Re: RARA-AVIS: Language

From: Kerry J. Schooley ( gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com)
Date: 24 Mar 2005


At 05:37 AM 24/03/2005 -0800, you wrote:
>Damn if I know, unless it's a writer does what he
>has to with language to make it work in his books
>or stories and that reality can be tempered with
>a genuine love of the language. One "fuck," well
>placed, is worth a dozen sprinkled around for
>reality.

My house backs onto a small, well-treed park. It is a perfect gathering place, on warm summer nights, for groups of teens to get away from parental and societal restrictions, smoke, drink and carry on. Has been for the thirty + years I've lived in this house, and before. (I know this because on occasion I was one of them, generations ago.) Each summer there is always one fifteen-year-old who liberally sprinkles the word fuck and fucking into each sentence. It is marvelous, rhythmic, even poetic, and certainly characteristic of a certain stage in life, an outlook that some carry into later years.

Fuck is one of the most powerful and flexible words in the language, and the irony is that it would not be so if it weren't that so many object to its use. That in itself is a bit strange. It is a word. It has its uses and applications. Setting a standard that prohibits swearing is a bit like telling painters they are not to use the colour red, because it is Satan's colour, or telling musicians not to use the note b-flat because it is offensive. There's no logic to these objections, but they are very human.

Best, Kerry

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