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["Alan MacHett" <machett AT ibiblio.org>]

> ... I used to swear all the time (even from childhood), and was rebuked for
> it by a coworker.  (He would call me "potty-mouth").  I could see his
> point, and realized that it is inappropriate to use possibly offensive
> language in a work environment.  I have since had to work very hard to
> clean up my language, which makes me wish my parents had done a better
> job at policing it in the first place.
>
> Now, I still swear, but at least I'm not inadvertently offending people
> as often as I used to...
>
> Diana

The discussion has come full-circle, back to my "I just don't get it." 
Perhaps I should not have begun an anthropology/sociology thread on a
technology list, but again I question:

Why are these words bad?  Yes, I can trace the historic and cultural roots
of the "badness" of such words  (like the fact that pork is often a taboo
food because centuries and millenia ago people often got sick or died from
eating it, poor cooking habits as they had).  But have we not progressed
educationally and socially enough to shrug off such nonsense?  "Damnit!"
and its ilk are merely exclamations, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and
verbs; and no one is going to Hell for eating a pig on Friday....

And since it was inadvertently added to the discussion... Why do
Industrial Societies compartmentalize segments of people's lives?  Why
should one's behavior and speech vary from home to workplace to social
gathering to wherever?  And I haven't researched any studies, but I'll
wager it's largely a white-collar phenomenon, too.
Certainly, in the correct context such distinction is required.  People
dress and act differently in a religious setting because those actions are
intricately tied to the invoking of the supernatural.  But such contexts
exist outside the day-to-day sphere of living.  Home, work, and play are
all part of day-to-day; they're one's "normal" life, yet we've relegated
ourselves to living our lives a bit at a time -- a bit here at home, a bit
there at work, a bit over there in public,...  Dude! it's all the same
life.
A friend pointed out that there's something to be said for maintaining the
peace in certain environments, such as the workplace.  True, but
maintaining the peace should not equal squashing one's own nature.  If I
can't handle the fact that my coworker likes to cover her desk with little
googly-eyed dolls or that he prefers to wear jeans over slacks  or that
she cusses a lot, then maybe the problem is me and not them.  I mean, how
do you think the whole cubicle phenomenon happened in the first place?
I refer you to the movie, _Office_Space_.

nuf sed,
Alan