Skip to main content

Cursing Takes Away from Message

As a child, a very strict policy on bad words was enforced upon me. I was forbidden from saying words such as stupid, shut up, that sucks, crap. My parents would not tolerate such foul language in our household. 
You can imagine my shock when I got to high school, hearing words much worse uttered casually in daily conversation. No repercussions were given to students who said them, and they did not seem to be bound by the rules I had grown up with. 
Of course, one gets used to it. We hear profanity on a daily basis, on the bus, in the halls, during lunch. People curse a lot–but it is time for high schoolers to tone down these obscenities.
I am not calling for a complete disownment of all curse words. If used correctly, they can alert people of your strong opinions on a subject and intense emotions. They can get people’s attention and draw them into what you are saying. But that is where the problem comes in–we are not using them the right way at all.
People swear so much that the words have practically lost their meaning. Their initial shock value decreases as we become accustomed to hearing them. Anyone who is constantly spewing profanity will not be taken seriously when they actually mean what is coming out of their mouth. It is people who rarely curse that make the largest impact when they do let an expletive fly.
It aggravates me to be hanging around someone who feels like they need profanity just to have a conversation. A valuable trait in life is to keep cool during tough situations, and if every little grievance causes someone to blow their lid off, I won’t think very highly of them. Neither will teachers, coaches, potential colleges or employers. Constantly repeating the same couple words makes someone seem uneducated, like they don’t have any other way to express their opinion. That’s not a great way to make a first impression.
An outpouring of expletives distracts from the overall message a person is trying to get across. All I can focus on are those words, and in the end I don’t listen to anything else the person says. I just hear the same thing over and over again.
Some people think bad words are a joke, but not everyone else feels that way. Cursing, along with using rude gestures, might seem funny to the person using them but offensive to the person on the receiving end. Whenever I hear profanity, I cringe, always a little appalled at what’s being said. It’s clear that people fail to remember what these words truly mean and just how offensive they are.
Oftentimes, the bad word is unnecessary to the point you are trying to make and should be eliminated whenever possible. That way, when you really mean it, people will listen to what you have to say. Swearing can temporarily vent your anger, sure, but in the long run, it does more harm than good. If you curse, someone is sure to be offended; if you don’t, nobody will be upset about the absence of obscenities from your vocabulary.
Anyone can say a bad word. It takes more strength to refrain from using them. Language can be powerful, but if it is used the wrong way, it can eventually lose its meaning, and a way to express yourself has been lost.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Almost Didn't Publish This

Enigmatic. Who knew that a word that literally means mysterious would help me solve a mystery I didn't even know existed. March 14, 2019. The hour had arrived to present our imaginary presidential candidate to students and admin in hopes of them electing ours over the other group's. It was the culmination of a month long AP gov project. Our group had scraped together a backstory, political stance, and campaign for this man--an African-American-to-appeal-to-liberals, male-to-appeal-to-conservatives man--Winfield Burnes couldn't fail us now. Our presentation went smoothly, as our group was well rehearsed, until the questions. "How is your candidate different from your opponent's?" Unsurprisingly, our liberal-heavy class had run eerily similar candidates; it seemed as though the only difference between them was their gender and the color of their skin. The opposing group went first. "Our candidate is charismatic, hard working, intelligent, enigma...
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm Tired of Being Tired

For the past three weeks, I've been tired. Not the ‘I got 4 hours of sleep’ tired, or the ‘I’m so stressed I’m about to cry’ tired. It’s more of the ‘I want to sleep all day, and when I wake up I’m still tired’ variety. And well, now that there’s not much else to do, sleeping is how I keep busy. I sleep. All day. I wake up incredibly tired, so I go right back to it. Yes, I have things I should be doing, but I just say, ‘tomorrow will be the day,’ and resume my slumber. I do nothing except play the piano an hour a day and maybe Animal Crossing if I’m feeling really ambitious. I might go for a twenty minute run before I give up and return to my bed. Then I read Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. It was for an assignment for college, and yes, something I had put off by napping. However, I became hooked as I read. I felt as if it were written just for me. Most importantly, the book helped me come to a realization. In the book, there is a part where Brené includes writing from one o...
Post a Comment
Read more

What do I want?

Now that I’m in high school, everyone’s favorite question is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ve answered a million different things: doctor, journalist, lawyer, therapist, PR officer, neuroscientist; the honest answer is, I don’t know. But if I tell people that, they just give me a look of unconcealed disappointment. It’s been drilled into our heads that we need to take the classes that align with our desired career paths in order to be successful. If you want to be a doctor, Biomed and AP Bio is the way to go. Or if being an author has been your dream since you learned how to write, you should take classes like Creative Writing and AP Comp. But what if you don’t know what you want to be? What then? There is so much unnecessary pressure to know exactly who you want to be right now. But the thing is, high school can still be a fruitful experience despite not taking all of the classes that “go with” what you want to do. This is a time to experiment, to see what ...
Post a Comment
Read more