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Some of you might remember how I’ve said drinking is heavily rooted in my culture, more so than the States, and unfortunately the same applies to swearing. We swear here a lot. Every second or third word in some cases, and I hear it on the street all the time… I used to swear a lot too, and didn’t think about it, which was half of the problem.
But I’m trying to give it up. I haven’t sworn in church, but I still find myself driven to swearing, and some how flip, sugar and so on don’t work very well. So any tips anyone?
I was raised without swearing, and then , for two years, worked along side some who said the Surgar-word every other sentence. Magically, I started doing it too. 1. The best advice I can give is to spend as much time as possible around people who don’t swear. This has a two-fold effect. First, you tend not to swear because they will probably disapprove and be shocked, and second, their lack of swearing stops reinforcing swearing in your mind.
2. You can also share your desire to stop swearing around people you trust, who swear. Ask if they wouldn’t mind stopping swearing too. But only if you feel comfortable talking about it with them. They will help you stop swearing if they commit, and they will stop reinforcing swearing in your own mind.
3. Alternatively, if you don’t have the relationship with swearing “others” to be open about it, you can sort of “coach them” not to swear around you by rewording what they said without the swear word. If they say — “I’m not taking this [sugar] anymore because this thing is [tucked] up anyway”. You can say “I think you said you’re going to stop cooperating until they fix some of the problems with management” — or some other gentle way of disapproving of their swearing. You can also let them know you’re LDS, in which case people also stop swearing.
One thing that really stopped me from swearing is teaching my children about it with a game. So, if you have children, try it We drew a ladder on paper, laid it flat on the table, and then put a picture of Christ as the end of it. Then, on recipe cards we wrote Bad Word, or alternatives to swear words such as “Oops”, or anything else you can think of that substitutes for swearing cleanly. Get some coins or chess pieces as individual game pieces, and a spinner or dice. The object of the game is to roll a die and then advance your game piece along the ladder until you reach Christ.
Go around the table, and for the first person, everyone playing tries to think of one situation that would be frustrating to the person whose turn it is, Then, the person flips over a card, which represents how they reacted to the situation. If it says Bad Word, it means they reacted by swearing, and they have to move their game piece to the left of the ladder. If it’s a good alternative to swearing, like “Oops” then they get to roll the dice and advance along the ladder toward Christ.
My kids are militant that you don’t swear because of this game. They come home and tell me when people have sworn at school, and they get REALLY disappointed when adults swear. It keeps me straight and narrow. They heard me swear once and gave me this look that broke my heart. I hope it never happens again.
SamBee wrote:But I’m trying to give it up. I haven’t sworn in church, but I still find myself driven to swearing, and some how flip, sugar and so on don’t work very well. So any tips anyone?
Don’t “flippin” sweat it. Swearing is good for you.
😈 I tend to agree with you about the stress thing, something which a friend of mine doesn’t seem to appreciate sometimes. He can be very verbally aggressive without four letter words, and yet he thinks my swearing is a form of such. Probably is. I’d still like to be rid of it… I think the stress thing is something to be addressed in itself, anger and stress are not good things. I have to admit the sugar thing annoys me a bit. I was at school with a girl who kept on saying it, and I felt like saying, “why don’t you just say s-?”
That might have worked for her, but it’s not convincing if I come out with such a word, as I’m a full grown male!
Quote:The best advice I can give is to spend as much time as possible around people who don’t swear. This has a two-fold effect. First, you tend not to swear because they will probably disapprove and be shocked, and second, their lack of swearing stops reinforcing swearing in your mind.
Well, I have been recently. Although people swear a lot on the street, and some of my favorite tv and music is full of it!!!
Quote:Ask if they wouldn’t mind stopping swearing too.
It’s an idea. I have stopped swearing on some web forums already, but I swear in my speech not in my writing anyway. I’ve also said to people on some of these forums that it doesn’t put a good image out, and that sometimes swearing detracts from the quality of what you’re saying. Some people will discount an intelligent argument because of the four letter words in it.
I’m not that offended by (most) swearing (although the MF word has always filled me with horror since I first heard it), and can take it, but want a way that I can ask this without being a self-righteous [?], if you get my meaning.
SamBee wrote:I have to admit the sugar thing annoys me a bit. I was at school with a girl who kept on saying it, and I felt like saying, “why don’t you just say s-?”
Yeah, I can “flippin'” understand that comment. Whenever I hear the “sugar” from my students in class, I tell them they may as well just say
because I thought it and heard it in my mind anyway, and I say the wordso they understand how “serious” I am, and that includes the F-bomb. Haven’t got fired yet – bidin’ my time I suppose. It’s like when people use asterisks as substitutes for letters – especially only one letter. Really?
