Potentially offensive — British swearing
Many people, myself included, shared this table on social media last week.
Now I’ve finally got around to taking proper a look at the report it came from I’m quite impressed. It’s a decent bit of research and tells quite a lot about the general lack of exposure to abusive language amongst those who watch TV. Well done broadcasters!
Here’s the full report.
It has a few interesting tables, and of course lists of naughty words! Here’s a table I quite liked-
I guess all cultures try to protect their children from bad language, indeed I expect some still wish, as was the case 50 or so years ago in the UK, to protect their women-folk. Yes this really happened -
When the full unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published by Penguin Books in Britain in 1960, the trial of Penguin under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was a major public event and a test of the new obscenity law. The 1959 act had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit. One of the objections was to the frequent use of the word “fuck” and its derivatives. Another objection related to the use of the word “cunt”.
At the trial, the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it were the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read”.
Anyway, I digress, since my childhood, and for all I know much earlier the ‘official’ bed time for British children has been 9pm. I have no idea why; though when I was young this was when the BBC TV national news was broadcast.
How and when to swear
Swearing on TV is of course used largely for comedic or dramatic purposes. In real life it’s not necessarily used in the same way. As I noted earlier swearing in literature was considered by some to be acceptable for educated men, but not others. Maybe that’s still the case, either way, I offer this link to a guide on how to swear-
You need to be on top of this stuff. ‘Arse’ isn’t swearing any more. Your arse is just your arse. ‘Shit’ remains a bit sweary, but has mainly become a perfectly routine term for either ‘not good’ or actual faeces. If you want to keep it properly rude, add the Celtic e and make it ‘shite’. ‘Shite’ remains a great word. ‘Fucked’ means broken, or otherwise damaged. That is all. Even if something is broken as a result of actual sex (a bed, say), this is mere coincidence; there are no such connotations.
