Peoria Times
10 OPINION
January 27, 2022
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I’m resolving to give up cussing this year BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist
M
y 2022 New Year’s resolution made it a startling four days before I lapsed. The occasion was a hooked golf drive that hit a cart path and ricocheted out of bounds. My response was something like, “Are you #@%^&*ing $**^%& kidding me. $#%^$ )*()* #^&*(.” So much for eliminating profanity in 2022. The truth is, I’ve always had something of a situational potty mouth. As a former talk radio host, I learned early on that speaking in public requires some degree of subtlety. You can get away with the occasional “damn” — provided the Lord’s name is not in front of that mild cussword — but you can only use the major offenders one time.
After which, the big bosses will summon you and you’ll be unemployed. For the most part, I only curse around my closest guy friends, while playing golf, or when signing my federal tax returns. Still, as a gentleman of a certain age who appreciates words, I’ve been determined for a long while to clean up my act. Especially after happening across a Wall Street Journal piece headlined, “We’re Cursing More. Blame the #%$ Pandemic.” As the story put it: “Pandemic stress, the melding of personal and professional spheres, and an exhausted slide toward casualness are making many of us swear more. ‘It is a perfect swearing storm,’” said Michael Adams, a linguist at Indiana University Bloomington. According to the Journal, CleanSpeak’s profanity-filtering software, used by companies to moderate online communities and discussion forums, has experienced a 300% increase in filtered profanity over the last year
and a half. As someone who does multiple Zoom meetings a week, I can vouch for that. And it’s somewhat predictable: In an environment where people resemble the cast of the old “Hollywood Squares” sitting in little digital boxes and most of us are wearing sweatpants, Lululemon garb or a dress shirt and manties, it’s only natural for the occasional “f bomb” to make its way into what was once polite conversation. Or, as one of my friends described it, “Why wouldn’t you say bull***t in the middle of yet another bull***t meeting.” Growing up on the playgrounds of Queens, New York, swearing was a way of fitting in. Later, on the basketball court and in the gym, it was an expression of machismo — surely frowned upon in today’s woke culture. Fast forward another decade, to professional life, and the occasional curse word was an act of rebellion, a verbal statement that one understood the rules of the workplace but remained unafraid of bending them. The thing is, I’m not much for going along with the crowd. So if everyone’s cursing, I’d like to stop. But that’s tougher than it sounds.
In 2009, Richard Stephens, a researcher at Keele University in the U.K., tested 67 students by having them stick their arms in freezing water meanwhile swearing like a sailor. The result? “People withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a non-swear word,” Stephens wrote. “Swearing also lowered pain perception and was accompanied by increased heart rate. We interpret these data as indicating that swearing … actually produces a hypoalgesic (pain lessening) effect.” Who knew? And swearing is way cheaper than Tylenol. Despite the biological and social reasons for cursing, I’m going to stick with this year’s resolution, even if my perfect record isn’t intact. Part of it is wanting to seem more sophisticated as I get older. The other reason is, for once I’d like to actually succeed at keeping a resolution. Toning down my penchant for profanity feels somewhat doable. Especially compared to my other option for a resolution. No way am I going on another $%^&# low-carb diet this year. PT
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