Language

It always floors me the amount of cussing, cursing, foul language, whatever you choose to call it that people use. Now I will completely admit that when I am in the midst of certain individuals or when I become angry I myself will throw out cuss words-however it's not a behavior that I'm exactly proud to engage in on occasion. I never noticed how much our language choices impact the impressions we leave on others until I started student teaching and was appalled by the language I would routinely hear out of my students' mouths. Thus began my rule of "If I hear a significant cuss word out of your mouth, you're writing sentences." Whether or not it was a fair punishment, the kids would write them and the amount of foul language in my classes was greatly reduced. In fact, I'm known as the sub that "you can't cuss around." Shouldn't all adults be instilling in kids the desire to use more descriptive words?

I recognize that some individuals grow up in home environments in which foul language is the norm and where the F word becomes the most used adjective that there is to describe anything. However I believe that we all should have the capacity to have vocabularies where we don't need to use foul language on a routine basis. I always find it interesting when I meet someone for the first time and they proceed to answer a routine question (such as "Do you have a can opener I can borrow?") with at least three foul words and they aren't even distressed!

I remember when I first started commuting for student teaching with my man vs wild friend and I found it strange that he never cussed. Now he will use abbreviations, such as g.d. or such but I have yet, in over the year that I have known him, heard a single foul word out of his mouth. Something that I used to find so rare, I now completely appreciate about him. Thus it's from individuals like him and from my students themselves that I had to take a deeper look at myself and attempt to use better language choices. However it's interesting how sensitive it makes me to the use of those words out of others mouths, and unfortunately when I hear foul words it tends to turn me off from what the speaker is saying. A practice that I find at times even in the blog community. I can think of a couple of blogs that I really like but because of the fact that the writers cannot post without using cuss words instead of intelligent words to describe their opinion about a fairly serious and educational topic, I find that I no longer have any interest in reading what they are posting about. Maybe I'm becoming a snob or maybe I'm just wishing that more people would think of what they are saying......something I also need to continue to remember.....