I put an asterisk in the title per the board preference, but I have been watching some Gordon Ramsay shows and it seems as if in the UK, people tell each other to “Fuck off” or alternatively “Fuck off out of here” and nobody gets all that upset. Sometimes people laugh afterwards. It seems to everyone (but this American watching) to be a mild jab.
In the United States, that would be a pretty harsh thing to say to someone. It would definitely raise the level of argument, and between two fired up young men might lead to fisticuffs.
It has a very wide range of severity, depending on context. That range certainly encompasses U.S. usage, it can be harsh, but I think in the U.K. the range of meaning probably extends further into the casual/jocular when used among friends.
But in the context that Ramsay uses it, there’s nothing about British usage that makes it any less harsh than the way it sounds to an American ear. He is being a rude aggressive asshole to people. That’s his thing on those shows.
The context changes over time as well. In my 50s childhood you would never see it in print, let alone hear it in movies or broadcasting, even though plenty of WW2 novels of the time made it clear, albeit by euphemism, that it was indeed just punctuation among the soldiery.
If memory serves, it was first heard in broadcasts in the late 60s, and caused no end of a row. It didn’t become routine until much more recently, and it can still be very harsh and aggressive. It hasn’t lost that force in all circumstances in the way some other words are now more or less comic in effect.
There was an incident in 2015 when then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson, cycling on a bike, yelled the phrase at a taxi driver (news story). It was covered in the media, but more as an amusing aside; my impression was not that the UK public got outraged about it the way the American public would have had it been an American politician of similar position.
(Of course, the fact that it was Johnson who did it, whom you sort of expect to do something like that, also played a role.)
There is some dispute about who first used “fuck” as an expletive on British TV, but Kenneth Tynan is usually given the credit. In 1965, he was answering a question about allowing sexual intercourse to be represented on the stage, and replied: *"Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word ‘fuck’ would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.*2
It caused a bit of an uproar at the time, but - once the dam is broken - other people began to use it as an expletive for shock or emphasis. Of course, increasing use reduces the impact, and today we hardly notice when a character in a drama tells someone to “Fuck the hell off”.
We have a watershed at 9 pm, after which more risque scenes and language are permitted, and another at (I think) 11pm after which almost anything goes except actual penetrative sex. I imagine that a Media Studies student might write a thesis on the whole subject of sex on TV: when the first nipple was seen; when the first pubes… etc.
My point is that the sort of language that used to be confined to the military, fishwives and aristocrats, has gradually become commonplace in the UK and the use of all the expletives on TV has dulled sensitivity to the point at which they are hardly noticed. This has led to a search for alternative ways to shock. It’s no longer acceptable to call someone fat, or gay, or any of the perjorative racial descriptions, so they can be and are used (but not on TV).
I had the distinct impression at one time (about 15 years ago) that it was written into Judi Dench’s contracts that she should say “Fuck” once (but only once) in any movie.
I remember back when Zsa Zsa Gabor was the rage, there was an interview about the time she got pulled over. She was asked why she drove away from a traffic stop. She said her and the cop and some words and he told her to ‘fuck off’. She said that in her country (Hungary, not the UK, but still Europe) ‘fuck off’ doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it does here. Where she’s from, if you tell someone to fuck off, you’re telling them to leave. IIRC, that was part of her defense for why she drove away and again IIRC, I think it helped her case.
I’m Norwegian, so my experience is only slightly relevant, but is there an aspect here of there being more of an expectance in the US to keep bad language out of media?
I’m also puzzled by the excessive use of both “cunt” and “twat” in the UK. Both words seem to apply to either sex, and are hurled with impunity, if British sitcoms are to be believed.
Dude, I’d say that jokingly to my friends. As with almost everything, it depends on the context. It sounds like no one in the show is taken it seriously because it isn’t said with malicious intent. In the US it only leads to fights if a fight was already about to happen…
In this video, this English dad loses his shit at his son for walking in on him during an interview, repeatedly screaming at him to fuck off.
I was more than a little aghast at that. I mean, obviously the son was an older teen/young adult and not, you know, a child. But still, from where I sit his reaction seemed rather verbally abusive.
Is this just par for the course in British parenting?
