Life On the Breadline

 Life On the Breadline

Who am I? A lazy, feckless, scrounger? Is that what you think of the man that ‘steals the tax payers money’? In case you hadn’t already gathered, I live in social housing, and to you, that’s most probably known as ‘a council house’. Now, what springs to your narrow minds when I tell you that I live in a council house? I can probably paint an acutely accurate picture of what you’re thinking: chavvy single mum on the dole wearing a luminous pink Lonsdale tracksuit, smoking a pack of ‘roll ups’ whilst my 6 children, each from different fathers are up to God knows what. Well I can tell you that while you’re recovering from a hard week at work, enjoying the weekend, or sipping sangria, soaking up the rays in summer, both my husband of 30 years and I are slaving away trying to provide for our family.  Both of us work 60 hours a week to put food on the table for our 3 children, and to provide them with the correct help they need for educational purposes.  5 years, 5 whole years it’s been since I’ve taken a sick day off work. I pride my self on being a reliable employee, so your stereotype that people living in social housing are ‘just lazy’ can end there.

Now, I can’t say you’re entirely to blame for forming this stereotype; programmes such as ‘Benefits Street’ and ‘How to Get a Council House’ on Channel 4 don’t do much to correct this. Sure, why not make out like we’re all unemployed and just sponging off the government? Why not create an image that we’re the downfall of society? In fact, you might be surprised to learn that only 2.6% of government expenditure is on the unemployed; a much larger proportion is spent on the elderly.  But yes, I understand, people’s entertainment needs are far greater than the need to create an accurate perception of people living on benefits. If Channel 4 decided to create a more accurate TV show about what life for some of us is really like, I’m not so sure the show would fit into the genre of ‘entertainment’.

How did I get here, I hear you ask? Was it drugs? Alcoholism? No. When I was very young (14) my father died and my mother was very ill, meaning I had to leave school to look after her. By the time she died I was 17 and had been out of school for 3 years. I had no useful qualifications, so my employment prospects were limited. No money to go to college, no real way of paying rent and covering the costs of living. Despite this I continued to search for a job, and eventually found one, cleaning and looking after two young children for a family of four. So before you start pointing your pitchforks at us scroungers, take a moment to realize we’re not all using taxpayers’ money to score our next hit, or using it to pay for our Sky HD subscription, but some of us need it to support our children so they can have opportunities that we never had.

So F**king what?

Swearing, something often perceived to corrupt the English language and that it portrays a lack of imagination within our vocabulary. Not according to Stephen Fry who quoted “The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic.” Most people tend to use swear words consistently throughout their life, so when we use ‘swearwords’ as an adjective why does that still offend people? For example ‘I’m fucking boiling’, this statement was never set out to offend anyone, but merely emphasise how that person is feeling, yet your mother will most likely give you a slap on the wrist and tell you she doesn’t want to hear that vulgar language.

Nothing quite relieves our pain when we become the victim of slamming the door on our fingers, or burn ourselves with boiling hot water, then that that four letter word that we as society still frown upon. Despite the fact its been scientifically proved to relieve pain, yet we still perceive as a demon to the English language. Along with pain, swearing relieves stress, which is why, when we miss the bus that we need to get to work on time, we find ourselves using curse words, think about it, does any other word bring about quite the same stress relief as the ‘Fbomb’. There was a recent study carried out by physiologists in Keele University that measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water, and whilst doing so they were aloud to express an expletive word of their choice. Results showed that when the students used a curse word, they were able to withstand the pain for an average of 40 seconds longer. Although evidence of this is not clear, it is suggested that expletives hinge on evolutionarily ancient structures buried deep inside the right half of our brain. One of the structures is called the ‘amygdala’, a group of neurons that can trigger a response in our brain, causing our heart rate to rise when we swear, making us less sensitive to pain.

 We also use curse words to add comical elements to what we’re saying, usually due to the emphasis it brings which enhances our jokes. Maybe it is the fact that we shouldn’t be swearing that makes it funnier, after all it is human nature to laugh at things we shouldn’t be doing?

Not only do we use curse words in bad situations, but to emphasise positive feelings such as ‘it was f*****g great’. We do this in order to enhance an emotional reaction we’re having, for example the sentence example that I just gave you wouldn’t sound as convincing if a person just said ‘it was great’. The fact we can use the same word (f**k) to express that we’re angry, happy or surprised, to convey a range of emotions and it still provides equal meaning is fascinating, how many other words in the English language can do this?

Why does society say that swearing is a poor way of expressing yourself? It’s a perfectly adequate way of expressing how we feel; actually, without swearing I think it would be hard to find words to express as accurately how we’re feeling, it gives added meaning to what we’re saying. Swearing, as I previously mentioned is something the majority of us do, so why is it only associated with lower classes in society? If I asked a Lawyer earning a top wage if he’d ever sworn, I’m sure his or her response would be yes, the same with if I asked a cleaner on minimum wage, I’m sure there answer would be the exact same. So these words that we don’t condone actually deserve to be celebrated. A group of words that people from all social classes know and use for pretty much the same purpose.

It is a common misconception that swearing if for the less intelligent, as there is no direct link between intelligence and swearing. Take Stephen Fry, he is well renowned for his intellect, yet this doesn’t stop him from swearing. We swear in order to make our point clearly, and being able to communicate well with others demonstrates intelligence, and even people with the most extensive vocabulary still find the means to use curse words.

Swearing does tend to be a more common feature of men’s language than women’s, for example in the USA 58% of women swear compared to 72% of men. When swear words are used as derogatory, I can understand why this would be offensive, for example if a man was to say ‘yeah I f****d that girl the other day’.  I can comprehend that this does sound more aggressive and distasteful than to say ‘I made love to that girl the other day’, however they both carry the same meaning and the outcome is the same so when we wince at the first example I gave (I f****d that girl the other day) we must bare this in mind and remember they are just words.

Some words undergo the euphemistic treadmill whereby a word replaces an offensive or pejorative term, for example the word ‘retard’ was once a legitimate psychometric term, however gradually acquired negative use and earned its way to being a common playground insult, whereby children would throw the word about as they saw it as harmless fun.  The word has now been replaced by more acceptable terms such as ‘mentally impaired’ and ‘intellectually challenged’, however it’s only a matter of time before these words become taboo.

The reflectionist view states that language is a reflection of thought, therefore there is no point of making these words taboo because this won’t change the way that people think. However, the Sapir Whorf hypothesis suggested that thought creates language, so some schools of thought are that if we get rid of curse words, people won’t think using them anymore.

My next comments are bound to cause a stir, however I do believe it’s mainly down to peoples sensitivity. When will people wake up and realise that the majority of the time these words aren’t being used to harm people, and if they are, there’s always equally bad alternatives that aren’t swear words that people can use. As I mentioned before hand, people use words as harmless fun, so why do we have to create an issue out of this? There are far worse things going on in the world than the occasional slip of the tongue, after all, they’re only words.

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