If you reread the posts above you will see that it wasn’t me who wrote the words you are responding to.

Robert, I suggest that when you criticise an argument for being very simplistic, it’s wise to introduce some complexity in your answer.

Words are of course not inherently bad. Spelling things out, a language is an arbitrary set of associations between sounds and meanings we wish to convey. Sometimes the meaning we wish to convey is “insert tab A into slot B”, sometimes it’s “Get out of the building, there’s a fire!”, sometimes it’s “the universe sucks and I feel very miserable about it”. There is a lot of arbitrariness about which words get assigned to which purpose – as shown by the number of languages in which people manage to get through life quite productively. But within a languqage, those words have meaning – and if they are used without an understanding of that meaning, those meanings change. If you keep yelling “Fire!” when there is no fire, eventually people are going to learn that there is no association between you yelling “Fire!” and any actual fire. This will create a problem for you if there is actually a fire. I agree entirely that there’s nothing inherent about the sound “Fire!” that in English that means it refers to a dangerous situation, but it is very simplistic to stop your analysis of English meaning at that point and conclude that it doesn’t matter in which situation you yell “Fire!”.

Similarily, there is nothing inherently bad about the sounds that make up swear words, but it is very simplistic to stop your analysis of meaning at that point. If people use profanity so much that it is no longer shocking, they are going to have a problem when they really want to be shocking – they are starting to turn profane words into ordinary words and thus to lose their profanity, just as yelling “Fire!” when there is no fire eventually means the word is no longer a danger signal. (They are also creating a problem for the rest of us when we want to swear). Also, before you again falsely accuse me of being very simplistic, I had better spell out that I am well aware that different dialects of English have different meanings for similar words – eg the movie title “Free Willy” prompted a lot of amusement in NZ, the cleanest joke I heard was “it’s a movie about boxer shorts”. Part of the study of English should be teach kids about how words are interpreted by different speakers of English, and in partiuclar, teaching that some words that are in common use in their dialect will likely be regarded by potential employers, courts, etc as profanity and thus shocking. Just as you would teach a person learning English that the word “Fire!” is normally to be used when combustion of a substance with oxygen is occurring, and not when trying to attract a stanger’s attention.

So, Robert, going back to my original question, what other uses do you see for profanity, if it’s not for the shock value?

Look, hardly anyone will argue that kids in the court schools are going to be difficult cases, and are likely to use difficult language, especially in the context given.
What frosts my ass is the idea that anyone thinks they “had” this money to burn. That money (probably, assuming it was not a donation) had to be pried out of the hands of the workers who earned it in the first place, with the expenditure of a bunch of political capital. You better believe that I think resources like that had better be used carefully.

I hear this argument a lot, and honestly I think this is a very simplistic view of cursing when it comes to language and discourse.

Words are not inherently bad. A lot of kids grow up hearing curse words in everyday discourse. Therefore, such words are not meant to be shocking. It’s just another word.

I won’t even watch cable TV.

But when it comes to poetry, I won’t tell a poet what words to use or not use. It’s not by business. Otherwise, it’s not the poet’s poem.

Profanity doesn’t make for particularly good poetry, but I think that’s a discovery the student has to make.

If my life is really terrible at a particular time (an example that springs to mind is when I dropped my crutches on my *good* foot), only language that is shocking is suitable to express my outraged feelings.

Okay, sometimes a writer may choose cold-bloodedly to write words for a character that is personally going through something that feels like dropping the crutches on the good foot. And academic study of language should not be precluded from considering profanity unemotionally. But generally I think it is wise to discourage the use of profanity in order to maintain its shock value for those times when we really need it.

But after it’s allowed, the shock wears off and they use it for other reasons.

I’m glad you’re teaching The Catcher in the Rye. When I first started teaching, just having that book in the classroom would have been grounds for dismissal.

(By the way, have you ever used the text “If You Really Want To Hear About It” as a secondary source? I’m a contributing author, believe it or not, which you don’t have to believe at all since I used a pseudonym.)

I agree with you that high school students aren’t mature enough to use profanity artistically, yet when given the freedom to use profanity, they sometimes produce poetry that turns out to be quite good.

Robert, Robert, Robert.

This argument sounds a little puerile, no? A lot of things occur in literature that should not be condoned, and any nimrod with a pen and paper can write what he thinks is poetry. I think we should distinguish between gratuitous profanity and profanity that legitimately adds to character development or the narrative or some other aspect of the work, e.g., the use of it by the narrator in The Catcher in the Rye, which I use with my junior classes. Personally, I don’t think high school kids are mature enough to use profanity artistically rather than just for shock effect, and in that case I don’t want to encourage its use.

Actually, I like Shakespeare. I even tolerate his profanity, of which there’s a great deal.

Perhaps I’ve written so much about this because I’ve been heavily involved with poetry, spoken word / slam poetry events, and at-risk students for a number of years and as a consequence, I’ve formed more than just casual opinions on the subject.

It’s an especially nice experience when a troubled student doesn’t use profanity when he knows he can if he wants to. That’s a real milestone, and it’s not something that’s seen when there are restrictions.

Unrestricted school sponsored poetry slams are fairly common throughout the Bay Area. I guess the violation of the profanity taboo is more of an issue when the profanity is written or recorded.

I’m puzzled why people think profanity still is taboo when it’s in poetry. Would these people also think that unabridged dictionaries have no place in a high school library?

Yes, I respectfully disagree with you.

But I must confess, more than anything else, I’m puzzled.