[ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:14 AM 5/4/2007 -0700, Lee wrote:

>Yes, yes, yes, have a good laugh!  Laugh and the world laughs with you.
>Laughter is the best medicine.
>
>It also helps you avoid *real* problems, making it conveniently unnecessary
>to ignore reports like BillK's where he wrote on 5/3, 9:34 AM
>
> > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their
> > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent.

Actually, I agree pretty much entirely with Lee on this. When I was a 
kid I worked briefly as a laborer packing and moving stuff at 
university, and later in an army barracks where I slept with a bunch 
of ordinary shiftless humans. The routine, mindless but apparently 
hostility-jammed streams of obscenities were genuinely distressing. 
Hearing the same thing from children on public transport etc is infuriating.

But it's still mildly entertaining when someone uses (rather than 
quotes) "----" as an advance-purchase get out of jail free card. If 
you're going to call someone a -ock---cker, why not just suck it up 
and *call* the swine a lock-picker?

Damien Broderick