6 ms·

Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority. You (99% percent of us) would not drop the F-bomb in

by ellyagg 15y ago

Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority. You (99% percent of us) would not drop the F-bomb in the presence of a new boss, for example, unless you had very good reason to think it was ok. It's similar to the fact that the boss teases subordinates, but the reverse is much rarer. Swearing is absolutely a status strategy, even when speaking to groups. For all the people who claim that swearing is essentially as innocuous as any other speech, and only prissy people think anything of it at all, it would be interesting to see their behavior around their professional or social superiors. There'll always be the people who pipe up to claim they treat everyone the same, and don't know what status is, but on the whole, I'm pretty sure the social implications and power dynamics of swearing show very strong patterns. Swear all you like (I do), but please don't pretend that profane language doesn't have different effects from normal language.

alexholehouse 15y ago
I would agree with you if we're considering English. I'm not sure the same conclusions can be drawn for other languages (German springs to mind).
- ugh 15y ago
  Why? I’m German and that seems bizarre to me. Swearing is definitely not used independently of context in German.
  - alexholehouse 15y ago
    I was in Germany a few years ago, and I remember a historian we were working with swearing a lot (in English) just to make points or convey extremities. When I queried him about it he said swearing didn't have particularly negative connotations when used in "normal conversation" in German. I took this at face value at the time, so I apologize if I've misspoken on the matter.
    - ugh 15y ago
      That sounds like a lame excuse. Maybe he was just unaware that he was swearing so much. I think it’s generally easier to swear in a second language: There are no parents around to tell you not to use certain words. I certainly don’t feel the same when swearing in English and German. I almost never swear in German – written or spoken – because it feels wrong to me†. I have less problems swearing in English. This goes so far that I tend to say “fuck” to myself when something goes wrong and not the German equivalent (or if I do use a German word it’s the tame „verdammt“ – “damn”). There is this comedy routine from 1998 by a German comedian about exactly this topic, by the way. I found it on YouTube, even with subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNLENPsbq4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNLENPsbq4 (I’m not in any way claiming that it’s any good, it just fits so well.) — † I don’t have a problem with others swearing. I’m not offended by it.
      - Kliment 15y ago
        German, as a language, is rather ill-suited to swearing. Other than "shit", there are no strong expletives I encounter. But lots of people say "fuck" (in English). I've often felt the need for a stronger expletive but there don't seem to be any. So I am sometimes reduced to swearing in one of the other languages I know. Finnish is best suited to the task, but pretty much any language seems to do better than German.
idle_processor 15y ago
Swearing is also cultural/personal, and correlates with familiarity. People will swear more among friends than with strangers. "[S]wearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority" implies people respect their friends less than (and find them inferior to) strangers, which is absurd. One runs a high risk swearing in the presence of a superior with an unknown stance on swearing. This causes less exploratory swearing. Do not mistake caution with respect. A superior poses higher risk than a peer or junior. Someone can negatively react to swearing in a couple ways: 1) Deal with it directly, by talking. 2) Deal with it indirectly, by leveraging resources to harm the offending party. A peer/junior has less destructive potential when taking option #2. As a consequence of this, people swear less around superiors than peers/juniors.
uisce 15y ago
"Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority." This completely depends on the culture as well as the situation obviously. I have always found that Americans make way too much of a deal of swearing.
praeclarum 15y ago
"Social superiors"? Man. There's just so much wrong with that...
- seagreen 15y ago
  You have to take an honest look at the world before you can optimize. A lot of our problems (in the US) come from trying to pretend we don't have social hierarchies, or problems with race, or whatever.
  - praeclarum 15y ago
    Educate me some more and please name a social hierarchy I belong to. I'm a pretty standard geek so feel free to make assumptions. I really want to know who my superiors are so I can call them up and apologize for treating them as equals all these years.
    - Mz 15y ago
      FWIW: There's a pecking order on HN. And you're a member. In any social setting, pecking order and stuff like that matters a whole lot to most people (and is very frequently the driving force behind a lot of the comments, even here). I try to treat everyone with respect regardless of who they are and I am disinclined to kowtow to anyone. I assure you it gets me in hot water on a routine basis with people who are trying to impose a hierarchy on the relationship and trying desperately to make sure they are in the superior position. Refusal to take the inferior position gets read by such people as an attempt to assert my superiority (and oppress them/disrespect them). It is damn difficult to convey equality to people hellbent on doing something like that. {Which makes me curious why you seem to experience it differently. :-)}
      - praeclarum 15y ago
