Like it or lump it

[matmat]

PG rating, according to the MPAA:

 

"A PG-rated motion picture should be investigated by parents before they let their younger children attend. The PG rating indicates, in the view of the Rating Board, that parents may consider some material unsuitable for their children, and parents should make that decision.

 

The more mature themes in some PG-rated motion pictures may call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity and some depictions of violence or brief nudity. But these elements are not deemed so intense as to require that parents be strongly cautioned beyond the suggestion of parental guidance. There is no drug use content in a PG-rated motion picture.

"

 

highlight is mine.

http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp

[babalu1997]

If I happened to find myself in a rugby club changing room

Will someone get me courtside seat at the changing room please?

[kenrexford]

Now I have to come up with a new name for one of my most important contributions to slam bidding, the OS5NT bid, a 5NT call that announces an intent to pass the next call no matter what happens, usuyally because the bidder is absolutely lost in the auction. As the "OS" part is a bad word "Oh ____," apparently that's too much for sensitive ears in the know.

 

The problem is coming up with an alternative. OC5NT ("Oh Crap!") sounds like some sort of very "in crowd" 5NT bid. That doesn't work. Plus, "crap" is probably a bad word, too.

 

OP5NT ("Oh Poopie") sounds wrong, too.

 

Maybe I need to quit with the scatological.

 

TS5NT ("This Sucks!") comes to mind, except that it might be deemed as sexist or as homophobic. Darn!

 

Why is "darn" a bad word? Making fun of seamsters? I suppose seamsters are often women, at least in classic male-biased society. Not sure on that one.

 

UO5NT ("Uh oh!") might work. Except, that sound gutteral, like I'm making fun of Neanderthals. Grunters. Although, how can I trust movies that portray Neanderthals as grunters? Maybe they spoke in a language that was more flowing, with even more useless letters, than the French? I mean, the valley is close to France, maybe eben in France. Not sure. Maybe Neanderthals thought crepes are too bulky and liked an even lighter version of the pancake.

 

I'm confused...

[sceptic]

hhhh

[jillybean]

<snip>For instance, if I were playing golf with a client, or anyone else I needed to impress (or not piss off (oops  B) ) and bladed a shot OB, no one would care in the least if I said MF!!! <snip>

Maybe I have misunderstood the post but I find it hard to believe someone saying Mother F**ker on the golf course wouldnt raise some eyebrows.

Do people not care or just feel uncomfortable saying something?

 

If MF is ok then where are the boundaries?

[matmat]

If MF is ok then where are the boundaries?

do there need to be boundaries, as far as language is concerned?

[Echognome]

<snip>For instance, if I were playing golf with a client, or anyone else I needed to impress (or not piss off (oops  B) ) and bladed a shot OB, no one would care in the least if I said MF!!! <snip>

Maybe I have misunderstood the post but I find it hard to believe someone saying Mother F**ker on the golf course wouldnt raise some eyebrows.

Do people not care or just feel uncomfortable saying something?

 

If MF is ok then where are the boundaries?

It's all context.

 

Say you were at home and you opened the refrigerator and a glass pitcher fell out and shattered on your floor. And you said "Oh sh**!" or some other expletive in front of your husband. Would he be understanding?

 

Say that someone dropped something on your foot that was heavy. It'd be understanding to swear.

 

I think that's more analogous to what Phil was saying in regards to golf. If you swore every hole or every bad shot and it was often, then it would raise eyebrows.

 

 

Unrelated to your specific posts JB, I think this whole notion of "If they use expletives, then they must have a limited vocubalury.." business is really what you tell children. It may be true in some cases, but I know plenty of intelligent people with tremendous vocabularies that still swear now and then. I personally think it's a judgment about what company you around and I really don't think an online forum is a place with much limitations. I certainly cannot imagine worrying about language online. We can simply choose to ignore certain people's posts or parts of their posts. I think of it akin to watching cable television. Some channels might have "inappropriate" language, but that doesn't make it wrong. It just means you should be careful what you watch if you find it offensive and certainly careful what you let your children watch. However, amongst adults, I don't see the problem.

[pclayton]

<snip>For instance, if I were playing golf with a client, or anyone else I needed to impress (or not piss off (oops  B) ) and bladed a shot OB, no one would care in the least if I said MF!!! <snip>

Maybe I have misunderstood the post but I find it hard to believe someone saying Mother F**ker on the golf course wouldnt raise some eyebrows.

Do people not care or just feel uncomfortable saying something?

 

If MF is ok then where are the boundaries?

The only real boundaries are the white stakes on the edges of the course.

