Does it matter to society if language is cruder or fashion less formal?

Great Debates
1

I think that I’m on pretty firm ground to assert that, over the last century, our public discourse has become coarser (that is, profanity is much more acceptable and tolerated), and our clothing styles have become much more casual, in that people wear more revealing attire than they used to.

Some decry this as a loosening of morals. People are less polite, they lament. And the culture (especially as it pertains to women) is so sexualized.

Then again, the earlier eras were hardly fair and just: to the contrary, beneath all of the veneer of respectability brought about by refined language, and formal dress, was entrenched bigotry and oppression. With a relaxing of mores has come a widening of freedom.

On the other hand, the United States has a vulgar, obscene man as its leader. He has no compunction about saying fuck in a public setting, and he is proud of his form of masculinity, which is rife with sexism.

Did a loosening of our standards allow this to happen? Or is it a misplaced connection? Regardless, has society benefited from these changed standards: men don’t wear suits, and women dresses, and we don’t address each other as Sir and Ma’am, and people will say shit and fuck in front of kids, and he doesn’t pull up his pants, and her boobs are hanging out, and people wear pajamas when they fly, and does any of this matter to our social order?

Thanks to all who reply.

2

I think it’s fine for society to largely split into two tracks. Nothing wrong with the common folk (like most of us) being coarse or crude or dressing sloppy, that’s just being comfortable. Saves us lots of energy. But I still want high-level professional folks like doctors, presidents, etc. to speak formally like they ought to.

3

Or, more broadly, different mores are appropriate for different contexts.

4

I’m going to try to keep my usual “nobody knows history” rant to a paragraph.

The moral crusaders have been complaining about the coarsening of culture by the vulgar underclass every year since … we’ve had recorded history. Certainly in America. Always. Always. Always. Instant communication with everybody in the world has made it far more accessible and visible. That’s the only change.

5

It’s less oppressive of people than being forced into rigid roles by control freaks. Also:

And his attitudes are all old, dating from that very era of rigid formality and conformity. It didn’t make slavery any nicer that the plantation owner wore a nice white outfit when he ordered people whipped using formal diction.

6

Formality is nothing more than classism, anyway. Rich people dress fancy so everybody knows they’re rich, while middle-class people try to dress fancy so nobody thinks they’re poor. It’s all about positioning yourself in the hierarchy - less so today than in the past, partially because people don’t care as much, and partially because there are other indicators of wealth these days besides clothes.

7

Also, because clean, neat clothing just isn’t as hard for most people to pull off anymore. In order for something to work as a status symbol it has to be expensive and difficult for low-status people to achieve or maintain. As more and more people have moved away from dirty physical labor, keeping a neat set of clothing has become progressively easier and therefore less useful as a status symbol.

8

The main cause of this was the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The younger generation actively fought back against what they felt were “oppressive” attitudes.

A lot of folks at the time had the same complaints that you outline, that society was becoming rude and vulgar, that morals were rapidly declining. However, many younger folks saw it as breaking down barriers, whether they were barriers of race, of class, or whatever. The younger generation didn’t want social structure and order. They wanted all people to be equal.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, and especially since I grew up poor (my father died in 1971 so we grew up with just my mother’s income), the idea that rich people weren’t any better than me had a certain appeal to it. We made fun of their fancy clothes and their “proper” speech, and crude language never bothered me.

Yes, it matters quite a bit that our society has become less formal. Classism, elitism, and racism all suck. I wouldn’t want to go back to that.

9

I tend to think the higher the stakes, the more self-control we ought to exhibit. So that’d be my argument in favor of more professionalism, particularly in government. I find cursing and inflammatory language to be a huge turn-off from a politician.

Otherwise I don’t really give a damn. I do sometimes swear around my kid. He doesn’t seem to notice. But he’s liable to say one day, “Why can’t kids say this?” and I have no explanation that makes sense.

I wear fairly casual but nice clothes to work. Don’t think it affects anything.

In some cases dressing up can mean, “I really care about this” (and by extension, you) which is a nice compliment.

But remember I belong to a fancy family. They dress up for everything. It gets tiresome.

10

My argument has always been “If you swear all the time, then you can’t release pressure as well when you’re hurt or angry by swearing.” Which does work.

Studies suggest that cursing can reduce the perception of pain, providing a measurable analgesic effect, by as much as 33%.

The act of swearing can be a distraction, increasing an individual’s ability to tolerate pain and discomfort.

Profanity can help individuals process emotions, establish social bonds, and express their feelings in certain contexts.

