Frack and other replacement words.
Scott Adams has a provocative post today, “Frack“, on his Dilbert Blog. Scott points out that parents let their kids ride their bike in the street, but protect them from hearing curse words. Inferring that being hit by a car is likely to result in less injury to the child than hearing a curse word, Scott goes on to wonder about first aid for a child injured by hearing a curse word.
The problem with letting kids hear curse words is similar in some ways to letting adults hear curse words. The more people that use the words, the more usage increases. When a person uses the F-word or any replacement word (’f-bomb’, frack, flame, etc.) it gives a bit of permission for others to use it, too.
When a child hears such a curse word (other other forms of social misbehavior, including inappropriate words, language, and gossip), they will have to use it in some inappropriate ways to learn what the rules of ‘polite’ usage are. And they will be punished for misuses. This is called ’setting the kids up for failure’. In addition there is the matter of public image. The public at large considers children that use rude language to come from a rude home, and treats both parents and kids as being rude, and often as if they were ignorant. So parental pride requires suppressing their children’s usage of curse words.
The problem with the words themselves are that they are rude. Few people become better persons with stronger character and better social adaptation because they hear a curse word. Our interest in helping others find more happiness is what should be reducing our readiness to use ‘bad’ words.
Most pressure to avoid using the the f-word over any of it’s poetic or colorful replacement words is shallow pride, “I don’t use bad language!” The reality is that any replacement word brings the same connotation to the communication. Thus, you still say the same thing. That also goes with ‘dag nabbit’, ‘dog gone’, ’shucky darn’, etc. which are replacement words for a phrase, depending on usage and belief of the speaker, as a prayer to curse the listener, blasphemy, or an immoderate usage of someone else’s religious symbols and beliefs. The word you use expresses exactly the same meaning; avoiding the ‘heavy weight’ base words will get you past the computer and human ‘word checkers’, but you have still cursed. And now you feel that you have cursed in a ‘polite’ way. Which is it? Is the curse the important thing, or the fact that you cursed by implying the curse and hiding it in flowering (deceptive) coverings?
I find that one ‘replacement’ word that generally works well, is ‘la!’ As in ‘Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do!’ La is recognizable to most people that have seen the Sound of Music, or encountered the term in music education. You can express “La!” with any amount or kind of emotion you wish, and people readily perceive what you are expressing. The big difference is that “la” isn’t rude, you won’t have to apologize for using it (unless you were supposed to remain silent), and it doesn’t distract from communications by introducing innuendoes of unrelated topics (such as frack and other replacement words imply).
Like TV and radio commercials, and to some extent short-short stories, one-liner jokes, and newspaper ‘new’ stories, the short, jarring interruption of thought of the expletive will derail the flow of thought around it. This breaks concentration, it interferes with concentration, decreases patience, and disrupts thought about the surrounding concept or task. Perhaps instead of calling curse words ‘foul language’ or ‘bad words’, we should call them ‘annoying distractions’, ‘communication errors’, or ‘linqual terrorism’. Rude language.