Mind your language: Is swearing ever acceptable?

STEPHEN Fry can't imagine the world without it. Frank Skinner thinks we should do it a little less, but only so we preserve the piquant pleasure it affords us. Wherever you stand on swearing, it is part of all our lives. Enjoyed by building site workers, comedians and schoolchildren alike, it is one of the few pursuits which cuts across both age and class barriers.

According to a recent poll, more than 80 per cent of us swear every day and 98 per cent of us swear when we lose our temper. Yet, despite its ubiquity, foul language can still cause offence, as Wick coastguard station officer Norman Macleod found out last week to his cost. The veteran volunteer _ who had more than 40 years service _ used the phrase "f***ing bitch" about (but not to) a woman on the Aberdeen watch whose attitude he had found unhelpful during a search for a missing pensioner.

Having apologised for the offensive words spoken in the heat of the moment, he nevertheless found himself hauled before his boss, coastal safety officer Ian Burgess, and accused of gross misconduct.

The move led to Macleod's resignation. Eight colleagues walked out in support (leaving only two to man Wick station) and a Facebook site has been set up to demand his reinstatement.

Several public figures have also recently caused controversy with their use of obscenities. Labour's prospective Parliamentary candidate for Moray, Stuart MacLennan, was sacked by the party on Friday after posting a number of expletive-ridden comments about political colleagues, rivals and celebrities on Twitter, which included branding veteran labour MP Diane Abbott "a f***ing idiot".

There have been calls for the resignation of sports commentators Richard Keys and Andy Gray after a technical hitch led to insults – including: "You've been shite son, in your daft pink boots" (aimed at Theo Walcott) being broadcast on-air during the Arsenal vs Barcelona match last week.

And US vice-president Joe Biden simultaneously shocked and excited the nation when he swore while congratulating Barack Obama on pushing his health reform bill through. Footage of him leaning forward to shake the president's hand at the signing ceremony while clearly saying: "this is a big f****** deal" in his ear, has proved an internet sensation.

All four cases show that, even if many individual expletives have lost their potency through overuse, the issue of swearing divides the nation into those who see it as the last refuge of the ignorant and linguistically indolent and those who regard it as an art form and a badge of social acceptability.

So why do some people continue to get worked up about foul language? Does the kind of mindless swearing we hear around us every day truly represent a discourtesy and a form of environmental pollution? Or should we all just relax and accept cursing as one more means of self-expression?

Cursing has a proud heritage in this country, going back to the days of Chaucer, who – unrestrained by the dead hand of the censor – sprinkled his work with obscene words such as ferte, erse, pisse, shiten, queynte, collions (testicles), and swyve, the precursor to f***, which arrived around 1500.

And although swearing is often associated with shipyard and factory workers, it has long had its middle-class exponents, particularly in literature. Shakespeare was an enthusiastic blasphemer – his plays containing plenty of religious swear words such as zounds – or God's wounds – which were in common usage at the time.

Gradually, as the world became more secular, religious swear words gave way to the sexual ones we use today, their popularity driven, once again, by writers, such as DH Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller and Dylan Thomas.

Since the 1960s, rock stars have rallied to the cause, with the likes of Bob Geldof, Madonna, Liam Gallagher and Lily Allen all doing their bit to make them more acceptable.

The result is that – where literary critic Kenneth Tynan caused a storm of protest when he used the F-word for the first time on TV in 1965, and the Sex Pistols outraged presenter Bill Grundy with the same outburst in 1976 – foul language is so integral a feature of today's culture, it barely registers.

From Four Weddings and a Funeral, which nevertheless opens with a volley of F***s, to prolific curser Gordon Ramsay's show The F Word, swearing is par for the course.

Today, f*** has been so successfully absorbed into our lexicon that in 2001, Kenneth Kinnaird, 43, launched a successful appeal against a breach of the peace conviction for telling an Edinburgh traffic policeman to "f*** off" on the grounds that the word was part of "the language of his generation" and was barely an incivility (although the C-word, which in part led to the banning of Lady Chatterley's Lover, topped a BBC survey of the words viewers continued to find offensive).

The increase in swearing has not come without a backlash. The last few years has seen movements such as Mediawatch-UK (the successor to Mary Whitehouse's organisation) and the Campaign for Courtesy lobby for less swearing.

In the US, writer and PR guru James V O'Connor has been flying the flag for cleaner speech with his book Cuss Control, and now a Cuss Control Academy.

He believes that on a personal level swearing gives a poor impression, endangers relationships and sets a bad example. On a broader level, it contributes to the dumbing down of society and can lead to violence.

"The problem is that swearing still offends some people, influences the way they judge your intelligence and character, heightens conflicts at home and at work, and represents a decline in civility," he says.

