As I walk around the USC campus, I can’t help but notice the ubiquity of curse words in normal conversation. Many times in passing I hear — out of perhaps a 15-second excerpt of a dialogue — two or three f-bombs dropped.
Though I don’t use strong language myself, I don’t necessarily condemn its use by others as an exclamation of shock, an expression of pain or in times when ordinary language cannot adequately express the depravity of a person’s words or actions. People of all kinds have greeted such circumstances with strong language.
But more and more today, I find curse words being used in normal conversation as modifiers, fillers or short responses. This trend is disturbing because it conveys an attitude of unprofessionalism and unconcern for offending others. And while it may seem that since everyone is doing it (it must be alright), using curse words in normal conversation to fill in sentences or cultivate a positive peer perception has negative consequences down the road.
A survey by CareerBuilder.com found that "64 percent of employers said that they’d think less of an employee who repeatedly uses curse words, and 57 percent said they’d be less likely to promote someone who swears in the office." And a majority of people, 54 percent, said swearing at work makes an employee appear less intelligent.
More insidiously, the versatility of curse words allows them to stand in for almost any kind of normal word, taking the place of once-common words that are now unknown to a large segment of my generation. I enjoy learning and using so-called big words but often have to give my listeners the definitions for words like incorrigible, pleasantry or fatuous — words that are not particularly scholarly or arcane in nature or use.
When I use proper punctuation and capitalization in text messaging, most of my friends think it odd. But while such experiences could just be a local anomaly, broader research points to a decline in the vocabulary of the American people. According to a 2012 Wall Street Journal article, results from standardized vocabulary tests over the years indicate that “12th-grade verbal scores … fell sharply between 1962 and 1980 and … have remained flat ever since.” Researchers have attributed the drop to numerous causes, ranging from increased standardized test participation of lower-income students to simplified textbooks. But whatever the effect of the precipitous decline, the American vocabulary has yet to recover from it.
While admitting that it may have no correlation with broader trends, I attribute the vocabulary gap between my peers and me largely to the consumption of different forms of media. I frequently read books and newspapers in my free time, while most college students spend more time watching TV or movies. While these newer forms of media require less time and concentration to enjoy, they fail to provide the same verbal richness as their written counterparts.
I’m not advocating that everyone give up their favorite TV shows for classic novels, but improving your vocabulary is a profitable investment and not too difficult to accomplish. If you want to build your lexicon, an easy step is to begin writing down unfamiliar words as you encounter them and looking up their definition. It only takes a pause of a few moments from reading to get the definition on your smartphone and even less time to ask the person you’re speaking with to define the word they just used.
So try it. Look up or ask about an unfamiliar word. Later it will come to mind and make you sound (and feel) much more intelligent than a curse word that could take its place.
—Written by Andy Wilson, first-year English student