asleep), will probably find me quite a reasonable person... who swears a sihtload. and if there's a heaven, i'm fairly confident i'll get in before most lawyers, politicians, used car salesmen, CEO or president. what, someone thinks you get to be president by being a nice guy? please. you don't get to a position of true power without being a son-of-a-*****. i think that's worth bearing in mind for characters. you can be a nice guy when you go home to your family at night, but once you're in that boardroom or on the battlefield, effective decisions don't always equate to doing the right thing. i'll make a deal with people with supposedly high-moral fibre: don't send my son overseas to kill and die for no damn good reason and you can swear all you want. don't close the plant where i make my living to send my job to a third-world siht-box then raise my taxes a minute later to make up for the loss of city revenue, and you can skywrite f_ _ _ in thousand foot letters.
as mentioned, swear words have exactly as much power as you give them. i think that's important to consider when writing. are you going to give them power or take that power away based on your own personal opinions of how things *should* be? if you do that, who, if anyone, are you disservicing? if you haven't heard a racial slur uttered in the last two years, what sunshine-ville are you living in, and can such a hothouse flower be trusted to inflict their own moral fibre on people from such a removed place? this is really telling of a character who goes out of their way not to swear, too. what's their reasoning for it? not everyone should swear if it makes them uncomfortable, of course, but if your CEO just laid-off 30,000 right before x-mas (which is a very typical time for lay-offs as it fits into their fiscal quarters) so he could make that bonus incentive, yet refused to mutter a 'profane' word, how much more hypocracy does there have to be there to 'justify' his murder by a disgruntled employee who *does* swear, but who's otherwise just a regular guy who has to take a crappy factory job to take care of his family? who's the more profane? you might as well make the absurd claim that people of low moral fibre smoke, too. as opposed to those of high moral fibre who drink too much wine.
naturally, i find it just perfectly fitting for this backwards, unwordly country to draw distinction between 'damn' and 'siht.' oh, my gawd! OO boobs! avert thine virgin eyes! americans are like that, though. stupid americans. that's why we make the best characters. germans make lousy characters because they're smarter than we are and have their philosophies figured out. only americans do one thing and say another, tout freedom while being the first to repress people's rights (well, the chinese are pretty good about that, too, and i wonder how many of them swear up a storm?).
in real life, i've little to no real corrolation between moral fibre/intelligence (which lumping the two together is itself hilariously unthought-out, as if the two hold hands on a sandy beach at sunset) and swearing. in my example of the unwed mother of four above, the woman refuses to swear. nevermind she breaks all kinds of codes of morals and ethics that most reasonable people hold, she won't cuss, boy howdy. but, people i respect and who *happen* to be christian or muslim (oddly, i don't know any jewish people, though i imagine there'd be no difference there) might swear every now and then if you get their dander up. sure, it's hypocritical (last i looked, swearing wasn't a sin, but, c'mon, it probably kinda is, but i reckon it's on the level of ordering that piece of tirimasu after you're already full), but it's not an issue unless they make it one. don't say i shouldn't use the f-word when an hour ago i just head 'siht' come out of your mouth, then defend it by saying, 'oh, that's different. your word is worse and plus i was mad when i said it.' oh, okay, hypocrite, i guess you're right, being of such high moral fibre and all, at least when it's convenient.
that's what this rant boils down to for me: if you're a hypocrite with an easily destroyed position, you may convince someone to lead a highly 'moral' and repressed life, but you're only convincing those easily fooled. how can a writer be a hypocrite and possibly write believable characters? by extension, all those characters are flawed, and while character flaws are essential to avoid having a mary sue, it's also of paramount importance to recognize that they *are* flaws not to be confused with being right. i think your character can start out being profance and through a series of events become righteous, and as a result probably will drop the use of swear words, but i say that that's a case of making a conscious decision and not by some de facto situation where 'naturally' swearing is stopped. obviously, speech patterns reflect the culture. the comment about people who swear having a lower sexual capacity or urge or whatever is patently ridiculous.