In the UK, too, efforts are being made to wash out our collective mouths, with Preston Council in Lancashire launching an initiative to stop casual swearing, with posters which read "No Effin' and Jeffin" and 80 on-the-spot fines.

Schools – generally regarded as a breeding ground for foul language – have been increasingly proactive, with a comprehensive in New Malden in Surrey suspending 60 pupils in six months for using bad language and the headteacher of one Birmingham primary writing to parents to tell them not to swear in the playground.

"The thing I dislike about swearing, is that those who do it show a lack of respect for themselves. They demonstrate a lack of vocabulary and they are reduced in everyone else's eyes," says Peter Foot, chairman of the Campaign for Courtesy, who recently upbraided a fellow fan at Fulham Football Club for his language.

But for every person who abhors bad language there is someone else who views it as a liberating force.

Far from being a sign of verbal laziness, swearing can – its proponents insist– be creative and eloquent. According to Nick Lohr, who once ran a website devoted to it, the beauty of the word f*** lies in its versatility. It is "the one magical word which just by its sound can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love," he pointed out.

"F*** falls into many grammatical categories, as a transitive verb, for instance: John f***ed Shirley. As an intransitive verb: Shirley f****. Its meaning is not always sexual; it can be used as an adjective, such as John is doing all the f***ing work; as part of an adverb: Shirley talks too f***ing much; as an adverb enhancing an adjective: Shirley is f***ing beautiful; as a noun: I don't give a f***; as part of a word: abso-f***ing-lutely; and as almost every word in the sentence: F*** the f***ing f***ers."

You need only listen to The Thick Of It's fictional spin meister Malcolm Tucker's innovative profaning ("Come the f*** in or f*** the f*** off" being a prime example) to understand that – in the hands of an expert – swearing can indeed be an art form. Of course, when Tucker swears he does so to demean and dehumanise those around him. But, says Yehuda Baruch, professor of business management at the University of East Anglia, far from demoralising a workforce, swearing can have a positive impact on relations, boosting team spirit.

His study into swearing suggested that in many cases bosses should turn a blind eye to taboo language as it acts as a stress reliever and a means of maintaining solidarity between employees.

Baruch sees what happened to Norman Macleod as "a clear indication of political correctness", but accepts that – when it comes to swearing – context is everything.

This weekend, Stuart MacLennan will be wishing he watched his language more but whether Macleod's reaction to his colleague's perceived obstructiveness went beyond a reasonable expression of frustration, and tipped into abuse, is difficult to judge without having been there.

It seems likely the offence was taken not at the use of obscene words per se, but the fact they were used to describe an individual rather than merely to express annoyance. One could even speculate that the word "bitch" – with its misogynistic overtones – gave Burgess cause for concern.

But, from the reaction the row has provoked – it seems most people do not regard a one-off use of bad language as a good reason to end more than 40 years' service.

Since Macleod's resignation 1,700 people have joined the Facebook site to show support and to express their concern that part of the coastline of Scotland may now be dangerously undermanned.

"So what, he swore," declared one angry post? "Doesn't everyone occasionally? He (Macleod] did it whenin a state of panic. He's only human for goodness sake."

Swearing etiquette

• BE INVENTIVE: Anyone can pepper their sentences with a few F words. It takes a connoisseur to make it both interesting and a statement of their individual personality. With this in mind, take your lead from Malcolm Tucker (Sorry, sorry, I know you disapprove of swearing so I'll sort that out. You are a boring F, star, star, c***!") rather than the linguistically tedious Gordon Ramsay.

• PAS DEVANT LES ENFANTS: Even these days, it's not good manners to launch into a volley of expletives when there are kids around. Although plenty of people do. Hence the (I hope) apocryphal tale of the child who was admonished for saying "f***ing knickers" in front of her grandmother, and replied: "What should I say when grandma's here then? F***ing trousers?"

• GET YOUR TIMING RIGHT: While a well-placed profanity may help you ease your way into some social settings, it's probably best to lie low until you have got the measure of the place. Walking into work on your first day shouting "I would have got here on time, but the f***ing alarm didn't go off and the f***ing bus was late," is unlikely to earn you anything but a one-way ticket back to the dole office.

• DON'T EXPECT IT TO ENHANCE YOUR PUBLIC STANDING... unless you are a rock star; or a footballer, or a D-List reality TV star; or the vice-president of the US; or the leader of the Tory Party (who used the word t*** on a breakfast radio show). In fact, DO expect it to enhance your public standing, unless you are Stuart MacLennan.

• KEEP IT FROM THE CUSTOMERS: No matter how liberal we are, we don't want to stand at a check-out and hear the assistant shout: "Can you give us a price on this f***ing bread? I can't find a f***ing bar code." It just doesn't sound right.