Longevity of the Presence of Swearing - Essay Example

The world of people is quite a strange place to live in. Why, you may ask Well, for example consider how funny it may be to watch films which exploita poplar topic of the visitation of Earth by some extraterrestrial being who tries hard to comprehend and to adapt to the rules of the human society. Indeed, many of our traditions and rules seem irrational, and one of such delicate aspects of our everyday life is swearing. Swearing belongs to a peculiar type of knowledge, which the vast majority of adults possesses, but from the usage of which many of us abstain. But despite that swearing has always been an inseparable part of our culture, and most others for that matter, so even those of us who would wish to ban swearing as such will likely have to come to terms with its existence while man exists. So, on ground of this, let us take a closer look at the phenomenon of swearing and its place within our and other cultures. We start with defining this term. Swearing is normally understood as a profane expression through usage of a word or phrase normally associated with indecency. At the same time, quite ironically, swearing once signified telling the truth by making an oath. At this point we can immediately see how both those definitions of swearing combine in the real life and give us a better hand at defining what swearing actually is - a formally obscene verbal expression, which nevertheless may uncover a truth about our feelings as far as it conveys our emotions. Therefore, swearing clearly belongs to a group of cultural habits of a given society, and different societies allow for a varying degree of freedom of expression of its members. However, it is here that the real difficulty may arise because in the modern globalized world, where we often communicate with representatives of other cultural traditions, cultural diversity creates potential for confusion due to the differences in attitudes to swearing and to the existence of different forms of swearing. For instance, you should always keep in mind that if you call a Chinese person a turtle, which is maybe not the most pleasant comparison for people in our society but still definitely not an insulting one, then you may become his or her worst enemy, because this innocuous creature represents one of the worst offences in China. Or, speaking about a much closer to us British culture, using the word 'bugger,' acceptable in the United States, would cast a shadow on your politeness as you would be understood as talking about a sodomite. If you were to live before 1934 you could even be imprisoned for uttering this word (Bryson 1991, p.224). And, as we have mentioned the history of attitudes to swearing, it must be noted that we are quite lucky today that we have a relative freedom of expression, because in the nineteenth century there were such intense attempts to clear out English of swearing that even some traditional words from the old English were being changed, like transformation of 'titbit' into 'tidbit' (Bryson 1991, p.221). So, as we can see, the phenomenon of swearing went as far as even modifying our language. But what fuels the mentioned longevity of the presence of swearing as seemingly unavoidable cultural trait of most societies is its arguably positive ability to serve as a channel through which we may relieve our feelings. Ironically, the very forbidden status of profane words and expressions makes them very emotive, which then perpetuates their forbidden status. And what works is normally extensively used, therefore most people from time to time express their anger, dissatisfaction, or other impulsive emotion with the help of swearing, which, paradoxically, sometimes is sufficient to dismiss the cause of our vexation as a thing of the past. Of course, this does not concern damnable, sorry for this term, cases when some people are so accustomed to swearing that it constitutes a large part of their language. After all, to turn our mother tongue into a continual swearing would mean to strip swearing of the large part of its power. The importance of the task is to inform people of the nature of swearing and its cultural and social importance. More specifically, swearing belongs to the category of cultural practices which we almost subconsciously employ on the regular basis, but about the role of which in our life we rarely think. Such ignorance deprives us of our cultural self-awareness, and creates potential for confusing situations during our cross-cultural communication. In this regard, the type of audience the speech is written for are adults, because only at a certain point in our life we may begin to act consciously, while during the young age when children and teenagers accumulate knowledge of swearing they tend to use it an imitative way. This topic was chosen by me because it treats a taboo subject, and also deals with cultural diversity. At the same time, the deeper understanding of the phenomenon of swearing may in fact endow us with a better comprehension of its power in both real-life applications and in literature. Such a understanding, in its turn, may tell us something about the human nature itself. Therefore, it is no wonder that serious works were written by professional historians, social scientists, and psychologists on the topic of swearing with statements like this one: "Swearing constitutes a species of human behavior so little understood, even by its most devoted practitioners, that an examination of its meaning and significance is now long overdue" (Montagu 2001, p.1). To make the speech successful I tried to use several literary tools. Firstly, I paid attention to the composition of the introduction of the speech so that to make it interesting, and immediately connect the topic of the speech to a well-known aspect of our life. Also, I strived to define the topic of my speech in the introduction. In the body of the speech I wanted to observe the principles of rhetoric, like clarity of expression and logic of the theme development, to make my speech as informative as possible, and to emphasize its key messages. Finally, I wanted to finish the speech using the literary tool of paradox (Rivkin and Ryan 2004, p.357) in such a way as to exemplify how subtle is the role of swearing in our culture by showing that swearing needs to be marginalized to remain so powerful. Sources Bryson, B., (1991), The Mother Tongue, Harper Perennial Montagu, A., (2001), The Anatomy of Swearing, University of Pennsylvania Press Rivkin, J., (Ed.), and Ryan, M. (Ed.), (2004), Literary Theory: an Anthology, Blackwell Publishers Read More