10
Apr
Swearing
I guess I have to make this clear before things go down the path of no return: absolutely no swearing is allowed.
I know that I used to swear a lot while doing my national service: it brings cold comfort when the worst things happen, and everything just goes wrong: like when you lose your job, your girlfriend leaves you after taking all your life’s savings and selling your house, and your friends start taunting you for being a loser - that is the time to swear. It brings out the survivor in you, which somehow keeps your fighting spirit up so that you’ll keep at it. Curse your ex-boss to slip on the wet floor at the lift lobby, your girlfriend to lose all that money she stole from you in the stock market, and to kick the royal _____ out of your friends. You soon feel better.
Citing obligatorily from statistics in yesterday’s papers (coincidentally, some reporter took the trouble to find out the exact number of people who swore at any time of their lives — which I take to be filler so that they can avoid writing feature articles about the opposition parties in Singapore), 66% out of surveyed admitted to swearing. A psychaitrist decided to state the obvious: “the other 33% are lying”.
Given the prevalence of swearing, and the so-oft-quoted “freedom of speech” mantra that many use to justify swearing, my “no-swear” policy on this site seems to go against my own ideals.
I don’t think so. I feel that restraint from vulgarities is a culture in itself (alright, a small sub-culture), given that you see people swearing freely everywhere; and a worthy habit to indulge in. Whereas you might swear enough to make an old sailor blush, why not set aside an area in your life where you swear not to swear (pun intended)? That way, it forces one to actually process the words in your brain before even typing it out.
You don’t have to believe me, but you can take a leaf from online communities: most flame threads come about because somebody didn’t take the effort to think about what they write, and in doing so caused constructive discussion to turn into an online war zone, absolutely thrashing the discussion value.
Swearing may be acceptable, but it will never be a good habit.
[tags]swearing, vulgarities[/tags]
on April 11th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
I think this is a very well written article.I think army regulars (I don’t know about Navy,Airforce,Police,SCDF and other conscript units) shouldn’t use vulgarities in their work.It will only give the citizens that using vulgarities is right and its encouraged because the authorities themselves is using.Mere vulgarities will break friendship,relationships,ties with relatives because in some cases it distorts what the swearer is trying to tell the swearee(haha) and if any tourists won’t have a good impression of the social capital in singapore upon hearing those vulgarities.I hope someone will do something about vulgarities in the army ( and whatever conscript units that are encouraging the use of vulgarities)
on April 11th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Actually, I have nothing against vulgarities per se, it is just that I made it a personal policy to disallow it here because of the reasons I listed above.
I feel that like anger, vulgarities are good when used in moderation; they won’t be as effective if you are saying them all the time.
Vulgarities shouldn’t break friendship, as far as I know, because as I mentioned, I swore quite a fair bit during my time in the army, and it has come to a stage where all the commanders and men use it at the last stage of service as an endearment. Unusual usage, but it tickles me quite a bit.
Another reason why I won’t allow swearing here is due to the nature of the written media: it is hard to convey feelings properly: was the vulgarity used in jest, or was it intentionally used as an insult? Just like how sarcarsm is better felt rather than seen.