Swear words: who gives a s#%*?

Bunker KingContributorThere’s a subject that a lot of people at Samo have been touchy about for a long time – swear words. Most teachers either don’t allow them to be said in the classroom, or they have taken vows of profanity silence. However, I’d like to take a moment to talk about why this is a ****ing bad plan.For the purposes of this article, I’d like to begin by establishing the difference between hateful language and profanity. Hateful language is directed at one specific group of people. Homophobic and racist slurs are the most common types, although it is not rare to hear sexist talk thrown around. Profanity, on the other hand, doesn’t discriminate. As a major proponent of profanity, I’m offended when people draw comparisons between curse words and intentionally discriminatory language. Profanity, unlike hate speech, does not target a specific person or group. Even when profanity is being used as an insult, it’s in an all-inclusive way. Profanity doesn’t give a flying **** about ethnicity or gender. And if you use words of prejudice, then you’re one of the saddest pieces of **** seen outside of a toilet.Some teachers do make it a point to embrace profanity in the classroom, and their lack of fear in using profanity, while simultaneously making themselves more relatable, is an inspiration to the community and more American than hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Joking aside, teachers who let out the occasional cuss word show a level of respect for their students by choosing not to patronizingly filter themselves around us “kids.” Although those special teachers uniformly declined to comment for this article out of fear of administrative retribution, their defense of free speech is admirable.There are two major arguments against profanity that I’d like to try my hand at countering:1. Swear words are detrimental to the development of a student’s communication skills.2. Swear words are slowly destroying the English language.On the first: since people seem unaware of the significance of swear words as utilities in the human language, let’s have a grammar lesson. This is school, after all.Swear words serve many important functions in speech and conversation. The f-word alone has numerous different meanings depending on the context it was used in or the prefix/suffix attached to it (f*** - verb; f***er/f***head/motherf***er - noun; abso-f***ing-lutely - interjection; etc.) The most well known function of the f-word — or any other swear word, for that matter — is for emphasis. Swear words are, along with pitch and volume, the equivalent of bold, italics and underlining in text when it comes to getting connotation across. Sarcasm simply wouldn’t be the same without the timeless phrase, “No ****, Sherlock.” It would be considerably harder to tell other people that you are unimpressed with their level of intelligence without sounding like a pretentious ****head. Samuel L. Jackson would be out of a job. To restrict such an important component of language is not only criminal, but just ****ing rude.On the second, that profanity is destroying the English language … I’m going to try to remain calm.Let me just take a moment to see if I understand this properly. You’re fine with swoll, bae, turnt, cray, ratchet (used as an adjective), fire (also used as an adjective), heat (Jesus Christ, these are all nouns, what the hell), swag (threw up in my mouth there), anything that happens in text messages or the complete rewrite of the word ‘literally’ because people kept misusing it. But swear words cross the line? I’m a part of the generation that’s developed this new grab-bag of nonsensical phrases and altered words, and I had to ask the kid who wears nothing but capri shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and whatever the hell a “lum snapback” is what they meant, and he just laughed and said I was being “humes.” I hate to sound like my grandfather, but at this point it isn’t even English.Although one has to appreciate the … ahem … creativity of recent slang words, it’s important to note the key word there: recent. Although ‘bae’ may be more prominent in a teenager’s lexicon, it can’t overshadow the significance of words that have existed for centuries in some of the most influential pieces of English literature the world has ever seen. The word **** (right, that’s censored… Your hint is, ‘shares three letters with aunt’) alone shows up in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Burns … The list I found on Wikipedia goes on. We look up to these figures because of their use of the written language, yet critique and censor the few words arbitrarily deemed unacceptable by society?History may prove me wrong, but I seriously doubt that the word “mish” (Seriously. What the **** does that ... No. Just no.) is going to be showing up in this generation’s answer to “The Canterbury Tales” and “Othello.” This is a school that teaches English and history. Why would we sacrifice the legions of words that a few children have deemed archaic and useless, but allow an entirely different language to seep into our studies? I’m already taking Japanese, and I struggle with English as it is. Let’s let the language as we know it — and I mean the entire language — flourish.I defend the swear word not because I appreciate being vulgar, distasteful and contradictory (even though I am all of those things). I defend the swear word because I believe that in this day and age of National Security Agency (NSA)  screenings, excessive political correctness and the fact that it’s 20-***ing-15, we should be able to say simple profanity. And complex profanity.So, moral of the story – let me speak my mind, in whatever f****** words I want to.