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Words
By Scott Harrup | October 8, 2009
It’s the age-old question — which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or, as I’ve been wondering, do the media negatively influence our culture’s use of language or does a degenerating culture create the foul-mouthed media it consumes?
Last night I was watching a documentary on dams and hydroelectricity when an ad popped on for a product that wirelessly charges various gadgets.
The actors are so stunned by the product that their dialog devolves into a series of bleeped expletives. Listeners familiar with the English language can readily insert the intended obscene word.
Other ads in the promotional array use the same idea with different actors and settings. The company has even named the ad campaign “What the Bleep?”
A generation ago, I lived with a virtual soap bar floating over my head. I came home from the first grade and shared with Mom the bon mot so carefully highlighted by its omission in these ads. Mom lovingly informed me I would be eating a cake of Irish Spring if I ever decided to repeat that word in her hearing.
Times have changed. Jodie teaches preschool and deals with spontaneous vulgarity from 2-year-olds.
Despite my renewed disappointment in our nation’s degenerating sense of decency, I realize that nothing is gained from cursing the darkness. Rather, that brief commercial last night motivates me to watch my own choice of words. As offensive as I find such bleeped innuendo to be, there are plenty of things I can say in “refined” English that cut someone far more deeply than simple vulgarity.
Without a hint of profanity, I can allow my anger or impatience to vent, leaving in the wake of my destructive emotions my wife, my child, a neighbor or friend.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14, NKJV).
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