I’ll be the first

to admit I swear like a sailor. God that metaphor is so overused. How about, I swear like I belong on a Bad Girls Club reunion? Or better yet, I swear like my mother.

Now, my mother is never one to hold back. She’s been swearing in front me since I can remember. So, whatever. Swears are just words, after all. Yes, people are going to say what a bad parent. How could she do that? Maybe it’s because it’s what I grew up with, but it doesn’t bother me that my mom swore in front of me. It doesn’t negate her telling me to say please and thank you, and honesty is the best policy, and treat others the way you want to be treated. To be honest, she taught me the worst word you could say is hate. Now that’s a word, if used correctly, I think carries a lot of value.

What do I mean by that? To paraphrase my freshman year English teacher, Shamus, words alone don’t have meaning. It’s how you use them that is powerful. For instance, if I’m writing a paper and I say “it was a fucking big party” or I say “it was a very big party” in the end I’ll have to cut out “fucking” and “very.” In this case, both the words are just as useless. So, why can’t my grammatically incorrect choice of word be “fuck” or “damn” instead of “very” or “a lot”. You see what I’m getting at? In the end it just shouldn’t matter that much.

I know. I know.

It’s a stretch for some people and maybe this post is simply my defending my use of word choice, and there’s no right answer. The debate will never be won. There is no right answer. Some people love swears, some don’t. The debate is akin to asking someone’s opinion about pineapple on pizza. There just is no objective correct or incorrect topping for a pizza. (For the record I fucking love pineapple on pizza.)

Back to Shamus’s argument, and my second example to back up my argument. If someone calls me a bitch. I’m only mildly offended. The word is terse. But alone it really doesn’t have much meaning. Or, rather, it has so many meanings it’s hard to know what the persons intent is. Am i bossy? Am I apathetic? Am I a female dog? You just don’t know without context. However, if someone says I’m a fat, selfish pig, who writes terribly, and has mommy issues. Chances are I’d be much more offended. In the latter, not one swear word was used, but, it hurts more.

Alone swear words, words in general, don’t mean anything. It’s the way we use them and shape our sentences that give them power. People say they like to save swear words so when they use them it has more shock value, but I’d like to think I’m able to create shock value through words with or without swears involved. The English language is colorful and the cool thing is it’s ever changing and each person can use the dictionary how they want.

Because I swear a lot, you may say I’m not be elegant, but isn’t that sort of overrated in 2018 anyway?

A topic for conversation. Would love to know people’s opinions.