Bad Language

I just read a Creating Passionate Users post about how products should make users say "how f***ing cool!" and all the comments focus on whether or not using "bad" language in the workplace is ok or not.

First of all, I hate that it's called "bad" language -- but I'm not that troubled by it. If it weren't "bad," it wouldn't be any fun to say.

I remember the first time I swore. I was in fifth grade. My arch enemy rival April Basulto, representative of every evil I could imagine, with dark Lucy-hair and leader of a dumb blonde named Colette, had poked her finger in my Native American wigwam, made out of some limp putty my mother had concocted using oatmeal, water, and salt in our kitchen after the sugar cubes would not glue together to make an igloo. I stormed away from the class displays under the covered bench area on our playground, and screamed FUCK as loud as I could. (Or I dreamt it. This is one of those memories I am not sure is real or not.) But real or no, the speaking aloud of the unutterable was liberating. A release like no other, a release from the confinements of goodness.

We tend to like badness for its freedom. "I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it," sang MJ. Others are "bad to the bone." "BAD" is a strange word. It means "not good." But the precise definition of it is always in flux.

For me, cursing/cussing/'bad' language, whatever you call it, is a cultural marker of informality. When used between two people in the workplace, it is often a way of marking the relationship as closer, more intimate, more informal than when it's not used in say, a larger meeting in the conference room. But it's not just curses, but slang in general - my Californian boss says "cool" and "dude" and "awesome" to me (also a born Ca-girl), but he only lets those words out in formal meetings when he's being "charming."

What's going on here with these discussions about the workplace, whether it's about clothing or language use or taking risks, is about the changing culture of the workplace as it tries to determine if it's going to be formal or informal. Our culture at large, due, I think, to mass media - youth culture, has become extremely informal in the last 50 years. We tend to not wear hats to public events, and I've noticed that even shaking hands when introduced is considered optional behavior.

Being appropriate and respectable is no longer a valid aim for a person's professional and personal identity; we've rebelled against the Death of a Salesman ideal. To 'make it,' we need to make waves, find ourselves while making money - and it's obvious that to do so does not require ironed pants, collars, and a soapy tongue.

I love to swear. I find it deliciously fun to do so - in the appropriate place, where I know the audience hearing me won't ascribe ignorance and idiocy and immaturity to me for doing so. I learned early on that swearing didn't make my parents respect my rebelliousness, but consider me ridiculously low-class. It's not about 'being myself'; it's about having control over who I am with respect to where I am and who I'm with.

So I like Hugh's site, and I'm not offended by his use of the 'foul,' but I don't think I myself would not be able to work with people who couldn't swear. Swearing is not 'who I am,' but a way I talk. I'm reminded of urban black youth who change how they talk between home and school. Or when my family lived in East London, and I spoke Cockney at school and American at home. People who refuse to modify themselves to meet the requirements and expectations of their environment, based on some illusion of staying true to themselves, are usually just obstinate and inflexible.

This of course fits into my last post about changing who I was all the time. There's a compromise in here somewhere - a way to both 'go with the flow' and to 'stick to your roots,' to paraphrase an image I've always loved from the Tao te Ching. The idea is that the strongest plants are the ones that stay rooted in place but bend in the water and wind - those that remain stiff break and shatter. Those that loosen in the torrent die. To live properly, we must learn to be ourselves, and to know that that does not mean having no ability to edit our words or behavior, to act out, because to respect others and to honor situations is to be wise...

Someday I will figure out exactly how that works.