Bad language

“I SWEAR by Almighty God.” So runs the solemn beginning of the witness oath in court. But of course, there are diflerent kinds of swearing, Obviously swearing on the Bible in court is totally diflerent from using “bad language” - in which God and Christ often feature - in social settings.

So when is swearing particularly inappropriate? A lot depends on the context. Not many people would merely murmur “Oh dear” if they smashed their thumb with a hammer.

Swearing is generally deemed acceptable in the company of consenting adults. If you go to a Billy Connolly show or turn on the TV to watch Gordon Ramsay, you know you’re not going to get language appropriate to a Sunday School picnic.

Or to a kirk manse? When our family moved into the manse of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, I tried to fix up a telephone answer machine, but, being totally handless, I couldn’t get it to work. I asked a neighbour to have a go, but after much wrestling with the machine he couldn’t make much of it either. Next day there were a few calls. I thought my wife, who was upstairs, had got the calls and she thought I had answered them in the study below. Imagine our dismay, then, when a friend phoned and said: “That’s an amazing answer machine you have. All you get is the voice of a man swearing!”

It was our neighbour’s voice. He hadn’t realised that it had been recording all the time he had been struggling with the machine. To this day, I still don’t know who the other calls were from. They certainly must have thought the new minister had a strange line in language.

Sometimes swearing isn’t even swearing at all. When I was a divinity student in Edinburgh, I got a summer job sweeping the streets of Marchmont. The man I worked with seemed unable to speak at all without using the “F” word - he even inserted it into the middle of words. It was almost an art form; he could have won the linguistic equivalent of the Turner Prize. Later, when working in an area of deprivation in Glasgow, I couldn’t help but notice that the “F” word was pervasive. You heard it all the time. But it didn’t actually mean anything. It was simply part of the speech patterns people had grown up with.

Sometimes people swear because of language poverty. They don’t have enough expressive words in their vocabulary and so-called “bad language” is a substitute. Frankly, there are lots bigger things to get in a lather about than swearing. Poverty, war and repression, for starters. And highly educated people who never swear can engage in character assassination with a few well-chosen words uttered over coflee in an impeccable upper-class accent. In my view, that’s much worse than swearing.

“Sometimes people swear because of language poverty. They don’t have enough expressive words in their vocabulary and so-called “bad language” is a substitute.

What is truly oflensive, though, is “in your face” loud, foul, and abusive language in public places, particularly in family contexts. Nobody should have to put up with that objectionable behaviour.

When the Very Rev Dr Angus Morrison was the Kirk’s Moderator, the presbytery of Dunfermline decided to invite him to attend a football match, Cowdenbeath versus Dunfermline Athletic at Central Park. I was asked if I would be his escort. I was slightly apprehensive, knowing full well that Cowdenbeath and Dunfermline were fierce rivals. I knew that the language on the terracing would be less than diplomatic. I explained this to Angus, who replied with a smile: “It’s alright, I sufler from selective deafness.”

I swear to God, the man showed class. And the game mercifully ended in a draw.

This article appears in the November 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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