Language

The British Prime Min­is­ter has said re­peat­edly that he’d “rather be dead in a ditch” than ask for a delay in the dead­line for leav­ing Eu­rope. Of course, he’s speak­ing about Brexit. And now that the pre­vi­ously pro­rogued House of Com­mons has re­sumed busi­ness, MPs on both sides are com­plain­ing about John­son’s use of lan­guage. We would all agree that lan­guage is a means of ex­pres­sion. In this case they ob­ject to John­son’s use of words, per­sonal and vi­tu­per­a­tive, which might lead to more di­vi­sion and might even be dan­ger­ous.

Some MPs ex­pressed the view that the House of Com­mons has often been the scene of strong dis­agree­ment by rea­son of its very na­ture. His­tor­i­cally, there are rules to go by. For ex­am­ple, “Among the words to which Speak­ers have ob­jected over the years have been “black­guard, cow­ard, git, gut­ter­snipe, hooli­gan, rat, swine, stool-pi­geon and trai­tor”! Lan­guage, both good and bad, can have im­mense ef­fect and in­flu­ence on us as in­di­vid­u­als, not only in Par­lia­ment but also in our do­mes­tic lives.

Our fam­ily has never been one to use swear words. Some peo­ple even swear when they see some­thing amaz­ingly beau­ti­ful. I still wince every time some­one says “Oh, my God!” Call me old-fash­ioned but I can’t bear it!

But my up­bring­ing may be said by some to be re­pres­sive. And this is borne out by the time I had to give up act­ing as a ca­reer due my to my jeal­ous hus­band. As a char­ac­ter in a play, I could spit out any kind of of­fen­sive, vi­o­lent or blas­phe­mous ex­pres­sion with a clear con­science – it wasn’t me! But los­ing my use of bad lan­guage then blocked an im­por­tant emo­tional out­let I had en­joyed.

I must have passed on my re­pres­sion to my chil­dren but luck­ily they are more light-hearted. Ap­par­ently, once on a long car jour­ney from the UK to Cat­alo­nia, three of them set about shout­ing out all the swear words they could think of, laugh­ing and cry­ing with the fun of vo­cal­is­ing so many for­bid­den words with­out fear or favour!