Four Letter Words
When I was a young boy, teachers, parents, everyone we encountered tried to keep us from using "bad" words, four letter words. We rarely heard these words and when we did we were appropriately shocked. Sometimes we sought the shock value of certain words and surprised our listeners with words we heard on the playground in hushed tones. We knew we were doing something wrong but, in the way of children, decided to do it anyway. Now I can hardly avoid hearing four-letter words. I hear them on television, the radio news, I read them in newspapers, magazines, even my favorite web journals. I see them painted on walls, I even hear them in quiet, polite places, such as restaurants. I hear them in concerts and on golf courses. I hear men, women and children use these words.
I don't want to be one of the older people who think all changes are for the worse. There are many, many things which are better now than in the "good old days". Nor do I want to look at my youth through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and find the modern age wanting in comparison. But I can't ignore the things which have gotten worse: a certain loss of courtesy and civility, a loss of kindness, a coarsening of our discourse which is exemplified by the constant appearance of four letter words.
As usual, I can think of many possible explanations for this. Perhaps people's anger and disaffection can only be expressed by the use of these words. Yet I hear them used calmly, almost as if normal parts of speech. Perhaps the speakers genuinely desire to shock, just as we children did when I was a young boy. But if I'm right that people use these words calmly, without much thought, there can be no desire to shock. Perhaps, more likely, we have become lazy in our speech, using these words as the all-purpose verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs we are too lazy to replace with more exact language.
For many reasons, I wish we could all be more careful in our speech: Language is a beautiful thing when used correctly, expressing complex thoughts and emotions. I wish people would seek beauty and precision in speech. I also wish we could have a body of words which we recognize as coarse and unusable in polite conversation. And even if we decide to use these words, using them less often would give them more effect when used. I don't want to see our daily conversations, indeed even our whole language, become cheap and ugly. Please try to avoid using mean, ugly, "bad" words and think of beautiful words to express kind thoughts. We'll all benefit.
11-22-99