Swearing has lost none of its power to shock – thank f***!
Whenever I read asterisked swear words in print, and surely you do this, too, I very carefully sound the word out either aloud or in my head. And the feeling it gives me, working out the word from only two letters and an assortment of shapes, is as if I have cracked a secret code or passed a test, which means the word resonates at a higher pitch than its pathetic unstarred pals. It rings like a lovely bell and the stars for letters mean it glitters. Which, I think, must be the very opposite of what was originally intended. Instead of obscuring the word, the asterisks manifest it.
Sometimes you don’t even need asterisks. The ASA recently investigated ads for Tesco Mobile after receiving complaints that using the words “shiitake”, “pistachio”, and “fettuccine” in a context where they “alluded to expletives” was offensive and inappropriate for children to see. They would make them think about swear words and then, presumably, become ungovernable and possibly go on to kill.
The most recent occasion I had to read a series of starred-out swear words was when the education secretary Gillian Keegan (after an interview about whether she should have acted earlier to deal with the crumbling schools, how she’d failed to keep parents informed about whether their children’s schools were closed, and how Tory spending cuts are to blame) declared she’d done a “f ****** good job” while others sat “on their a***s”. The story shifted from the schools to the swear words, with Keegan later grimly apologising for her “choice language”. In the House of Commons the following day, where she was making a statement about the crumbling concrete, Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson suggested that if the education department needed more money it might install a swear box in the office.
These funny little incidents, where someone swears when they believe their microphone’s switched off (like Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who was once taken off air for a week after being overheard, off-camera, using the C-word to describe Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker, or when MP Andrew Mitchell was reported to have called a group of police officers “fucking plebs”), are remarkably common. And while the swearing becomes the headline, what is always more interesting is how those words appear when the subject of the