        I refuse to kowtow also but rarely get into hot water. I'm curious what you're saying to these people. :-) If someone does try to assert their superiority (I'm trying to think of an example, but am having a hard time) then I tend to appeal to their humanity and ask them to chill the fuck out. (I don't know of a pecking order on HN. AFAIK you're all my equals. Even PG. He has more money than me, and has more relationships than me, is older as wiser than me, but I don't see him in any way to be my social superior.)
timsally 15y ago
> Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority. This is a simplistic analysis. Swearing is a device of language that can be used well or misused. Most of the time we can do better, yes, but swearing does have a place that is neither disrespectful or superior [1]. What would John McClane, one of the greatest movie characters of all time [2], be without that classic line? [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ7z5CUsrbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ7z5CUsrbk [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane#Reception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane#Reception
eogas 15y ago
>You (99% percent of us) would not drop the F-bomb in the presence of a new boss, for example, unless you had very good reason to think it was ok. A company I interned for had an employee who allegedly dropped an F-Bomb or two during his interview. His nickname was F-Bomb. No joke. When someone chooses to swear for emphasis or for the shock value, he is not trying to win over the people who might be offended, or who might take it as a sign of disrespect. He is trying to win over the people who buy into his personality, in spite of the people who may be offended. The whole reason he's saying "fuck" is because it will offend some people. F-Bomb probably didn't want to work for a boss who would be offended at someone saying "fuck". Who would?
- e40 15y ago
  I tend to say "fuck" a lot. I've been reading these replies and I really don't think I say it for the reasons people are hypothesizing here. I say it because it is (at this point a bad) habit. Saying "fuck" instead of something else is a cop out. It's so easy to apply this general, emotional term, and much harder to express what you actually mean. I've taken to, after I say the word, to try and think of a better way to express myself. Rarely was it the best word choice, but it's such a habit that it's hard for me to do this analysis before I say it. Another mode I get into is saying it out of frustration. It's like a tension release valve. It seems to make me feel more calm. Of course, during this latter use I'm almost always alone, so it's not applicable to the linked article.
  - famousactress 15y ago
    You hit on it though. The word "fuck" expresses emotion and tension in a very brief desperate way. It's not a cop out if that's literally what energy you're attempting to convey. It's not always "I haven't worked hard enough on this presentation to I'm gonna say 'fuck' instead of something poignant about my frustrations with XML configuration files". Sometimes it's the very desperation that you're trying to get across and touch on.
  - d0mine 15y ago
    Investigate a crime scene only using the word fuck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM (The Wire)
Volpe 15y ago
I think there is a lot of culture behind the appropriateness of swearing. I find Australian's are much more relaxed about it, than Americans. (purely anecdotal), but I don't think it can simply be categorised as being about 'status' or something else, it's dependent on the culture you are in.
- aangjie 15y ago
  i live in india and among people still closer to the culture, than the modern, savvy crowd... Recently i have found that i seem to swear as a tactic, when i find someone is not listening to my arguments, but just rejecting some of it implicitly...
FreakLegion 15y ago
Not only would I drop the F-bomb in the presence of the new boss, I dropped it at my interview. And I got the fucking job.
- hansef 15y ago
  Hired over a dozen engineers in the last couple years - swearing is a cultural signifier for me. It's a (small) cue that you might be a good team fit. If you say "fuck" while interviewing with me, I'm slightly more likely to hire you.
  - artmageddon 15y ago
    While I like your style, it's very hard to ascertain that swearing would be ok in an interview with you without some prior clue. Then again, I live in the States and most of my interviews that I've gone on were all corporate jobs.
xanados 15y ago
One nuance to this is that not all profanity is created equally. Essentially none of the people here that would drop the F-bomb in a presentation would utter the word "cunt" in any remotely professional environment. It connotes disrespect much more strongly and status perhaps very little, probably negatively.
- astrec 15y ago
  I've found anecdotally that acceptance of that word in a professional environment is limited to the two tails of the income distribution.
- wgx 15y ago
  US readers might be interested to know that, while very offensive, the 'c word' is much, much less taboo in the UK. In fact, there's a well-established feminist movement to 'reclaim' the word.
- sp4rki 15y ago
  Interestingly enough 10 minutes before reading this I told my boss that: "Visual studio is a fucking cunt and I will kill you if my phone starts ringing every 5 minutes like it did at 3am because you where fucking up the builds." He laughed... I guess it just comes down to the corporate culture of where you work. I also got asked what my thoughts where on C# and .Net on my interview... I said "It fucking sucks..." got hired on the spot... and got to work on lots of VS projects!
afterburner 15y ago
"Swearing is absolutely a status strategy" Not always, but it risks being perceived as such, which is why it's a problem.
wr1472 15y ago
> Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority and > Swearing is absolutely a status strategy, even when speaking to groups. The "clueless" according to the Gervais Principle (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...) are the usual suspects in this (yes based on some anecdotal evidence). EDIT: formatting.