Which is certainly a good argument against “swearing is always bad”.

11

I rather like profanity, but there’s a time and a place. For my son, we’ll listen to something that lets an occasional curse word slip, but I’ve had to lay off some of my favorite podcasts because you don’t realize how common casual swearing is until you have a young child!

12

Profanity is a useful and important part of language. It’s good for getting people’s attention, for emphasizing various points, and for expressing emotions. Like any language, it can be misused or inappropriate for specific situations, but there’s nothing inherently “right” or “wrong” about it.

13

100 years ago, drinking alcohol was morally condemned and illegal, yet that didn’t prevent widespread lawbreaking, corruption, or disrespect for authority–it arguably encouraged it. Social rules and taboos are not inherently equivalent to virtue. Fascist and Nazi sympathizers moved freely in “polite” American society well into the 1930s, and were often treated as respectable voices rather than moral pariahs. Just because people once avoided certain words doesn’t mean they were more ethical or polite in any meaningful sense.

As already pointed out, linguists and psychologists note that swearing can serve multiple social and emotional functions: expressing frustration, bonding in informal settings, or emphasizing a point. Saying “fuck” in public doesn’t automatically erode social order any more than saying “piss” or “shit” did in Shakespeare’s time (which, by the way, were common in public theater). In other words, tolerance for strong language has existed before and hasn’t historically caused society to collapse.

Today’s norms reflect a broader freedom of expression. People can swear in ways that feel inappropriate to some, but society has simultaneously developed rules around when and where it’s acceptable–just like formal etiquette used to. The previous era’s formalities–suits, dresses, “Sir” and “Ma’am”–often coexisted with systemic oppression, sexism, and racism. Politeness and dress codes did not prevent harm or injustice; they sometimes masked it.

Der_Trihs’s point is well taken, too. When people look back a century and assume that everyone spoke more politely and swore less, they are often drawing from a narrow, white, middle- and upper-class lens–newspapers, literature, and public etiquette manuals that were dominated by that demographic. But if we consider working-class communities, immigrants, and Black Americans, historical evidence shows that everyday speech was often much more expressive, colorful, and yes, profane, than these curated records suggest. So, assuming that society 100 years ago was universally less profane risks erasing the lived experience of large segments of the population.

~Max

14

I used to play docent at a military museum, and we had a poster of a Bill Maudlin cartoon from WWII. There were two, dirty front line soldiers in a Jeep in some European town festooned with signs telling them to keep their uniforms clean with promises of fines if they aren’t up to regulations. The caption has the enlisted soldier saying to the officer, “The hell with it, sir. Let’s go back to the front.”

We had a group of small children one day, and a little girl said to me in hushed tones, “I thought people back then didn’t swear.” I had to be the one to break the news that people did swear in the past.

And these norms are ever changing. I don’t imagine it was the same in 1740 as it was in 1780 let alone in 1830.

15

As Derek “The Menswear Guy” never tires of pointing out, suits were originally leisurewear - and men were criticized for wearing them in public the same way women are criticized for wearing yoga pants today.

16

A lot of stuff also seems formal and fancy to us only because it is old, even when it was the complete opposite. Remember, “thee” and “thou” were once informal speech, while “you” was formal.

17

Hesiod [I think] “No brother will take from brother the love once freely given” He was decrying the ‘fall of society’ a couple thousand years back, so same shit different century.

18

Exactly. Much of 19th-century Europe prided itself on being more “decent” in its language and dress than its foul-mouthed, tight-breeched, ultra-decollete forebears of the previous century. As Jane Austen wrote of the popular 18th-century publication The Spectator:
”their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.”

Also, there are lots of different interpretations of “decorum”. A century or so ago, “polite” society was much more circumspect about profanity and obscenity in its discourse, but much more relaxed about various kinds of insulting slurs and stereotypes. Nobody would have gone out in public without a hat, but they dumped an unwanted object in the public streets without a second thought. Etc.

19

Formality wasn’t just about the class of people you were. It was also about the class of place or event you were attending. People dressed up more for special occasions in the past, even if those special occasions were just going to church or going to a restaurant.

It seems to me that nowadays we have much less sense than we used to that certain places, events, and activities are special or formal. And IMHO this change is neither all good nor all bad.

20

Profanity is more acceptable and tolerated, but racial and ethnic slurs (and other derogatory terms for specific types of people) are much more taboo.

Nowadays, it isn’t the “four-letter words” that are most offensive; it’s the “six-letter words” (I’m think of those beginning with N, R, and F).