CURSES!

I want to talk today about curse words. I have never particularly been a fan of these words, but they have always intrigued me. Before you jump down my throat I will include the disclaimer here, in case my Bishop or someone is reading this and wondering, that I do not use or condone the use of swear words. I also apologize because I just went through this and it isn't very funny. If that is a problem you can stop reading now if you want.

Growing up, profanities, like many things, confused me. What was it about these words that made them so much worse than other words? I mean, I understood that swear words referred to things that were vulgar, but I also understood that while words like "poop" only drew funny faces and mild reprimands whereas other, less repeatable words sparked a frenzy like I'd never before seen. Words were words to me, and out of a list of several that meant the same thing, for some reason one was unacceptable.

Looking at them now, from the perspective of an English major, I understand that these words not only mean bad things, some are insanely insulting and others take sensitive subject matter and present it in a way that is much too casual. Not only that but they also sound ugly. While these words mean they same thing as other words, they portray them in a way that draws out strong emotions. And that is mainly the way that curse words are used today. They are all about the shock and awe and not so much about the meaning or content. Essentially they are the Ozzy Osbourne of one's vocabulary.

People today swear because they associate the strong feelings tied to these words with the passion of their argument, or because they mistake the shock value for humor. To me, swear words are the lazy and unintelligent way to emphasize or bring emotion to what you are trying to say. They are like sentence steroids, amping up the feeling and emphasis of the sentence, while sacrificing what really makes feeling and emphasis important.

It is possible to beef up your sentence without these performance enhancers, but it requires people to actually study the English language a bit, and to exercise their communication skills. For some reason this makes people defensive more than anything I know of. If you correct somebody's math they laugh and comment about how much they hate math, or about how bad they are at it. Correct their English and they react the same as if you'd personally dug up their dog and used it's corpse to wash your car. I have probably already offended tons of people with my unapologetic criticism of vulgarians. I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE TRUTH! I will apologize if I offended people though, because that really was not my intention. I guess what I am trying to say is that the next time you are tempted to swear, ask yourself what you could say that would be more intelligent and meaningful. I guarantee that there is something.