by ellyagg 15y ago

alexholehouse 15y ago

I would agree with you if we're considering English. I'm not sure the same conclusions can be drawn for other languages (German springs to mind).

ugh 15y ago
Why? I’m German and that seems bizarre to me. Swearing is definitely not used independently of context in German.
- alexholehouse 15y ago
  I was in Germany a few years ago, and I remember a historian we were working with swearing a lot (in English) just to make points or convey extremities. When I queried him about it he said swearing didn't have particularly negative connotations when used in "normal conversation" in German. I took this at face value at the time, so I apologize if I've misspoken on the matter.
  - ugh 15y ago
    That sounds like a lame excuse. Maybe he was just unaware that he was swearing so much. I think it’s generally easier to swear in a second language: There are no parents around to tell you not to use certain words. I certainly don’t feel the same when swearing in English and German. I almost never swear in German – written or spoken – because it feels wrong to me†. I have less problems swearing in English. This goes so far that I tend to say “fuck” to myself when something goes wrong and not the German equivalent (or if I do use a German word it’s the tame „verdammt“ – “damn”). There is this comedy routine from 1998 by a German comedian about exactly this topic, by the way. I found it on YouTube, even with subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNLENPsbq4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNLENPsbq4 (I’m not in any way claiming that it’s any good, it just fits so well.) — † I don’t have a problem with others swearing. I’m not offended by it.
    - Kliment 15y ago
      German, as a language, is rather ill-suited to swearing. Other than "shit", there are no strong expletives I encounter. But lots of people say "fuck" (in English). I've often felt the need for a stronger expletive but there don't seem to be any. So I am sometimes reduced to swearing in one of the other languages I know. Finnish is best suited to the task, but pretty much any language seems to do better than German.

idle_processor 15y ago

Swearing is also cultural/personal, and correlates with familiarity. People will swear more among friends than with strangers. "[S]wearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority" implies people respect their friends less than (and find them inferior to) strangers, which is absurd. One runs a high risk swearing in the presence of a superior with an unknown stance on swearing. This causes less exploratory swearing. Do not mistake caution with respect. A superior poses higher risk than a peer or junior. Someone can negatively react to swearing in a couple ways: 1) Deal with it directly, by talking. 2) Deal with it indirectly, by leveraging resources to harm the offending party. A peer/junior has less destructive potential when taking option #2. As a consequence of this, people swear less around superiors than peers/juniors.

uisce 15y ago

"Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority." This completely depends on the culture as well as the situation obviously. I have always found that Americans make way too much of a deal of swearing.

praeclarum 15y ago

"Social superiors"? Man. There's just so much wrong with that...

seagreen 15y ago
You have to take an honest look at the world before you can optimize. A lot of our problems (in the US) come from trying to pretend we don't have social hierarchies, or problems with race, or whatever.
- praeclarum 15y ago
  Educate me some more and please name a social hierarchy I belong to. I'm a pretty standard geek so feel free to make assumptions. I really want to know who my superiors are so I can call them up and apologize for treating them as equals all these years.
  - Mz 15y ago
    FWIW: There's a pecking order on HN. And you're a member. In any social setting, pecking order and stuff like that matters a whole lot to most people (and is very frequently the driving force behind a lot of the comments, even here). I try to treat everyone with respect regardless of who they are and I am disinclined to kowtow to anyone. I assure you it gets me in hot water on a routine basis with people who are trying to impose a hierarchy on the relationship and trying desperately to make sure they are in the superior position. Refusal to take the inferior position gets read by such people as an attempt to assert my superiority (and oppress them/disrespect them). It is damn difficult to convey equality to people hellbent on doing something like that. {Which makes me curious why you seem to experience it differently. :-)}
    - praeclarum 15y ago
      I refuse to kowtow also but rarely get into hot water. I'm curious what you're saying to these people. :-) If someone does try to assert their superiority (I'm trying to think of an example, but am having a hard time) then I tend to appeal to their humanity and ask them to chill the fuck out. (I don't know of a pecking order on HN. AFAIK you're all my equals. Even PG. He has more money than me, and has more relationships than me, is older as wiser than me, but I don't see him in any way to be my social superior.)

