06-20-2015, 03:53 AM
Modern day etiquette lesson.
Quote:Etiquette and swearing… They probably seem to be a bit of a mismatch don’t they? After all a gentleman never swears, right? Well, wrong actually. Of course we all swear, even if only rarely. Don’t try to pretend that you don’t now. The difference is knowing how to swear.
Firstly, one must understand when not to swear
– Never swear within earshot of your elders, including those you know well.
– Never swear within earshot of children.
– Never swear within earshot of strangers (men and women).
– Never swear in front of those in authority.
– Never swear in front of those you know to have strong aversions to bad language.
– Never swear in a place of worship.
Once upon a time one would have added ‘never swear in front of a lady’, but times change and we all know many ladies swear as often as us fellows now – if not more so!
These rules are critical to the art of swearing. Dear old Mrs Miggins simply doesn’t want to hear your profanities as she goes about her delicate life.
There is also another, more subtle rule, which is:
– Never swear at someone, only with someone. So swearing should not be used to insult, abuse, harass or demean other people.
So when can you swear? What do I mean by swearing with someone?
You can swear with yourself. By that I mean you can let out a loud ‘FFS’ when you’ve just dropped a heavy weight on your foot, providing you’re not within earshot of any elderly ladies and the heavy weight isn’t a church pew!
You can also swear with friends, providing it is done correctly. Someone once said that swearing should be used as an exclamation mark, not as a comma. In other words it should be used sparingly and for effect only. We might live an age of people using multiple exclamation marks in their writing, but that doesn’t mean that using an expletive every single sentence. Swearing should be used rarely and for emphasisonly.
For example, here using the word ‘bloody’, but feel free to interchange with other well-known expletives… you know which ones:
“ Please don’t lose this ” – Polite, respectful, I’ll try not lose it.
“ Don’t bloody lose this ” – Okay, I really know you don’t want me to lose this!
Swearing also needs to fall in the correct part of the sentence:
“ Shall we move on? I can’t bloody hear a thing in this place ” – Wrong. You are emphasising ‘hear’. So not only can you not hear, you can’t bloody hear… What does that mean? A verb should not be emphasised.
“ Shall we move on? I can’t hear a bloody thing in this place ” – Correct. Not only can you not hear a thing, you can’t hear a bloody thing. A noun, for effect, can be emphasised.
You can also swear to place emphasis on adjectives:
“ How big was it? ” “ It was enormous” – Oh, must be big.
“ How big was it? ” “ It was bloody enormous” – It really must be enormous!
You can also use common swearing parlance among friends, if infrequent. The phrases ‘to be hacked off’, ‘to have completely messed up’ or ‘to have made a total idiot of oneself’ can have the words ‘hacked’, ‘messed’ and ‘idiot’ exchanged for stronger language. Again, the expletives here are used for emphasis.
Stick to the rules though. One should really only use profanity sparingly and not within earshot of anyone you don’t know or who might take offence by it.
