Swearing is the curse of our language

A new guidebook claims the British have become a nation of swearers.

A. N. WILSON agrees - rude words are now used by all classes for all purposes, and we are less civilised because of it

HOW much do you swear? And - this is a slightly different question how tolerant are you of swearing in public, swearing on the radio or the TV, swearing in films?

Is it, in your view, permissible for newspapers such as this, which address themselves to a wide audience, to reflect the language which many Londoners in fact use?

Or should expletives, blasphemies and coarse phrases be disguised by means of asterisks and euphemisms?

The questions are prompted in my mind by the publication of a good-humoured guide to British English by the Lonely Planet series, and by a forthcoming second edition of Jesse Sgeidlower's ripe lexicographical investigation, The F-word (published by Faber and Faber in September at the remarkably small price of GBP 5.99 - so, you see, they are expecting to sell a lot of copies).

The Lonely Planet book quotes a writer who thinks that: "The British are notoriously foulmouthed ... Large numbers of British drape their entire discourse around the word fuck, with the occasional wanker or bastard thrown in for colour. Those at the cutting edge are moving towards a sort of Zen English in which fuck will be the only word - shaped, nuanced and spat out to convey every thought and sentiment" We've certainly come a long way since the Lady Chatterley Trial, when the prosecuting counsel deemed the book obscene, and used as his clinching argument that it was not a book you would wish your wife or your servants to read. Much of the argument depended on whether it was acceptable, in a work of literature, to use the word, which henceforth I shall refer to as "f***".

NOWADAYS, middleclass Englishmen are likely if they have servants at all to employ Filipinos or Portuguese with almost no English vocabulary; but their wives - well, they are just as likely to use "rude words" as their sisters of the working classes. If anything, more likely. Look at the 'eff-ing and blindin' which went on when the so-called Lady of the Manor of St Tudy in Cornwall was confronted by bailiffs not long ago and asked to give up some of her property in lieu of an unpaid parking fine.

DH Lawrence's gamekeeper, who was under the impres- sion that the f-word was full of quasi-mystic potency and tenderness, would have been appalled to find our latter-day Lady using it in its old trooper senses - or, rather, nonsenses.

In England, everything used to come down to class. Middleclass boys who did National Service probably all effed and blinded a bit at their boarding schools. But they would not think of doing so at home. It was, therefore, a huge shock to them when they joined the armed services and found out what swearing like a trooper actually entailed - that is, the "zen" use of f*** as a synonym for almost every verb and noun in the language.

Having left the class prejudices of a previous generation behind - and good riddance - the next generation was much more tolerant of swearing, and at the risk of sounding like Ann Widdecombe, I think this is rather a pity.

It was no less a defender of old High Tory values than Sir Peregrine Worsthorne himself who was one of the first to use the word "f***" on television. The actual pioneer was Ken Tynan.

The "zen" characters remain stuck in their own weird world. If "f***" is the only word you can use, then your linguistic skills are only one stage up from the mammals who communicate in grunts. It goes without saying that you are cut off from the riches and variety of the English language .

But, as we know, there are many people, men and women, who are highly successful in different walks of life, whose language is peppered with swear words. The staff of the Independent on Sunday were stunned the other week, when their editor was sacked and replaced by Janet Street-Porter. But they were almost more amazed, when she gave her first pep talk to the staff, by the number of times she used the f-word.

Later in the day, when one of her new lieutenants went in to see her about something, she was on the telephone to the TV company which is producing her new series about English churches. "I don't want any f***ing bells," she was yelling into her mobile. "Bells are f***ing crap!"

Well, yes, it's all very priggish to object to someone speaking in this way. But if this is the way you use the language, you could, to put it at its mildest, never be witty.

You could never say anything surprising or deep. You would have become your language's servant, rather than the other way about.

Janet Street-Porter is not the only newspaper editor to use ripe language, nor the only member of the officer class.

Nowadays, company directors, lawyers, probably even the clergy, all freely swear at one another.

I am enough of a hypocrite to wish that they didn't. Yes, I curse and swear and blaspheme when the f***ing computer "crashes", when the b*gg*ering car won't start or when my wife makes us f***ing late for an appointment. But it isn't something I am proud of, since it is something I do when I have lost control.

THE uses of language which elevate both it, and its users, are those when it stretches our ingenuity, when we use it lovingly, wittily, erotically, religiously, playfully. The greatest users of language do not exclude bawdry, but they are not habitual users of it.

When Dr Johnson was once asked what were life's greatest pleasures, he replied, "Sir, drinking and f***ing". He meant both words. Compare and contrast the disillusion we all felt when we first heard extracts from the Watergate tapes. Here was President Nixon, the most powerful man in the Western world, and when his dander was up, he spoke like an uneducated navvy.

It was demeaning. It was one thing to be a swindler and a shyster. We'd all suspected that Nixon was this all along.

But when we heard the tapes, we heard the raw sound of brutalised, irrational fear. It was utterly ignoble.

We know that Churchill was not above letting rip with some pretty strong expletives when he was under pressure, but he also took care to hone even his oaths and insults. So should we, if we wish to consider ourselves civilised.

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