Swearing Is Good for You

In a fascinating little book titled in this blog post, Emma Byrne lays out "the amazing science of bad language." The two blurbs on the back cover of the book are more than enough to gain a reader's attention. 

"A good book about bad language by a trash-talkimg woman? Sign me up! Swaring Is Good for You makes science feel downright celebratory." Mary Norris, best selling author of Between You and Me.

"I"m evangelical in my defense of swearing, not just on the grounds of freedom of expression, but because swearing is beneficial to us both as individuals and as a species. Is this book an attempt to justify rudeness and aggression? Not at all. I certainly wouldnt want profanities to become commonplace: swearing needs to maintain its emotional impact in order to become effective. So I'm not necessarily encouraging people to swear more, but I do hope they'll give swearing the respect it fucking deserves.  --From the Introduction.

THe chapter on swearing and the workplace is especially helpful. Swearing is first and foremost rhetorical--talk-oriented, not just mental or scientific. The implication of that statement was that I used swearing strategically, especially when I was new to a client firm. Some were aware that I had been a pastor and seminary professor. I was especially aware that some thought a bit of business naivete went with those roles so I intended to address that potential upfront with some well chosen expletives. Narratives are fundamental to selling consulting services. So I regularly inserted an expletive or two in the narrative, finding that such language quickly resolved any potential for naivete. My favorites were references to a "shitty process" or an individual being a "fucking asshole." I moved quickly to selling my exceptional awareness to executive clients, finding absolutely no resistance after my easy flight into the colorful. I found the occasional use of colorful language to be especially redemptive and enlightening. I also decided, early on, that people who were bothered by an occasional expletive were limited in options and lacked interest in development. I found them lacking in humanness--and in religious settings to be quite narrow and closed to serious progressive thinking.

All in all, I'm very definitely a curator of language. That's true not only of my swearing but of the huge bulk of my writing and conversing.

For my examples of rhetorical thinking about swearing, you'll find my blog about words as magic focused on the issue. Still another blog surfaces expletives from the edge of the cliff. In an earlier blog, I commented that if you're going to label someone with an expletive, do it accurately whether assholes, jerks or bullshitters. Because of the expurgated biblical, few are aware that whenever St Paul asks a rhetorical question, he inevitably answers it with "me genito," which is essentially "hell no." The Old Testament is filled rather seriously with swearing, the cursing of others--in numerous formats. It shows up regularly in the stock phrase "cursed be...." The only time I've heard cursing like that is by racists inveighing against blacks, latinos and immigrants. Plenty churchgoers feel quite free to say things like that about outsiders, but not he or she's a "fucking asshole" about insiders.

The gesture in the attached picture is quite verbal--signifying rather clearly, "fuck you." Even to the unitiated.

But it can also be used in jest. I once walked out of a conversation with the highest placed woman in 3M (EVP of Health Care Division, a six billion dollar business at the time), and laughing, I turned at the  door and gave her the finger. She howled with laughter, letting me know that no consultant had ever given her the finger. She called me right back into her 40 foot office, still laughing--and gave me another $100,000 of development business. It was a deeply appreciated, gutsy, strategic act on my part.