Saturday, May 19, 2007

Feeble Use of Language

A glorious pre-breakfast jog over Wimbledon Common this morning in
brilliant sunshine, was marred by seeing (and hearing) an adult man shouting
a string of expletives at his pet dogs; old black labrador types.
By his accent and dress he seemed wealthy and well educated.

There is much adverse comment in the UK media these days about young "hoodies"
and loutish behaviour often fuelled by alcoholic drink. I doubt whether
the Common dog swearer had had much drink taken at 07:45 this morning
but heaven help any young people who might regard him as a role model.

Interesting to note that by contrast on the Sharecrazy bulletin
board, there appears to be a robot which goes into expletive deleted
mode whenever something possibly OTT offensive is printed. Many
other BB sites operate in the same way and newspapers likewise
often avoid printing bodily function expletives.

Personally I find that expletives tend to end debate and discussion.
They cause me to wonder if the swearer is lacking something
in his or her imagination department.
They tend to close down avenues of discussion.
The more frequently people have recourse to them the less
shock they are apt cause to the listener.
The Common swearer's dogs for example,
continued to explore the fox dens as if they had heard nothing.

My reaction was to feel sorry for the Common swearer,
who seemed not to be able to savour the glorious sunny morning
on Wimbledon Common today.

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