Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 20 April 2008:

Swearing? Who Gives a Bleep?
by Colin Goh

By now, many of you must have seen that YouTube clip of a man’s cellphone recording of his altercation with a taxi driver.  Apparently, things were ignited when the cabbie, asked to move his vehicle, responded with the f-word.

“The F Word” is also the title of one of several food-related TV shows that I follow religiously that star British chef Gordon Ramsay, who is famous not just for his cooking skills, but his ability to unleash creative expletive-laden invective. (Sample quote: “You moved like a [bleep] tortoise giving birth!”)

And according to a much-circulated New York Times article last Wednesday, the culinary world resembles nothing so much as a US Marines barracks: a recent New Yorker magazine profile of New York’s hottest chef at the moment, David Chang, are littered with his profane utterances, while vulgarities are sprinkled like bacon bits on a salad in any given episode of the highly popular cooking competition ‘Top Chef’, not to mention anything involving Anthony Bourdain.

I was a little surprised by the article – mainly because the bad language never really registered with me.  “We’ve been watching these shows for years!” I said to the Wife. “What the heck is wrong with me that I never really noticed the swearing?”

“Who the heck cares?” replied the Wife, who, unlike me, actually used ‘heck’.

I paused to ponder this.  I came from an all boys’ school, so cussing was never new to me, but I do remember being stunned on my first day of national service, when arriving at my assigned company, the duty corporal greeted me by substituting Hokkien obscenities whenever punctuation marks were called for. To this day, whenever I hear a military person speak of a strategy of ‘shock and awe’, I think back to that first day at Nee Soon Camp.

But I wasn’t offended. In fact, this new benchmark of cursing amused me, and I actually began to archive profanity I found especially innovative. Naturally, the army was a treasure trove.

I guess it’s only natural to be curious about anything that’s seen as taboo.  When learning any language, we always want to find out a few choice expletives. I remember when hosting a Japanese exchange student during secondary school, his first question to me was, “Colin-san, what is ‘[very inflammatory Hokkien expression concerning the anatomy of one’s maternal parent]’?”

But I might have been particularly perverse during the interregnum between NS and university, when I dated a girl precisely because she swore like a fishwife, giving me personal insight into the persuasiveness of the venerable exhortation, “Talk dirty to me, baby.” The conversations during our dates often resembled the dialogue in a Quentin Tarantino movie, and my parents were certainly displeased when in their company, I’d inadvertently leak some of the vocabulary I’d absorbed.

I’ve since stopped swearing so much, except for the occasional outburst, but I can’t say it’s because I suddenly re-acquired civility. I’m one of the few who doesn’t buy the notion that employing vulgarities are, as we Singaporeans say, ‘so L.C.’ (for ‘low class’). I know people from every economic strata who curse – from Geylang durian sellers to Wall Street CEOs. In fact, my salty ex and, as I also learned, my corporal, actually came from very ‘H.C.’ backgrounds and went on to graduate from top universities. I think for most people, it’s a phase we grow out of, largely because it gets boring after a while.

Yes, yes, yes, swearing leaves an unpleasant impression, risks misunderstanding, is intellectually lazy, blah blah blah, but you know, it’s been around for eternity (it’s even in Shakespeare), and people should just shrug it off and deal with much more offensive uses of language – like incitement to hatred, or lying.  In fact, I’m much more annoyed by disingenuous people who employ substitutes like ‘sugar’, and (I’m not making this up) ‘grasshole’.

Am I out of touch with popular sentiment? Maybe, though I take some comfort from the fact that online commenters on the aforementioned YouTube clip seem to be heaping much less opprobrium on the foul-mouthed cabbie than on the clip’s recordist, for his hyperbolic comparison of being sworn at to a seizable offence under the assault provisions of the Penal Code.

And do I wish people would curse less on my favourite TV shows? Yes, but mainly because their expletives get bleeped out, and I want to hear what they’re actually saying instead of whatever the networks have hired R2D2 to dub over.

That’s my honest opinion. I swear.

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