a salty tongue in technology

My favorite interview question for people who will be working with me is: “how do you feel about a liberal use of profanities?“  Yup, for someone so enamored with the written word it surprises many what a salty tongue I have.  I learned my basic repertoire from George Carlin, The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say On Television (I had the album: Class Clown. Yes, album).  It was the 70’s.  Freedom of speech reigned supreme.  My dad didn’t mind too much as long as I used the words properly in a sentence.  My mother on the other hand …

So, I repressed my swearing ways until I got my first job in technology at Sun Microsystems in corporate marketing.  Wow, was I ever surprised to hear the plethora of expletives to come from management.  It only got worse when I joined Seagate Software supporting the sales organization.  Whoa, Nelly.  It went from there.

I’ve always been intrigued with the linguists debate, and Adam Freedman sums it up nicely:

descriptivism versus prescriptivism — that is, whether to yield to the reality of how language is actually used (descriptivism) or fight to maintain objective standards (prescriptivism). Descriptivists happily accept “impact” as a verb and “my bad” as a form of apology; prescriptivists resist such innovations. New York Times, Gentlemen Cows In Prime Time

I believe language evolves and incorporates the current environment.  My only guiding principal for swearing is that it should never be personal (e.g. there is a difference between “f*ck you” - personal - and “f*ck this” - implies some negativity to the task at hand).

It’s a known fact that our industry, technology, is littered with profanities which is deemed completely acceptable (or atleast over looked in many a situation).  I was out for lunch today with someone and I had to mentally take note not to swear (I slipped up twice).  But when you search the many social mediums available for communication swearing is everywhere.  Have we become desensitized to this vulgarity?

I became “aware” today after reading coverage of the Supreme Court ruling just recently announced and having lunch with someone, in technology, who didn’t swear once.  My immediate reaction?  I wanted to corrupt him.  My bad.  Hah!