Me: “I ain’t got a fucking clue mate.”
Cold caller: “There’s no need to swear sir.”
Me: “There’s no need to be a cunt either, but you’re giving it a good go...”
Cold caller hangs up, apparently no longer anxious to get me on the 3 network.
The above conversation actually happened, and what’s more I’ve had hundreds of similar conversations over the years, either on the phone, over t’internet, or face to offended face. Admittedly the above example is a bit extreme, and is a level of offensiveness that I normally, but by no means exclusively, reserve for the likes of cold callers and religion pushers. As you have probably already surmised, I’m a swearer. I have no problem with swear words at all; in fact I quite like them. I like their expressive quality, I like the way that, as someone who often talks complete bollocks, they give me an extra bit of time to come up with something else to say, or try and remember a word that has chosen at that time to temporarily slip my mind. I particularly like the fact that some people get offended by swear words, and I have to admit that I take a perverse pleasure in offending those people, upping my swear quota whenever I’m around them. Yes I know this is rather malevolent, but I believe if someone is going to be offended by what is essentially just a sound then the fucking idiots are practically begging to be offended.
Language itself is an abstract creation, it’s completely made up, and words have no real meaning at all; only the meaning, or meanings that we attach to them, which will be different depending on your geographical location: in the US a fanny fart has no sexual context, and Australians would find it odd to wedge a thong between their arse cheeks. And it’s the same with swear words. I once worked with an Australian for whom everyone was a cunt. “That cunt’s my best friend.” “Are you cunts coming for a drink after work?” “He’s the funniest cunt I know”. For him the word cunt just meant “guy”, there was no malice or offence meant, and yes there were one or two people that didn’t like his use of the word and had a very uncomfortable time around him, but most just accepted it and got on with their lives, and I have to say, I quite liked the cunt.
Before anyone can take offence at a word they have to be taught that it’s offensive:
“So Olaf, today we are going to learn the word ‘shit’.”
“Shit? What does it mean sir?”
“In its strictest sense it means defecate, or to evacuate one’s bowels Olaf.”
“Okay sir I think I’ve got it; I shit in the toilet?”
“That’s it Olaf. But you can’t actually use the word ‘shit’ because it’s offensive and people will get upset. You can use the word ‘poo’ which means exactly the same thing but people don’t find it offensive.”
“But why is ‘shit’ offensive and not ‘poo’ if they mean exactly the same sir?”
“Er... Lesson over Olaf... Now fuck off.”
I’ve lived with the English language all 37 years of my life, and even I’m confused as to why some words are considered offensive when another word, which has exactly the same meaning, is perfectly acceptable; you can say ‘poo’ on the radio but you can’t say ‘shit’. I find myself getting increasingly frustrated when having a conversation with people who substitute or reverse swear words; “That’s bullcrap man and you know it, I don’t know what the kuff you’re trying to achieve but it’s all a pile of shizzle!”. And then there are the whisperers, the people who will use a swear word, but only very, very quietly. They’ll be happily talking away at a normal, audible volume, and then suddenly go into a whisper for one little syllable before returning to the previous volume to carry on the sentence as if nothing had happened; “...and it was at this point that I realised the shit was really going to hit the fan, so I left the fuckers to it.”
It gets even weirder when it comes to the written word. I know people who will happily say the word ‘fuck’ but when it comes to writing it the best they can manage is ‘f*ck’. What the fuck does f*ck mean? It’s unpronounceable, but my phone is full of text messages with such as f*ck, sh*t, c*nt, and w*nk in them. Worse still, there are people who don’t just stop at one asterisk; they just keep piling them on until the original word they were trying to convey is completely lost behind a wall of little non twinkling stars. There’s probably a mathematical formula which shows the amount of letters in a swear word substituted with asterisks being equal to the writer’s level of being a complete fucking twat.
Then there are people who claim that they just don’t like the sound of a word, and that’s the only reason they take offence, ‘cunt’ being the main victim of this kind of sound prejudice. I have to admit that this is a subject I’ve heard the comedian Richard Herring comment on, and he has a very valid point: These people who harbour a dislike for the word ‘cunt’ because of its sound never seem to carry that dislike over into other words that contain the ‘cunt’ sound, such as country or constable. And I never tire of getting such people flustered if, in the course of an innocent conversation, they happen to say “you can’t”, I will always reply with “What did you call me?” Their indignation of being accused of saying a swear word is, to me at least, of great amusement.
Language, in all its guises, is a wonderful invention, without it the human race would never have achieved the intellectual and technical level we are so proud of. So I suggest the next time you feel yourself getting offended or embarrassed about a swear word, just accept the sound as it is and make it mean something else in your head. That’s the beauty of abstract ideas.
In the end it turns out that swearing may not be big, but it most certainly is clever.
