Someone has been doing research into swearing. Well, I suppose everything needs studying at some point. Anyway, here’s a sample of what they found:
“So it’s farewell to bloody Nora. The f-word has become Britain’s most popular swearword, overtaking “bloody”, as the nation’s use of expletives has dropped over the past two decades, a linguistics study has found.
Data on the use of 16 swearwords in the 1990s and the 2010s shows the f-word was the most frequently used, taking the title from “bloody” which was beaten into third place by “shit”.
The study, by Dr Robbie Love at Aston University, found there was a 27% drop in swearing in Britain over the 20-year period, down from 1,822 to 1,320 swearwords per million.
Men still swear more than women, and swearing still peaks in people’s 20s and declines thereafter, Love found.”
Now, I wonder about the statement that swearing declines later in life. Of course, it may be that as people have children they consciously control their swearing. But I wonder if the real truth is that the older the people studied are the more likely they are to have grown up at a time when swearing was less socially acceptable. As a child I don‘t think I heard the f-word at all. Then it became the swear word of extreme circumstances. Now it’s peppered all over sentences like confetti at a wedding!
In general we seem to have become ruder in our use of language. Time was nobody, or almost nobody, used certain words in writing, even if they had no qualms in actual speech. Tweeting has put a stop to that. This morning I saw a report of an MP tweeting that someone was “an arse”. 1. That was an MP and 2. when did “arse” become a synonym for “idiot”?
Still on language, I came across the term “bedroom community” as I skimmed the news online this morning. This was in a report about a small town somewhere in the USA which had been flooded out completely some years ago. 90+% of the houses were beyond repair. A local landowner offered to sell a patch of land to the community so they could rebuild the town above the flood plain. They took a vote and decided to go ahead, with some help from the government and, lo and behold, the little town is now thriving. It’s not every community that could afford to this but this was a “bedroom community”, with little industry in the town and most residents commuting daily to well paid jobs in the nearest city. So basically a “bedroom community” is American for a “dormitory suburb”. Or as Webster’s dictionary told me:
Definition of bedroom community
: a small community that has no major industries and that is lived in by people who go to another town or city to work
They live in a bedroom community just outside of the city.
There you go!
Still in the USA, there appears to be a bit of controversy going on about the nicknames that American football teams use. The Washington Football Team used to be known as The Redskins, but changed their name in line with Black Lives Matter. They were originally called The Braves, back in 1932 but changed the name a year later. They have a “fight song” (which seems to me a rather aggressive term for a team song) called “Hail to the Redskins”, which maybe they can’t sing any longer. Many team names seem to reflect something to do with the history of the district they come from: The Dallas Cowboys, The Pittsburg Steelers, The California 49ers, and so on.
The problems not confined to professional teams: high school teams also have their nicknames and people are agitating for names that refer to the First Nations should be changed as they are offensive and condescending to some of the students in the high schools. The teams are often willing to change but …. “
“Many school boards try to work towards positive change,” one spokesperson said, “but the older alumni and community members harass and bully them till they give in.”
And so the debate rumbles on. So many questions about how we use language.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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