Is This the Age of Profanity?
A recent survey reveals Americans are using profanity more often, but Utah State University students and professors have mixed views on how prevalent swearing is on campus.
According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, 74 percent of Americans surveyed said they hear profanity in public frequently or occasionally and 66 percent said they think people swear more frequently now than 20 years ago.
When asked about her experience with profanity usage on college campuses, USU Assistant Speech Professor Jennifer Peeples said it was more common to hear students swear when she taught at the University of Washington than at USU, though she said very offensive language isn’t used often at either location.
“Most people have fairly clean vocabularies,” said Jennifer Albretsen, a freshman majoring in physics.
Foul language was more apparent at Albretsen’s high school near Madison, Wis., than it is here, she said. While she finds profanity offensive, Albretsen said it’s usually not recurrent enough to ask the person who is swearing to stop.
However, Ben Shurtz, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering, said he has noticed a lot of swearing since he’s been at USU.
“I hear it the most in my dorm,” Shurtz said of Mountain View Towers.
The AP-Ipsos poll showed that 62 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds admitted to swearing at a least a few times a week. Both Shurtz and Albretsen, however, said they don’t swear.
“I appreciate it when people use clean language,” Albretsen said.
As for the word many people find most offensive, the AP-Ipsos poll stated that 64 percent said they use the F-word ranging in frequency from multiple times a day to a couple times a year.
Shurtz said he doesn’t find profanity to be particularly offensive and usually just ignores it – an opinion which is in agreement with the poll, as only 60 percent of men surveyed said they were bothered by profanity compared to 74 percent of women. When said by a professor, Shurtz said, profanity can bring humor into the classroom as is the case in two of his classes where his professors curse.
So why do Americans swear? While some think obscene language is uttered by people who are uneducated or classless, Peeples said profanity is often used by counter-culture groups as “an attempt to get a reaction.” Vietnam War protesters used profanity to express the negativity they saw in the war, she said, and teenagers use profanity to create an identity different from that of their parents.
Profanity is constantly changing and the media has a big influence on it, she said, with words that were considered profane in the 1970s now being heard on television. Albretsen said she thinks the language on TV is more foul than the language found on campus.
People have always used profanity and Peeples said she doesn’t think its usage has increased very much. Where people draw the line on what is profane, however, is what has changed. Evidence of this is how different groups apply meaning to words, resulting in some not even recognizing profanity when they hear it, Peeples said.
-mof@cc.usu.edu