😡 Old-Timer wrote:It’s like when people use asterisks as substitutes for letters – especially only one letter.
Really?
😡
I notice on TV they bleep out only part of the word, so that you know what is being said without hearing it.🙄 We had a missionary over a few weeks ago who is from Australia. He was telling us how he had to learn the line of what were swear words in the U.S. since it differed in Australia. Even if the language (English) is the same in words, the cultures place different meanings on different things. He told us he learned quickly that saying you are “pissed-off” in the states is acceptable, whereas that is like saying the F-word in Australia, and the f-word is used in Australia as not a big deal like it is here. He learned that the hard way, when on Christmas day he got to call his family and said some investigators pissed him off…and there was a pause on the other end of the phone until he remembered what he had done to his parents and their image of their boy on his mission!!
😮 All that is to say…it seems that words are just words. They become cultural norms on what is acceptable and not acceptable in society…and we can try to defy the cultural norms to make shocking statements or lewd jokes, or we can find alternative ways to express ourselves by recognizing with charity what effect it has on others listening.
There is value in bridling our passions to maintain control of ourselves…and always seek to show others love in our actions and our words.
Quote:Colossians 3:8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
Sambee…I think its cool you are trying to change that habit. It is good for us to work on things. Good luck!
This is a difficult issue for me. You see, I am a Beautiful Language snob. To me, any of the above that is less than beautiful is a shock word, an angry word, or a lazy word. Laziness, shocking, and anger all are unpeaceable and lead to bloodshed. But this practice of mine can lend to my experiencing Ego separation and false Superiority. It’s a real problem. The spiritual practice of Taboo Breaking (
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=237 Anyway, all that said, I personally prefer not to hear any use of body functions to fill in as expletives. Body functions are what they are, not filler words, it seems to me.
I think actually to be fair when you are quoting someone else, sometimes you have to use the words, or at least hint at what they are. We all know them, well maybe apart from pimpleslider, moosh and clack (sorry, just made those ones up 😆 ) I see that as different, although it has made me wonder what I’m going to do in some of my creative writing, because some people do talk like that, but it’s coming out of me…Yes, Aussies are bad ones for it. Afrikaaners do it a lot too (some of their swearwords are similar to English). Scots and Irish are bad for it too. In French, Spanish and German, the equivalent of the S word seems to be a lot milder than English in tone. (See I had to say “S word” there, because somehow dung, feces and excrement don’t quite cover it, or maybe they do. In which case, I hope not, and that it all gets taken care of by a farmer, or something)
“the f-word is used in Australia as not a big deal like it is here.”
On the other hand, “root” and “rooting” are very rude words in Australia. They aren’t used as exclamations, but are used to refer to the act itself. Some Hollywood film poster had to be withdrawn in Oz, because it had the caption “We’re all rooting for him.” Doesn’t quite have the same meaning to Aussies…
The interesting thing about “piss”, which means that I can write it out in full,
😈 😈 is that it actually appears in old versions of the KJV.(1 Samuel 25:22, 24; 1 Kings 14:10, 16:11, 21:21; and 2 Kings 9:8.)
Quote:So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light
any that pisseth against the wall. Apparently this is a Hebrew idiom that is meant to describe male descendants or heirs in a generation.
Quote:.I think its cool you are trying to change that habit. It is good for us to work on things. Good luck!
Thanks Ray. I have been looking at flaws in myself that I need to work on. I think in some ways this is one of them. I appreciate that it can be a means of letting off steam, but there really needs to be a way to stop that anger before it happens perhaps.
Sam, I actually have a moderate view of “swearing” – since it is a social convention that has nothing to do with any injunction in our scriptures. I don’t swear in front of people who would be offended by it (like Paul’s abstaining from meat example), and I don’t use the words that are considered the worst in “polite society” – but I really don’t like the fact that “sophisticated” people can use multi-syllabic words to say the exact same thing that “common” people mean when they use “vulgar” words. It’s classism and elitism, imo. If you are interested, I wrote the following on Mormon Matters a while ago:
“Modern-Day Swearing: Will Our Bastardized Words Damn Us to Hell?” (
http://mormonmatters.org/2009/02/03/modern-day-swearing-will-our-bastardized-words-damn-us-to-hell/ Old-Timer wrote:I really don’t like the fact that “sophisticated” people can use multi-syllabic words to say the exact same thing that “common” people mean when they use “vulgar” words. It’s classism and elitism, imo.
Well said. It doesn’t really matter what words you use so much as the ideas you are conveying. Calling somebody a horse’s posterior or an illegitimate or calling an idea a truckload of manure is on the low end of the helpfulness, effectiveness, and creativity spectrum, however cleverly or loftily couched.
Tom Haws wrote:Old-Timer wrote:I really don’t like the fact that “sophisticated” people can use multi-syllabic words to say the exact same thing that “common” people mean when they use “vulgar” words. It’s classism and elitism, imo.
Well said. It doesn’t really matter what words you use so much as the ideas you are conveying. Calling somebody a horse’s posterior or an illegitimate or calling an idea a truckload of manure is on the low end of the helpfulness, effectiveness, and creativity spectrum, however cleverly or loftily couched.
Too right, I’ve always thought that there is a level of snobbery in this.
Remember what “vulgar” means originally – “of the people”, i.e. vernacular, as in vulgar Latin.
All goes back to the Normans…
Quote:however cleverly or loftily couched.
I don’t know, I have come across one or two people who are amazingly creative with it. Not saying that I necessarily like it, or agree, but there you go.
I understand this is obvious, but words are language, and language is communication. “Swear” words in and of themselves don’t typically bother me if they clearly communicate the intended message of the speaker. Used as filler, they are silly, paint the user as unimaginative or ignorant at best, idiot at worst, and serve to dilute the power of that particular word, which kind of bothers me. I don’t find it coarse or low-brow for a person to use profanity, as some four-letter words can be very powerful, but such words, as any words, should be used relatively sparingly and with a thought behind it. I have found that a well-placed “Damn” can get my kids attention, but I don’t use it very often or it wouldn’t work. I DO wish more people would be more considerate of their audience and environment when they decide to unleash a cascade of cursing. The other day I was walking through a bookstore and meandered into the children’s section looking for a book for one of my kids. There was a 20 to 30-something man sitting in the kids reading area on a cell phone talking very loudly to someone, explaining how he didn’t f-ing care about f-ing this or that and it was BS and f-ing filth and foul and that guy could f-ing kiss his filth and foul and REPEATING the same line carefully again as if person on the other end maybe didn’t hear it… “Oh, lost connection? I was saying that I f-ing don’t care and will drive the F to here or there and this or that…” Come on… you’re in a kid’s reading area! Loud swearing in public DOES bother me, especially on a cell phone. I don’t think it makes you sound tough and I’ve heard women say that maybe it means you’re compensating for something. Wasn’t it Teddy Roosevelt who encouraged us to “Speak kindly and walk softly, but carry a big f-ing stick?” Something like that. If you’re comfortable with who you are and the lexicon you’re packin’, maybe you don’t need to frivolously fling four-letter words for all the world to hear. I once worked with a guy who swore like a sailor and as we know, when we’re around those words, they tend to slide into our lexicon as easy as picking up some Southern drawl if you spend much too time at a Texas Barbeque. But, this guy reported that he didn’t want to cuss so much and I surely didn’t want to pick up so much, so I suggested that he think of other words to use that would better communicate his intent. He was especially trying to curb his use of the F-bomb. To help him, when he’d f-ing let go a f-ing string of f’s, I’d listen and tell him, “Adverb, adjective, noun” or whatever the part of speech it was the he filled in his F. I don’t know that it helped him increase his vocabulary, but he’d usually smile and say, “Thanks, I gotta stop f-ing cussing so much.” Adverb.
Finally, I learned a new word today reading this thread–Sugar. I had no idea. It must be one of them Utahn euphamisms. Down South it’s just a term of endearment… or is it? Maybe that waitress calling me “Sugar” last night really WASN’T flirting with me.
I disagree with the notions that swearing is either ignorant, uneducated or unimaginative… certainly no more so than many other words, such as “get”, “nice” or “stuff”… I think that’s a relic of the old class differentiation mentioned earlier (Norman/Latin, i.e. upper class terms are alright, but Anglo-Saxon ones aren’t…) That’s not why I want to stop it at all, because I believe that’s rubbish. Sorry! I want to stop it because it upsets some people, is linked up with anger, and is probably not good for me. I’m certainly not unimaginative, or illiterate! It’s more to do with the “milieu” around here.
Cnsl1 wrote:Finally, I learned a new word today reading this thread–Sugar. I had no idea. It must be one of them Utahn euphamisms. Down South it’s just a term of endearment… or is it? Maybe that waitress calling me “Sugar” last night really WASN’T flirting with me.
That’s great. I think this is a great example of “effect” swearing. I mean – any other word and this paragraph just doesn’t work. As it is written – yeah, I’m chuckling and reread it several times to make sure I get what is being said.
A well placed “hell” or “damn” can be very effective and sometimes appropriate – even at church. When I lived in Brooklyn, this 14 year old kid got up in sacrament meeting to talk. No one listening, baby bawling, people whispering and talking. The kid took a deep breath and yelled in the microphone, “damn I’m nervous!” You could have heard a pin drop – and people listened to his talk – which was pretty darn good all in all. I can respect folks who use profanity in moderation and when appropriate. I quickly lose respect for those who don’t.
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