I stumbled upon this title on the Learning Blogs, NY times and this really captured my attention because the role of curse words has often been a topic for debate. While curse words have become somewhat a staple in pop culture through the means of music and TV using a curse word is still something I haven’t normalised for myself perhaps because the environment of swearing created by my parents at home. My mother swears quite a lot so the odd time I swear she doesn’t say anything. My dad on the other hand never swore and with as little words as possible I learnt not to swear. While on TV and in music cursing has lost its shock value as it’s become increasingly common I feel it still has some value in real life. Even though curse words have become a part of everyday language as it is used to emphasis how people feel or if they have forgotten something.

While I do frequently indulge in music with heavy swearing I feel too embarrassed to play it in front of my parents or anyone older. I feel like swearing shouldn’t be used with everyone and everywhere even though we all see it on media. But the shock factor of swearing definitely depends on the context. Personally when swearing is used in a conversation it is only slightly shocking and alarming but in the media it’s just a bit pretentious. However I disagree with swearing being used in formal settings, such as newspapers. I feel a few curse words in such a small text decreases the level of writing. While in books a few swear words in a few hundred pages only helps to aid the writer with their words. Another thing I’ve found is they swear words have really replaced detailed paragraphs day to day which is quite disappointing for me. It has helped ‘slang’ language form a new way of speaking English which I don’t really appreciate but I know many others do.

It’s a trend that is mostly harmless and for some quite exciting that has become a part of this generation. Limiting curse words in media could be viewed by some as a limitation to express their selves which is what lots of social media has really become about so that wouldn’t work. I still hold my ground and say we should keep cursing out of formal situations in order for people, especially the younger generations to understand it isn’t always acceptable behaviour.

I don’t believe there should be an age where children should be allowed to swear because if they are constantly hearing those words in the house from older family members it will only want to make them want to swear more and thus when they are older they will use swearing a lot in their conservations. That being said I don’t agree they all ages should be allowed to swear. I feel instead of being told you can swear when you are older they should be steered away from swearing. That’s the approach my parents took, they enforced that their were better ways to talk that didn’t involve swearing. At least for me, this meant I didn’t want to swear as much when I was older. I feel swearing and respect are intertwined. We can use everyday with our friends but we shouldn’t with our parents because we have a different sort of relationship with that with a different sort of respect.