Walking around a college campus, every other word you hear in a conversation is a swear word. Even professors swear in their lectures occasionally. I'm not sure if they are just swearing for the "hell of it" or because they feel they will connect more with the students. In addition, most of the time a swear word is used, there is a better word to be used in its place, and it does not add to the quality of the sentence. A swear word is as common as the air we breathe. The question is, when did the transition from shock value to air we breathe in curse words take place?
In the 18th and 19th centuries, swearing was considered to be taboo, and mostly used by the lower middle class and the poor. If you swore, you were considered untouchable in a sense, therefore the middle class kept quiet about their poor choice of words. Before these types of words were called curse words and swear words, most people referred to them as profanity. And, when people used profanity, it was mostly against the church - all biblical violation. Before the 20th century, people expressed their anger with God or holy things by using profanity or blasphemy.
Once the 20th century hit, the middle class became tired of hiding words that they felt properly expressed the emotion that they felt from being "mistreated" by God and by the government, so they came out of hiding. Thus, swearing came into the public.
The people who knew such words existed, but knew better to never express such words in public were shocked once they heard such terrible words said out loud. Some police even locked people up in the beginning of the 20th century for taking the language too far for the public to hear. The shock value of swearing stayed instilled in the heart of America until the 1960's.
The Baby Boomers were the last generation that held all the values that we consider to be "traditional". Anything that happened that was unsavory happened behind the doors of the perfectly watered lawns and the annoyingly perfect white picket fences. Men occasionally swore, especially when boozing and within the office, but for women to swear, it was still socially unacceptable. Once the hippies hit with radical change in the 60's everything, including curse words, took on a whole new meaning.
People threw around even the dirtiest of words just because they could. People were in such a daze that they felt free to say anything, including the worst of curse words, and people didn't care to say anything. The people that were not in a haze still were shocked to hear the radical people say such words so freely, but it did not mean the same thing as it did in 1910.
As society moved progressively through the late 90's and into the 21st century, curse words lost complete shock value. Swear words have now been assigned to everything, and have been used as space filler in any sentence. Today's generation of youth does not see a problem speaking to their superiors or adults with profanity because it is difficult to separate the way they constantly talk with their friends once they speak to an adult or authority figure. And, as I mentioned, now that teachers swear in the classrooms even as early as high school, it gives students a level of comfortability to say these words as freely as they want.
Now, the real question is, does swearing make people seem unintelligent, or because it is as common as air does it matter anymore?
Has society moved from too uptight to far too relaxed? Some real questions to consider...