 

To me, the difference is frequency. If you have a non-stop run of four-letter words during the round, or during dinner, or during your date, its a turn off. If it happens rarely to occasionally, no should raise an eyebrow.

 

Frankly, I think people who never cuss can be rather prudish.

[Elianna]

PG rating, according to the MPAA:

 

"A PG-rated motion picture should be investigated by parents before they let their younger children attend. The PG rating indicates, in the view of the Rating Board, that parents may consider some material unsuitable for their children, and parents should make that decision.

 

The more mature themes in some PG-rated motion pictures may call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity and some depictions of violence or brief nudity. But these elements are not deemed so intense as to require that parents be strongly cautioned beyond the suggestion of parental guidance. There is no drug use content in a PG-rated motion picture.

"

 

highlight is mine.

http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp

In movie ratings, some profanities are considered more serious than others. For example, use of the words "damn", "hell", etc are not enough to make a movie be rated PG-13, but they are still considered profanities. Take for example, this movie, "The Visitor". It is rated PG-13 "for brief strong language" according to IMDB. According to a website that lists anything that one might find objectionable (don't read the whole threadif you're worried about spoilers) it contains

 

2 F-words, 3 scatological references, 1 anatomical reference, 4 mild obscenities (two muttered in Arabic), 2 instances of name-calling in Arabic, 3 stereotypical remarks about Arabs, 2 about African-American, 1 about Caucasians, 2 religious exclamations.

 

And there's not much nudity/violence (not enough to raise the rating to PG-13).

 

So to claim that saying f*** is ok in a setting that is supposed to be PG is not true.

[matmat]

So to claim that saying f*** is ok in a setting that is supposed to be PG is not true.

fair enough

[cherdano]

Beep.

[JanTucson]

When I first encountered WTF on another thread, I had no idea for what it stood. World Trade....?? Of course after reading THIS thread I'm well versed. The one thought that comes to mind, relevant or not, is that shouldn't BBO language be equivalent to a Zero Tolerance club requirement?

[matmat]

When I first encountered WTF on another thread, I had no idea for what it stood. World Trade....?? Of course after reading THIS thread I'm well versed. The one thought that comes to mind, relevant or not, is that shouldn't BBO language be equivalent to a Zero Tolerance club requirement?

given how actively and diligently that is applied at the club level, I don't expect that much to happen on here.

[Elianna]

When I first encountered WTF on another thread, I had no idea for what it stood.  World Trade....??  Of course after reading THIS thread I'm well versed.  The one thought that comes to mind, relevant or not, is that shouldn't BBO language be equivalent to a Zero Tolerance club requirement?

given how actively and diligently that is applied at the club level, I don't expect that much to happen on here.

You mean you HOPE it doesn't happen here. That does seem to be the point of your posts. That people can be as rude as they want, and use as foul of language as they want, and if someone takes offense that's his fault.

[jdonn]

When someone asks you to stop using terms like this in an open forum to continue to do is just bad manners.

I can't see how anyone could disagree this. The essence of good manners is to avoid giving unnecessary offence.

I have a far stronger distaste for professional offense-takers than I do for people who use naughty words.

[Mbodell]

So to claim that saying f*** is ok in a setting that is supposed to be PG is not true.

Yeah, but WTF does not equal f***. I imagine if there was an AIM chat on a characters screen that included WTF and LOL and IMHO and other common online words that this wouldn't raise eyebrows or avoid a PG rating. For me WTF and LOL are words in and of themselves, but I imagine that is something that may correlate with age and computer usage.

[Mbodell]

To me, the difference is frequency. If you have a non-stop run of four-letter words during the round, or during dinner, or during your date, its a turn off. If it happens rarely to occasionally, no should raise an eyebrow.

There is a beautiful scene in the first season of The Wire with McNulty and Bunk investigating an old murder scene that has them just use the f-word some forty odd times but through tone of voice, pace, body language, and acting they have a conversation and tell a story just with that one word.

 

This whole conversation, and your paragraph in particular, remind me of that scene.

[the hog]

When someone asks you to stop using terms like this in an open forum to continue to do is just bad manners.

I can't see how anyone could disagree this. The essence of good manners is to avoid giving unnecessary offence.

I have a far stronger distaste for professional offense-takers than I do for people who use naughty words.

How sad for you that you don't respect the rights of other people.

[zasanya]

When someone asks you to stop using terms like this in an open forum to continue to do is just bad manners.

I can't see how anyone could disagree this. The essence of good manners is to avoid giving unnecessary offence.

