Devolving America's language culture

In American culture, we use language from all over the world. Business signs are a great indicator. Traveling along Belt Line from 30 you see English signs for a few blocks, then Spanish for a few more. Keep going and it’s back to English again, but they change to Chinese as you move to the heart of Richardson. Then there is Vietnamese, and back to English around Central. All that without leaving the Metroplex. We handle language just fine. So why can’t we handle what George Carlin called those “seven dirty words”?

Perhaps it is because, at some point, we placed importance on them. They signified hostility, agitation or disappointment. They let us know when we were in trouble and when we should rethink our positions on issues. But do they still hold that function? Bono’s outburst on the Golden Globes wasn’t hostile. He was genuinely excited. And in a promise not to do it again, he hit the nail on the head when he told Reuters, "If you use them in your everyday speech, sometimes they will come out. I don't mean to offend anyone."

There it is. Daily use desensitizes us to the original effects of certain words. Cursing like a sailor is fine in a boat full of sailors, but brining that language into the public domain is tricky. We aren’t always aware, or don’t always care, who hears us when we are out with our friends on the weekend. But we know who’s listening to the news, prime time television and the radio. Everyone, that’s who. Sure, certain shows come on later than kids should be awake and shock jocks rant during the morning commute, but everyone hears it. The toddler in the back seat picks up fun new uses for the phonics she learned in her pre-K class. And Grandma never would have let anyone say half the things to her that she hears during her evening television shows.

So, why do we care? It appears we don’t. Where lines of respect once stood between us and our vocabulary choices, now there are open spaces waiting for “f-bombs” to reign down. Some people claim language is evolving, but reducing it to the seven dirty words is devolution if it’s anything. We don’t care enough to try and find vocabulary to accurately describe our feelings. It’s so much easier to drag and old word out of the restricted bag and re-appropriate it to fit the given situation. Evolution implies moving forward, which in this case would be creating or learning new words. Instead, we are moving backward and reusing the old ones with no regard for whom we bother. And according to the FCC, that’s just fine.