in short, education illicits a culture wherein swearing is not encouraged for whatever reason. education does NOT make a person morally strong by itself. high moral fibre does not encourage swearing, either, but nor should it promote hypocracy. don't think you're any less of a sinner, if cussing is a sin, for saying 'damn' when what you want to say is 'f'. it's a great character flaw to work out, but a poor standard to live by if your intention is the same for either word. if you scream at the car in front of you for cutting you off, is your god going to consider the difference between 'you siht!' as oppsed to 'you monkeydoodle!'? pretty ridiculous when the force behind it is still vitriol-based invective, eh? lol. that's another great character growth: the character who forcibly restrains her speech and through a process of growth lets loose at last in a tirade, which may exlemplify her freedom.
i like the comment about the son who swears profusely and it's a comical thing. that poster has a prejudice against people who swear. i know i can trust her to a certain extent, heh heh (though, as i recall without looking back at the post, my opinion is the assertions otherwise made are pretty ignorant, no offense. at least the assertions were backed-up with examples). while i think it's right to give the words themselves absolutely no credence, which they don't deserve, i can't agree that the content is unworthy merely because it's not to the listeners preferences.
here in dayton it's actually a city ordinance you can't use foul or offensive language in public. you can be cited. yep, that's what i call freedom in a totally unrepressive society, you betcha. what i find even more amazing is people are offended by words. be offended by the content and/or intent.
other ridiculous assertions:
people who swear:
...are violent
...are more prone to drugs and alcohol (if this is true, it's only a cause of the society they're in being poor, which, i admit, poor people (which is rapidly becoming everyone around me) probably *do* swear more... then again they don't have terrific reason not to)
...drive american made, used cars
...are unmarried
...don't attend church
...own guns
...are middle- or lower-class
...always repeat themselves
...smoke
...speed
...are divorced
...are going to hell
...suffer from premature ejaculation on those rare instances where viagra isn't needed
...are uneducated
...listen to rock 'n roll or rap
...don't own a suit
...masturbate frequently
...have absolutely no regard for their fellow man
...always repeat themselves
...make bad, plainly foreshadowed jokes
...own pornography
...rant endlessly
...are opinionated
...doesn't read the newspaper
...thinks jerry bruckheimer is a genius
...watches 'south park' and other filth
...is immoral and can't be trusted
...is more likely to cheat on their spouse
...has a higher likelihood of being gay
...is prejudiced
...has tattooes (my personal favourite)
...has had sex out of wedlock/one night stand
...is just plain wrong in everything
...should get some kind of cancer like smokers
...have criminal tendacies
...are usually male (though this might have some merit, as usually men are more self-confident than women by maybe a few percentage points)
...eats fast food more often
...thinks 'ong-bak' looks like it might be a cool movie
...is over-weight
...is more likely to die of gun-shot wounds
...owns some form of hound dog
...spends too much time on the computer or watching t.v.
...doesn't read
...can't read
...wouldn't read if he could
...can't because he's too blessed dumb
...more likely to shoot pool and throw darts
...owns tight or revealing clothing
...doesn't understand corporate buzzwords are bullsiht
...are more likely to block the sun with a wall of stacked beer cans than ridiculously priced curtains
...doesn't vote
...are more likely to actually be of some useful purpose around the house
...wouldn't know the first thing about water-cooler conversations because they've got real jobs that actually gets things accomplished
...are 'common'
...aren't worth listening to
...have no imagination
...are more likely to be condoscending, arrogant pricks (oops, this is for my 'people with college degrees' thread)
...know how much a 'quarter' costs
...barely speaks their own language with any fluency (purely a cultural thing most of the time)
...are more likely to be non-white
...aren't usually the competent ones at what they do for a living
...rent rather than own
...hate the fact 'the man' forces them to wear seatbeats
...don't wear watches
...still has cable
...shops ebay
and finally
people who swear have posters on their wall instead of framed prints
did i say 'in short'? i lied.
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