Is sweaing bad? The BBC guidelines say the language that causes most offence includes
· Sexual swearwords
· Terms or racist abuse
· Terms of sexual and sexist abuse or abuse refering to sexuality
· Pejorative terms relating to illness or disabilities
· Casual or derogatory use of holy names or religious words
· Words for defecation
Swearing is though to have started as "a form of 'word magic', connected to religion, in early civilisations. People were more likely to believe in divine beings who had the power to punish them. So people called on divine beings in order to curse people they didn't like. This became a tabooed use of language, and sometimes, just saying the name of the divine being was tabooed." (Paul Baker, Lancaster University)
It is certain that swearing relies on being forbidden, a taboo. Whether the word refers to the genitals, a religion or to someone's race or colour, the intention is to shock and to offend.
Nevertheless, swearing has a powerful linguistic and emotional role in expressing shock and to repeat such offensive language paradoxically both reduces its power and risks offending readers.
Gratuitous swearing such as that by Gordon Ramsay in his TV series Hell's Kitchen (it is said he swore at least 5,000 times during the series) seems unnecessary to many, offensive to some yet Ofcom declined to uphold viewers' objections. It seems that the series traded on its notoriety and considered viewers should simply switch off if they didn't want to hear him swear.
The traditional phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me" may be a helpful playground riposte, but it is clearly untrue. Words describing other colours, races and creeds may be "just descriptions" to the speaker yet may be highly insulting to the receiver.
So swearing is usually insulting, certainly discriminatory and abusive, and is designed to show how little we care about the subject. Mostly it is unnecessary, best kept for the really emotional or painful moment instead of overused at every speech act. In that sense it is "bad language" because it is intended to hurt the listener.
On the other hand, from a purely linguistic perspective all we can do is to observe and describe it, because whether the language is "bad" or "good" involves a value judgment which is social rather than linguistic. The language here is doing the job it was intended to do - to hurt, insult and stir up anger. We may not like it, we may decrie it, but linguistically it is very effective.
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