timsally 15y ago

> Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority. This is a simplistic analysis. Swearing is a device of language that can be used well or misused. Most of the time we can do better, yes, but swearing does have a place that is neither disrespectful or superior [1]. What would John McClane, one of the greatest movie characters of all time [2], be without that classic line? [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ7z5CUsrbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ7z5CUsrbk [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane#Reception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane#Reception

eogas 15y ago

>You (99% percent of us) would not drop the F-bomb in the presence of a new boss, for example, unless you had very good reason to think it was ok. A company I interned for had an employee who allegedly dropped an F-Bomb or two during his interview. His nickname was F-Bomb. No joke. When someone chooses to swear for emphasis or for the shock value, he is not trying to win over the people who might be offended, or who might take it as a sign of disrespect. He is trying to win over the people who buy into his personality, in spite of the people who may be offended. The whole reason he's saying "fuck" is because it will offend some people. F-Bomb probably didn't want to work for a boss who would be offended at someone saying "fuck". Who would?

e40 15y ago
I tend to say "fuck" a lot. I've been reading these replies and I really don't think I say it for the reasons people are hypothesizing here. I say it because it is (at this point a bad) habit. Saying "fuck" instead of something else is a cop out. It's so easy to apply this general, emotional term, and much harder to express what you actually mean. I've taken to, after I say the word, to try and think of a better way to express myself. Rarely was it the best word choice, but it's such a habit that it's hard for me to do this analysis before I say it. Another mode I get into is saying it out of frustration. It's like a tension release valve. It seems to make me feel more calm. Of course, during this latter use I'm almost always alone, so it's not applicable to the linked article.
- famousactress 15y ago
  You hit on it though. The word "fuck" expresses emotion and tension in a very brief desperate way. It's not a cop out if that's literally what energy you're attempting to convey. It's not always "I haven't worked hard enough on this presentation to I'm gonna say 'fuck' instead of something poignant about my frustrations with XML configuration files". Sometimes it's the very desperation that you're trying to get across and touch on.
- d0mine 15y ago
  Investigate a crime scene only using the word fuck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM (The Wire)

Volpe 15y ago

I think there is a lot of culture behind the appropriateness of swearing. I find Australian's are much more relaxed about it, than Americans. (purely anecdotal), but I don't think it can simply be categorised as being about 'status' or something else, it's dependent on the culture you are in.

aangjie 15y ago
i live in india and among people still closer to the culture, than the modern, savvy crowd... Recently i have found that i seem to swear as a tactic, when i find someone is not listening to my arguments, but just rejecting some of it implicitly...

FreakLegion 15y ago

Not only would I drop the F-bomb in the presence of the new boss, I dropped it at my interview. And I got the fucking job.

hansef 15y ago
Hired over a dozen engineers in the last couple years - swearing is a cultural signifier for me. It's a (small) cue that you might be a good team fit. If you say "fuck" while interviewing with me, I'm slightly more likely to hire you.
- artmageddon 15y ago
  While I like your style, it's very hard to ascertain that swearing would be ok in an interview with you without some prior clue. Then again, I live in the States and most of my interviews that I've gone on were all corporate jobs.

xanados 15y ago

One nuance to this is that not all profanity is created equally. Essentially none of the people here that would drop the F-bomb in a presentation would utter the word "cunt" in any remotely professional environment. It connotes disrespect much more strongly and status perhaps very little, probably negatively.

astrec 15y ago
I've found anecdotally that acceptance of that word in a professional environment is limited to the two tails of the income distribution.
wgx 15y ago
US readers might be interested to know that, while very offensive, the 'c word' is much, much less taboo in the UK. In fact, there's a well-established feminist movement to 'reclaim' the word.
sp4rki 15y ago
Interestingly enough 10 minutes before reading this I told my boss that: "Visual studio is a fucking cunt and I will kill you if my phone starts ringing every 5 minutes like it did at 3am because you where fucking up the builds." He laughed... I guess it just comes down to the corporate culture of where you work. I also got asked what my thoughts where on C# and .Net on my interview... I said "It fucking sucks..." got hired on the spot... and got to work on lots of VS projects!

afterburner 15y ago

"Swearing is absolutely a status strategy" Not always, but it risks being perceived as such, which is why it's a problem.

wr1472 15y ago

> Whether you like to admit it or not, swearing is and will be taken as a sign of disrespect or superiority and > Swearing is absolutely a status strategy, even when speaking to groups. The "clueless" according to the Gervais Principle (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...) are the usual suspects in this (yes based on some anecdotal evidence). EDIT: formatting.