Profanity, Rudeness, and Civility

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When CBS picked up the Twitter-based sitcom $#*! My Dad Says and adapted it for television, the network faced one crucial challenge: how to express on television the somewhat raunchy language that over a million Twitter fans had embraced and found funny. Recent years have seen an increase in swearing and other rude language in real life as well as in media. Indeed, perceptions about what terms are acceptable and appropriate for broadcast are continually changing. For example, media reviewer Edward Wyatt noted that the word douche, once considered inappropriate, had been used at least seventy-six times in 2009 on twenty-six prime-time network series like The Vampire Diaries and Grey’s Anatomy. Wyatt claimed that several curse words seldom heard on television just ten years ago had, by 2009, become “passé from overuse” (2009, p. A1). In fact, some critics believe that public outrage over sex, violence, and profanity seems to have waned in recent decades (Steinberg, 2010).

Profanity includes words or expressions considered insulting, rude, vulgar, or disrespectful. The words get their social and emotional impact from the culture’s language conventions. For example, swearing can be a powerful expression of emotion, especially anger and frustration, but the perception of swearing as offensive depends on the context and the relationship (Jay & Janschewitz, 2008). For instance, Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater gained national fame in August 2010 when he responded to a barrage of insults from a passenger with his own colorful language (as he quit his job by jumping down the plane’s emergency chute). While we don’t advocate responding to profanity with profanity, many people viewed Slater’s response as “reasonably hostile.” Tracy (2008) argues that language attacking people who are exhibiting bad behavior in local governance meetings is viewed the same way.

Whether our language is viewed as rude or “reasonably hostile” also depends on the culture and times. What language does have to do is meet some standards of civility, the social norm for appropriate behavior. Crude, offensive, vulgar, and profane language can create uncomfortable and unproductive relationships and work environments. Communication business specialists Rod Troester and Cathy Mester (2007) offer five guidelines for using more civil language in the workplace—but most of them are applicable outside the business context too: