Ever since my eighth-grade honors English class, I have been in love with the English language. In that class, I learned Shakespeare, grammar and an appreciation for the structure of the language. My skin now crawls when a person butchers the most basic grammatical rules, and I have become a self-appointed grammar police officer, correcting and chastising language-abusers whenever possible.
But now I am assaulted with another offense to the English language that even a whole squad of grammar police couldn't correct. Maybe I could excuse it if the problem were as simple as ending sentences with prepositions or using double negatives, but the new offense is much worse: swearing.
As much as I am ashamed of it, in my lifetime I have been known to swear when I get upset. But if these language slips come only occasionally, I think they can be excused. What I really have a problem with is people who replace all adjectives and adverbs with the f-word.
It seems as though I can't walk down the hall or pass through the parking lot without hearing the f-word casually dropped into a sentence, whether it replaces an exclamation point or serves as a pause in the middle of the sentence.
For example, I was walking into school at 8:23 in the morning when a group of boys in front of me was discussing some macho topic. One boy was spouting off about one thing or another, and for what seemed like an eternity, he was able to drop the big f-bomb in every other word. At first, I was amazed he was able to repeat the same word so often without even pausing for a breath for air. But I also had to question the strength and depth of his vocabulary. Couldn't he find another word to express how he felt? Were his friends as offended as I?
His friends might have lost all sensitivity to swearing and probably weren't upset about this creative individual's use of the f-word. The reason for the f-word's popularity is people's ability to adapt it to any part of speech. It becomes a noun or an adjective or an adverb, or a verb or an exclamation. In music, movies and magazines, the f-word is shouted, sung or quoted so many times people don't even notice anymore. It's almost unusual to watch a video on MTV where there isn't a portion blanked out because of the language.
Now, censorship is rotten, and I certainly respect the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. But self-censorship is a great option for people who find themselves swearing too often. Instead of flying the big f-bird, grab a thesaurus and find another word to describe whatever event warrants the f-word. It's a superlatively great idea.