Comment by obviouslygreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by obviouslygreen | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

While I have no idea about other places (unfortunately), as an American, I find my countrymen (oh crap, should that be countrypersons?!) are indeed eye-rollingly oversensitive about profanity and political correctness in general.

It ends up being a good measure of a social situation. As soon as I decide I'm around people that might be interesting, I will slowly decrease the child-friendliness of my language. The subtle reactions to the first use of "fuck" tells you a lot about how open-minded people are likely to be.

I can understand being careful in your use of language in corporate environments, simply because -- at least here -- offending the wrong people with colorful expression can easily compromise your employment or promotion opportunities. Granted, I'd say that's not a great environment to work in, but some people don't have quite the flexibility in what they can do or where they can do it in terms of taking or leaving job opportunities.

> as an American, I find my countrymen (oh crap, should that be countrypersons?!) are indeed eye-rollingly oversensitive about profanity and political correctness in general.

I know it sounds trite, but it's mostly about the children.

I couldn't care less about people dropping F bombs around me (although it does taint my opinion of them if it's done for no particular reason), but the less kids hear the word, the more they realize that it is not to be used lightly.

It's been fairly effective in the US, from what I can tell.

> it's mostly about the children > it is not to be used lightly

See: "begging the question".

I don't understand what you mean. Would you mind expanding on that?

Sure.

From http://begthequestion.info/ :

"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

laureny is claiming that it's "about the children", but the implicit assumption there is that there's something wrong with cursing in the first place. laureny assumes "it is not to be used lightly" and that children need to understand this - but that's exactly the item under discussion.

> there's something wrong with cursing in the first place.

There is when it's used in regular speech for no reason, like using "like" every other sentence instead of just pausing.

I don't think you really understand what "begging the question" means because these two excerpts are nowhere near doing that.

> It's been fairly effective in the US, from what I can tell.

Seems something of a straw man. It's not like we swear in front of our children over here in the UK :) I can count the number of times I heard my parents use profanity, before I turned 18, on one hand. And the lecture I got for using the word 'pissed' in front of my mother, aged 14, still rings with me!

However, during my travels in the US I found people very adverse to profanity even without any children in evidence. And it's not like I am particularly foul mouthed!

Of all the countries I've travelled in, the US is where I'd make a point of not swearing ever. Which is sad; just in general I often feel I have to self-censor lots of my personality/language in the US.

> I know it sounds trite, but it's mostly about the children.

> the less kids hear the word, the more they realize that it is not to be used lightly

I don't agree. The less lightly kids think swear words are to be taken, the more they will use them to prop up their own attempts to be taken seriously by their peers and the adults around them.

Once a kid hears someone who swears every other word, they realize that overusing swear words dilutes their impact until they become effectively meaningless. They come to the natural conclusion that, in order to maximize effect, swear words should be kept in reserve for truly exceptional circumstances.

These are somewhat circular arguments, of course :)

And really the "right" answer depends on the viewpoint of the observer (i.e. whether you approve of profanity or not).

straw man.

When I was a 12 year old skater punk every third word out of my mouth was an F bomb.

I hardly ever swear anymore. It's not so much that I perceive it to be rude, but that it seems to show up more often as a placeholder than anything else. To the point where any power in the word is completely gutted and it comes off as lack of confidence in communication skills. Similar to people saying 'like' or 'um' all the time.

Now how Linus/Zed Shaw use it, and as well how it's used in a site like this, all I have to say is, awesome.

You're on to something here. The reason why "fuck" is not used as much in the U.S. is most educated Americans think you should be able to express yourself well without profanity. And "fuck" is the most overused swearword of them all. IMHO, "shitty" would be a better word in this case.

It really takes a skilled person to give the tired-old swearwords some zip. The insane sorority letter that went viral a month ago was remarkable not only because of sheer quantity, but also the quality of the swearing (for example, the verb "cuntpunt.")

Reply on news.ycombinator.com