I shouldn’t admit this, but I’d love it if you’d start a thread in an appropriate (?) forum and give us some examples. I’m quite curious.
My 27 year old niece is an oil well geologist. She reports that if she wants to be taken seriously at drill sites, cussing is required.
Unfortunately, this is well nigh impossible to do. When I get going, I start slow and work my way up to a fine fury, but it is all stream-of-consciousness stuff. 5 minutes later I barely even remember what I’ve said. Also, it’s corny in writing. R. Lee’s rants are well known, so people can actually hear the emphasis. Try reading those sentences with no context and they look stupid.
Last but not least, I find myself not wanting to offend anybody here. I could offend everybody here with ease in a single post, but what for? The people who know me don’t take me seriously, but some jackass on the SDMB would and that would be a fight not worth having.
I know a few truckers and they don’t seem like particularly good profanity artists. Now mechanics on the other hand…
Former Navy officer here…
When I was a young division officer, I was often woken in the middle of the night because some piece of equipment that was my responsibility was down. On one occasion when this happened, I met my division chief petty officer (my subordinate) back aft in the engine room to see the problem. He had been on watch back aft, so he was already up to speed. He gave me the run down as follows: “Well, sir, the fucking commutator brushes have shit the bed, so we’re trying to replace them. The bitch of it is, the fucking slip ring…”
Still half asleep, I went forward to give a report to the Engineer [Officer]. I used the same terms as the chief petty officer. The Eng was pretty laid back, so he didn’t bat an eye. He told me to give the Commanding Officer (CO) the report.
The CO (who was not at all the laid-back type) was asleep in his stateroom, so I rapped on his door to give him the update. “Sir, I’m here to give you an update on the starboard SSMG,” I started out.
He responded, sounding kind of pissed off, “Report!”
I continued, “The fucking commutator…I mean–the commutator brushes have shit the…I mean…” :smack:
Of course, such colorful language can be an impediment to effective communication, too. I’ve told this story on the Dope before, but…
While I was in the Navy, someone found in one of the engineering spaces a yellow poly bag filled with feces. Now, one of the assumptions we make is that anything that is in yellow PVC is radioactive. So, we had a nice loaf, sealed in this bag, complete with a proper, air-tight seal. But, in general, we were also supposed to reduce the amount of rad waste we generated. So the Chief Engineer decided that someone was going to have to scan the waste and see if it could be cleared as being non-contaminated.
Which meant that the waste had to be spread out so that the probe on the detector could get within 1/4 inch of all surfaces of the material.
Volunteers were solicited. The division, to a man, remembered the real meaning of NAVY: Never Again Volunteer Yourself. Eventually the LCPO of the division decided that he didn’t quite have the chutzpah to make it an order, and did it himself.
When the report the Chief Engineer recieved about the bag was: “Sir, we just found a yellow bag full of shit,” he didn’t connect that with fecal matter. He just thought it was a generic bag of stuff. It wasn’t until after the rest of the Reactor Laboratory division refused to spread it out and count it; and he’d made it a specific order to the Division Officer that someone spread it out and count it, or else; and the LCPO took it upon himself to bite the bullet that Chief Engineer actually got around to asking why there’d been such resistance to doing the work.
Yeah, it’s not nearly as true today, but in the past, there was a very strict taboo against swearing in “mixed company” (aka “when there are ladies present”)/
To step back to the days of my youth, when I was a snipe in the Navy and our motto was “Fuck the Navy!”.
Fucking A goddamn yes, of course we fucking curse all the fucking time. Shit, how the fuck could you fucking doubt it. JesusMotherFuckingMaryChristOnAStick, we not only fucking cursed, we got damn fucking creative about this shit.
It has taken me decades to unlearn the bad habits I picked up in the Navy. People mock me for using uncolorful metaphors in place of the curses that my language was so peppered with when I got out of the Navy. Sailors curse a blue streak. Apparently we always have and I expect we will continue to do so. I have noticed the young woman that join the Navy, also end up swearing far more than their civilian peers.
Jim
According to my brother, kitchens tend to be heavy on the profanity as well. (Just as one more to add to the list.)
In three and sometimes four languages, no less.
Good points all. Still I wonder what creative swearing really sounds like when it’s not all just the f-word interspersed freely.
Heh, you’ve obviously never seen this one. 
Also, I can’t believe I’m using my 1000[sup]th[/sup] post to talk about the Smurfs.
Wolfe later recycled this exact concept, except in reference to college life. He renamed it “Fuck Patois.” That’s a common theme of Wolfe’s, reusing stuff (in many cases, exact phrases) over and over again in all of his books. I like him anyway though.
I think almost any blue-collar job is going to have lots of swearing. I’ve worked a few outdoor city jobs in my day and their activities can be summed up thusly, in order of importance:
Obscene banter
Bob and Tom
Classic Rock radio
Cigarettes
Fast Food
Talking about how fucked up you were the night before
Talking about how fucked up you’re going to be after work
Bitching about your wife or ex-wife
Work
Some city jobs, you literally get paid to drive around in a truck all day long and do virtually nothing. It’s fun as hell.
The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell is a ground-breaking book that examines the seamier aspects of the (American) Civil War. One chapter covers profanity, as reflected in court-martial records.
The author reports that, far from the fabled flights of obscene fancy described by writers like Mark Twain, profanity in the Civil War seems to have been mostly of the mundane fck, sht, son-of-a-b*tch type.
Another myth laid to rest. 