fuck.uk.com

Why we shouldn't

The case for keeping it in reserve

This is not a page about being prim. It is a page about the fact that a tool this useful is worth looking after, and that using it on other people is not the same as using it for yourself.

1. You wear it out

Everything on the previous page depends on the word being taboo. The pain relief, the venting, the comedy, the honesty signal: all of it comes from the shock. Stephens's own follow-up research found that people who swear many times a day get much less analgesic benefit from swearing than people who rarely do. Habitual users have spent the word. If every sentence has a "fucking" in it, the word has become "very", and when you actually hit your thumb with the hammer you have nothing left to say.

The people who use it best, from Dunbar to Armando Iannucci, use it precisely. Frequency is the enemy of precision.

2. Your audience did not consent

Swearing among friends is a bond. Swearing at strangers, or in front of them, is different: you have decided on their behalf that they are the kind of people who do not mind. Many do mind, for reasons that are not silly. Older people, people from religious communities, people for whom English is a second language and who hear the word at its full literal strength, people who associate it with a violent home. The word carries its history with it. A good general rule is that swearing is something you do with people, not at or near them, and if you do not know which it is, it is probably the second.

3. Children copy everything

Children pick up swear words by about the age of two and have a fairly complete repertoire by the time they start school, largely from parents. They also learn exactly which words get a reaction. There is no good evidence that hearing the word harms a child, but there is very good evidence that a five-year-old who says it in a Reception classroom will cause trouble for themselves and for you. Teaching a child that the word exists is unavoidable. Teaching them that it is ordinary, and then expecting them to know when it is not, is asking a lot of a five-year-old.

4. At work, it is a gamble

Research on swearing in the workplace is mixed. Within an established team it builds solidarity. Outside that team, and especially upward or towards customers, it is read as a loss of control and a lack of respect. British employment tribunals have upheld dismissals for swearing at managers and have also overturned them where swearing was the office norm, so the only reliable rule is that the norm is set by the room, not by you. Email and messaging platforms are worse still, because tone does not travel and a screenshot lasts for ever.

5. It escalates

Directed at a person, the word does not release aggression, it transmits it. "Fuck off" is not venting, it is an attack, and the reliable response to an attack is another one. The venting benefit belongs to the word shouted at the sky, the spanner, the referee on television. The moment there is a face on the receiving end, the neuroscience stops being on your side.

6. It can still be a criminal matter

In England and Wales, section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to use threatening or abusive words within the hearing of someone likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress. Since 2014 the word "insulting" has been removed from that section, and in Harvey v DPP (2011) the High Court accepted that police officers hear the word so often that it is unlikely to distress them. But swearing at a member of the public, in a residential street at night, in front of children, or as part of a wider row can still lead to arrest and a fine, and it regularly does. Scotland's common-law offence of breach of the peace and the Public Order Act's section 4A (intentional harassment) are broader still. Broadcasting it before 9pm is a breach of the Ofcom code. Putting it on a T-shirt in a courthouse is fine in Los Angeles, and rather less fine in Wolverhampton.

7. It is lazy, sometimes

Not always. Sometimes it is the exact word. But it is also the word that arrives when you have not bothered to find the one you meant. "It was a fucking nightmare" tells your listener about your mood and nothing about the nightmare. English has a very large vocabulary, and the F-word is its most convenient way of not using any of it.

So what is the sensible position?

Not abstinence. The word is part of the language and pretending otherwise makes you sound like a Victorian dictionary. Instead: