$#!†

I’m an inveterate curser (one who curses, not that pointy thing on your computer screen, that’s a cursor), sprinkling my speech and writing with expletives as one might sprinkle herbs on a pizza. I don’t know when I first began swearing, though I do remember the first time I swore at my father, as it resulted in a belt across my ass. That experience, far from deterring my blasphemous ways, only taught me the power of cursing to illicit a response. As a graduate student I read a paper at the University of Iowa’s Communications Department’s PhD Seminar where I was told I used the first swear word in that august meeting – “weenie,” granted not a particularly offensive utterance in most places, but it raised a bar that for decades had been on the floor in that dour setting. When I taught first-year composition, I would regularly be asked, usually toward the beginning of the semester and usually by a backward-cap-wearing would-be degenerate, if they could use cuss words in their writing, to which I would respond, “Shit yes! Just make sure it’s OK with your readers, which is why I emphasize identifying your fucking audience early in the writing process.” – It was a teaching moment (though I don’t know how much of a learning moment it was).

I raise all of this because of seeing a current TV commercial for something called LogMeIn Ignition, apparently an app for your iPad that allows you to access your computer from wherever you are:

What intrigues me about this ad is its assumption that virtually everyone will recognize the actual words being covered by the euphemisms (“darn,” “shucks,” “shoot,” “rats,” “too bad,” “sweet”) and company logo, sparing lip readers. Most all of us recognize that these substitute terms are meant to replace either “shit” or “fuck,” and the great majority of us do because we either hear, read, or use them regularly ourselves. This also is at work on late-night TV, where comedians (especially) use profanity regularly (John Stewart a lot), the producers’ bleeps being little more than a wink and a nod to the inside joke that’s fully outside. My hope is that all of this is signaling a loosening of the stigma on a segment of our language that deserves to be available to all of us in (most) all situations. (I would retain the caveat I gave my students to be aware of audience before uttering or writing anything.) When we have a full linguistic palette, communication will be the richer for it. But what the fuck to I know?