When I was a little boy my mother washed my mouth out with soap for saying a bad word — probably one I had overheard from my father.
I am not proud to report that the mouth-washing discipline — common in those days — had no long term effects.
When I started school I learned some more curse words and, to be honest, still let some slip today, especially on the golf course and watching Ole Miss football on television.
I was careful, though, to refrain from cussing in the presence of my mother. And even now I try to restrain my off color language to places it won’t offend someone.
Given my more than occasional lapse into the use of off color words, though, I’m probably not the best person to criticize others for using them.
But it seems that language today that is common in movies, books, rap music, sports stadiums, parking lots and in almost all public venues, unless it is a church, is so bad there isn’t enough soap in the land to cleanse the mouths of those who utter profane and gutter language where everyone can hear it.
Cursing in the White House isn’t new, as evidenced by recordings and other reports about past presidents. Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson immediately come to mind.
But having it immediately broadcast as it was recently when rapper Kanye West and retired professional football player Jim Brown met with President Trump perhaps did break some new ground on inappropriate language if, in fact, there is any new ground.
West, in a 10-minute rant, that mostly didn’t make a lot of sense, said among other things: “Trump is on his hero’s journey right now. He might not have thought he’d have a crazy (expletive deleted) like me.”
Judging from the rest of his rambling remarks, as well as some of those in the past, it’s hard to argue against the accuracy of the “crazy” part of West’s discourse.
Give him credit, though, He’s one of the few people to ever upstage Trump.
One definition of profanity is socially unacceptable language. In today’s society there may not be any such thing.
In fact you can go to the internet and find numerous articles making the case that swearing is even beneficial.
Dr. Emma Byrne, a computer scientist, has even written a book entitled “Swearing Is Good for You.”
The benefits of swearing, she and others suggest, include relieving stress and reducing pain. A theory they advance is that cursing helps trigger your "fight or flight" response, which raises the heart rate and pumps more adrenaline through the body—two physiological responses that make humans more tolerant of pain.
A 2016 Time Magazine article reported on academia studying the use of off color language, also reaching conclusions that swearing can be beneficial to the human psyche in some instances: Relieve tension, make you feel better, that sort of thing.
“If you don’t study this kind of language,” psychologist Timothy Jay was quoted in the article, “you’re missing an important part of being a human.”
During his career at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Jay has recorded and analyzed thousands of people swearing, and he’s come up with two core reasons for why we do it, Time reported. For one, it allows us to express our emotions, to vent, to release. “It also communicates very effectively, almost immediately, our feelings,”
Actually, for me it may have the opposite effect. When I swear I don’t feel good about it. Maybe it’s because of my Baptist upbringing and a mother who didn’t tolerate it from her children in her presence.
I don’t still taste the soap, but whatever brand she used wasn’t very appetizing.
Reach Charlie Dunagin at cdunagin@enterprise-journal.com.
