Pesky paradigms: Language Shifts

Dear Friends,

Now here is a question I would very much like your responses to. It has to do with words. their meanings, and how they move from forbidden to acceptable, and where that movement happens.

Permit me to lay out a bit of background. I was born in 1952 in the southern part of Oklahoma. My mother was from the Ozarks. My father from the oil patch. I had a small town raising with church-going people.

In that milieu, there were manners taught and expected. Many of these involved what was called polite conversation. Polite conversation covered many things like forms of address, acceptable topics at different times and places (I am still not certain why one is not supposed to discuss slaughtering the hog at table when he is right there present in the form of good friend pork chops and gravy), and what words a little gentleman did not use.

I will digress to say that being a little gentleman is not always what it is cracked up to be.

But here is the point at last. Many of those rude words are now on prime time every night, and I am sure more are on their way.

So what am I to think????

Should I move along with the times? I will not use those words here, for my own reasons. But should I find vulgarity and especially name calling acceptable?

Am I just a dinosaur and out of touch? Are such manners just quaint at best but unreasonable to expect in others? For me, I know all those words very well. I just do not need them to express myself. There is no superiority intended there. My mind just does not run to those words as descriptive.

The problem is that I am too literal minded. I cannot help it. For example, if someone says I am an ass, I am not affected. I like donkeys and prize a good mule. And who does not like burros? being an ass must therefore be just fine.

If they then refer to a hole, I object to the vulgarity in a public place, and will simply conclude that they are ignorant. I am much more than the sum of my parts, so I cannot be summed up in an orifice.

I confess that I do not want to be a prudish fellow. And while I might like to impose my standards of manners in speech on this forum for my own comfort, I do not have that right.

So I will ask your feedback on what you think the standards should be. Or, should there be any standards at all?

In fact I do not actually mind any of the prime time words. What I mind is people using them to try to humiliate others. I am not asking about whether anyone approves of vicious name calling or attempts to humiliate on the forum. I am clear on where I ought to stand on cowardice of that kind.

So, the paradigm of right language has shifted some. To what extent ought a gentleman or a lady, in this place, accept it and keep silent. I would like to know what you think.

God bless,
John