!@*&^%! What is with ALL THAT *&^% SWEARING?!

Certainly, at one point or another, your parents, your teachers, other adults, your peers, or even yourself, have asked that question, and in some cases, you've asked that very question with the *&^%$#@! included.

It is one of THE MOST paradoxical things in this universe, present in ALL cultures. Everybody says it's taboo, sort of like KKKursing, (sorry, stammered) and yet, even the most educated will at times vociferate one of these. (Variations of 'fuck' and 'shit' are pretty popular) Every language, every culture has these. Don't believe me? Head over here (*Attention linked page unfortunately contains sexually explicit advertisements.) Hell, even fictitious universes have them. Good examples are "gorram[it]" from Firefly, and "mudblood" from Harry Potter.
(There are categories and nuances depending on racial religious or visceral reference, but hey, this ain't a gorram classroom. Enough to get you laughing is sufficient.)

Punching a guy in the face: (my way of saying get to the point)

Why do we swear like drunken pirates?


-Instinctive response to something painful and/or surprising and/or emotional. According to researchers, it's an outlet for our emotions; in the same category as crying. (Some people do both at the same time to blow off steam twice as fast.)

-Social Interaction (establishes group identity, express solidarity, express trust/intimacy, adds humor/emphasis, and camouflages fear/gives courage)

Of course, censors exist in an attempt to spare young and innocent ears from the ravage. Regardless, as someone I know has said before, what doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable. Dictionaries usually don't include these words of questionable decency. The government can censor certain things in the media. (The freedom of speech right has that convenient loophole.) Unfortunately (or fortunately) fuck, shit, crap, damn, etc. etc. do filter down and to everybody who can hear. Believe it or not, even deaf people do swear in sign language for the same reasons, and deaf people with Tourette's syndrome, or more specifically Coprolalia, have be known to swear EXCESSIVELY using sign language, just as if they could speak. On average, you are 4 times as likely to remember a swear word than any other word. Perhaps that's the reason why when you start learning a language, you tend to start with swears and I quote [in indian accent]:

"You fucking blowjob!" -Russell Peters

So we've established that swearing is wrong, but a fact of life. What annoys me to the point that "ça me fais chier" is the french people at our school. Allow me to elaborate. By 'french people', I mean the people who speak french as their birth tongue.

I quote:

Ay! Parle donc en francais 'stie d'Anglais. [I ignore him]
Les fucken Anglais...[walks away]

Hey, who's the one using an English swear word? Why don't cha invent yer own bloody swears mate? How about otaritoi?

All in all, swearing doesn't bother me too much. [Take that as you like.] I find it adds color to one's message. Swearing, when appropriate, is a great to get your audience's attention or to motivate them. However, I don't really like people swearing to insult, but, if that's as creative as they can get , so be it. Some people are lower on the creativity scale, whaddya want. If you gotta say S.O.B. or "fag" instead of something like "baboon's asscrack" or, "You are the cause of trauma to my lower posterior abdomen" or "get the hell outta the gene pool now!", go right ahead; you'll just be a lot duller to listen to.

EXCESSIVE swearing does (ahem) piss me off. It is not normal that apart from the subject ex: I, every other word is a swear. French people at CSL do seem to do it more often. The overuse of "fucking" for emphasis is crazy. Worse is the accent which makes "fucking" become "fucken". Used as in "c'est fucken bon".
There is a time and place to use swear words for emphasis or anger/stress relief. Choose wisely and they'll be an asset. Overuse 'n abuse, and you cause entire societies to use these words everyday, every hour, every minute, in every fucking sentence!

Your criteria of the proper time and place to insert a fuck, or a shit or a sonuvabitch does, thankfully, shrink as you age.


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facts on swearing gathered from

Wilson, Tracy V. "How Swearing Works." 30 November 2005. HowStuffWorks.com. 08 April 2009.