(The Nationalist, 10 December 1999)
Not very long ago I took a taxi from the Busáras in Dublin to a friary some distance away. On the way the taxi-driver offered me his opinions on the state of the world, sprinkling his comments with an abundant use of four-lettered words. They were the usual Eff, Bee and Ess words which all but the stone deaf can hear on an Irish street any day of the week. The driver’s favourite was the Eff word in its various forms. Just out of curiosity I decided to count the number of times he used it in the next sentence. It was eight times. What struck me about this was that he was unable to express himself in any other way; he didn’t have the vocabulary. This is something of a let-down in a country which has produced more winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature than almost any other on earth. Truly, the overuse of four-lettered words is the refuge of the inarticulate and the unimaginative.
Sometimes people say that using those words helps them to let off steam and to release tension when they feel angry. There is probably something in that. But doesn’t it reinforce anger and tension as often as it releases them? And may it not generate tension in at least some of those listening?
There is a more serious point about the matter. The four-lettered words are usually violent words, if not in their content then in the way in which they are expressed. And violent words are only a short step from violent action. If you or I use four-lettered words regularly to express our impatience, frustration, tension, anger and so forth over every minor problem that the day brings, what is left for us to use when something really serious happens? There’s no point in using the same words again as they have lost their force through over-use. They have become routine and carry no impact. There’s not much left to do but to hit the person in order to make a point effectively.
That this is not a fanciful idea is borne out, I believe, by some of the accounts one reads of court cases in which relatively minor incidents become the spark for very serious crimes, even for killing a person.
Saint Augustine described words as ‘precious cups of meaning’. There’s a lot in that when you reflect on it. Words relate to communication as money does to an economy. Counterfeit money can destroy an economy. The counterfeit use of words – for example, using the same words for any and every situation – can destroy communication. Words then become just sounds made with the mouth, having not much more meaning than the braying of a donkey.
It seems a shame to jeopardize something as valuable as human communication for want of a little imagination or – lacking that – self-discipline.