Teenage Swearing

When I say ‘damn’, you hear ‘suffer eternal punishment in hell’
As a 16 year old, I am more than confident in expressing my opinions or merely thoughts using numerous swear words, sometimes over excessively. As with many of my friends, we find ourselves saying phrases such as ‘fuck off’ or ‘that was shit’ and this is widely recognised by most people as, not only an insult, but a way of emphasising a point. However in the literal sense, these phrases sound ridiculously childish and don’t even make sense. According to the British dictionary, when my sister grabs the remote and switches channels, I tell her to ‘sexual intercourse off’ and after seeing the fourth Twilight film, I retorted ‘that was faeces’. Well clearly it wasn’t but the use of this language has developed in a way that one should take offence to these phrases. Furthermore, words like these are used so commonly that many people, mostly peers to my age group, have grown immune to them and calling your best friend a ‘whore’ is now seen as more of a sign of close friendship.

Having said this, people in the older generation do not react to the words in the same way. They are neither immune to the words, nor viewing them in the literal ‘Oxford dictionary’ sense. After telling my dad ‘this pasta tastes like crap’ and remarking to my mum that ‘my teacher is a bitch’ I was sent to my room and the wifi was turned off. Please note, when the wifi is turned off in my house, it is a big deal. In fairness, I do not think that my parents are naïve enough to believe that I don’t swear at all, I think that with teenage swearing, the parents first experience shock that their child finally knows these words and is choosing to use them, losing their innocence. Most parents do not teach their children these words, so it comes as a surprise when they pop up in conversation – how did she learn these? Naturally, the parents make it very clear that these words are unacceptable but as with anything, if one is told not to do something, ‘caution hot surface’, they will probably try to do it, ‘shit that’s hot’.

The parent’s despair comes from when they realise they cannot stop their children from learning these words. The frustration of taking time to monitor their teenager’s television viewing and reading to ensure these profanities are not taught to them, and then realising that someone at school has filled them in with the latest curses must be overwhelming. It is somewhat worse as the parent does not even know which words are in their vocabulary, and so every mother’s worst nightmare is their child spontaneously quoting Ron Weasley at Sunday dinner with the grandparents by exclaiming ‘that was bloody brilliant’. Perhaps the child does not even realise that this can be seen as offensive for people who were brought up to understand the word as blasphemous, and so when granny starts choking on her roast potato after this comment, the child is none the wiser, they have merely complimented her cooking.

Teenagers are forever trying to overstep the boundaries; I personally know that swearing will make my parents go ballistic at me during an argument, which is my exact aim. However similarly, I realise that my parents use the words too, just not as often and general. This means that even they realise it would be hypocritical of them to take offence at me using these words so the need for punishment comes when they are used unnecessarily or to purposely cause offence. I believe that people think teenage swearing is an issue not because nobody else knows these words, but because they are taught them by other people so they come as a shock, even though most of the time one is not trying to offend. The universal definition for swear words has been naturally changed so generations have different ideas on one’s intention after saying these words.