I have a far stronger distaste for professional offense-takers than I do for people who use naughty words.

To suggest that some of us are "professional offense-takers" almost made me voice out the forbidden phrase. ;)

BTW Cant help relating an incident that happened a few months ago.My son occasionally expresses interest in developing Bridge skills.So that day we decided to kib and we decided to kib the table where you and jlall were playing.After a few minutes both of us were a trifle embarassed .(No;not because of the card-play :P )

Just then i had to take a telephone call and when i came back after a few minutes i found he had turned the chat off.He is 18 and I know he uses the expletive in company of his friends.I am happy he never uses it in company of elders.

[jdonn]

When someone asks you to stop using terms like this in an open forum to continue to do is just bad manners.

I can't see how anyone could disagree this. The essence of good manners is to avoid giving unnecessary offence.

I have a far stronger distaste for professional offense-takers than I do for people who use naughty words.

How sad for you that you don't respect the rights of other people.

And there I was thinking freedom of speech was a right. I didn't realize freedom to not read abbreviations for curse words was one too. I guess you also have the right to make huge leaps to randomly unjustified conclusions. In fact lots of rights are in play here. Right to act like an old fart and be proud of it. Right to decide what offends you. The list goes on.

[jdonn]

When someone asks you to stop using terms like this in an open forum to continue to do is just bad manners.

I can't see how anyone could disagree this. The essence of good manners is to avoid giving unnecessary offence.

I have a far stronger distaste for professional offense-takers than I do for people who use naughty words.

To suggest that some of us are "professional offense-takers" almost made me voice out the forbidden phrase. ;)

I think you should have. You might feel better!

[Guest Jlall]

BTW Cant help relating an incident that happened a few months ago.My son occasionally expresses interest in developing Bridge skills.So that day we decided to kib and we decided to kib the table where you and jlall were playing.After a few minutes both of us were a trifle embarassed .(No;not because of the card-play ;) )

Come on, my bidding isn't that embarassing!

[Elianna]

And there I was thinking freedom of speech was a right. I didn't realize freedom to not read abbreviations for curse words was one too. I guess you also have the right to make huge leaps to randomly unjustified conclusions. In fact lots of rights are in play here. Right to act like an old fart and be proud of it. Right to decide what offends you. The list goes on.

Sure, freedom of speech is a right, but this is not a freedom of speech issue. These forums are owned/run by a private entity and they have set out rules for the use of the forums, as was quoted above.

 

And btw, I bet that you have worked at jobs where your "freedom of speech" was limited. I know that if I said any kind of swear word at my job, I'd be fired. They can't limit what I say in private, but I definitely can't use certain language at my job site.

 

Anyway, freedom of speech says that the government can't put you in jail for what you say, not that private corporations/people can't treat you differently for what you say. Totally different things.

[Codo]

And there I was thinking freedom of speech was a right. I didn't realize freedom to not read abbreviations for curse words was one too. I guess you also have the right to make huge leaps to randomly unjustified conclusions. In fact lots of rights are in play here. Right to act like an old fart and be proud of it. Right to decide what offends you. The list goes on.

Josh, you should know better then this.

 

There are borders for free speech. F.E. You are not allowed to claim in all your statements that I am a stupid little idiot. (You are allowed to think so of course).

This is a personal insult which is forbidden even under the rights of free speech.

 

To use offensive wording is a lesser crime of course.

To use language that does not offend people is a kind of respect.

 

If someone just respects himself and does not care about the emotions of others, he has the right to do so. Anybody has the right to behave stupid and egoistically.

If someone is not able to see how his wording can harm others, he is allowed to do so, we are allowed to have limited skills.

If someone believes that his wording is approbiate for the place where he is, he may use any word he wants. But he should not wonder if the client hires another pro next time.

 

OTOH: If people are unable to understand how the language is changing and that words with had been abusive 20 years ago are common now, they shoud stay in their senior citizens residents between themselves.

 

So I really like Justins statements here: He tried to understand something which is totally different from his way of thinking. He does not share Jillys views, but he showed his interesst to understand her view. That earns my respect.

[BillHiggin]

OTOH: If people are unable to understand how the language is changing and that words with had been abusive 20 years ago are common now, they shoud stay in their senior citizens residents between themselves.

The same words were just as abusive AND common 20 (40 and 60) years ago as today. The idea that young people have that their usage is something novel is simply the same wrong idea that young people have always had.

 

40 years ago, there were censorship issues. Censorship merely added power to the gutter words.

 

Those who actually have something to say and some intelligence will find ways to get their ideas across without resorting to words which really have little to do with the topic.