A lot of good points being made here and it is clearly what Jo (jmh) had in mind to start with - to capture the feelings of the noticeboard members towards expletives.
However, it is interesting that everyone has used an example from the film industry to emphasise their point(s). Nobody has mentioned 'profanity' in the printed media or, more importantly, in books.
True, the film industry does go overboard sometimes in their use of bad language, violence and nudity. I wouldn't wholly agree with the very general comment made that the quality of film declines when clothing is removed - after all, the most powerful scene (to me, anyway) in Schindler's List was the scene in Auschwitz when the women had to strip and were herded into the 'shower'. But I get your point. The film industry comes in many guises and 'Hollywood' ply their trade with big money-spinners full of dumbed-down dialogue, lots of action and spectacle and the token sex scenes. many other film-makers try to capture the real world and, in doing so, have to include real language which, like it or not, is part of the real world. Changing attitudes over the past thirty years have brougt us from the sanitised john Wayne WWII movies to realistic 'blood and guts' epics like Saving Private Ryan and The thin red line both of which dealt with the reality of frontline war and not what happened on the peripheries. Many recent Vietnam films were the inspiration for these two films and, doubtless, we can expect a resurgence in the War film over the nextfew years. But I digress...
The fact is that real soldiers used real bad language no matter how they spoke at home and people have to be depicted on screen as they really are otherwise film loses meaning and context. If it turns your stomach then may I suggest literary adaptations?
It is not uncommon in literary circles to use blue language and many respected (and respectable) writers have used it quite comonly. Notable are the Nobel writers from Ireland.
James Joyce (well, he didn't win the Nobel prize - but he should have) is reckoned by soem to be the greatest writer of this century. Maybe, but he is widely known to have cussed in everyday parlance.
W.B. Yeat's wasn't coy with his use of the odd bit of f***ing in public life - even when he was an Irish senator.
The reknowned poet - Seamus Heaney (who I have had the pleasure to have met) used the 'f' word many times in his poetry which he read to an audience of visiting tourists in Dublen recently. Not many were shocked.
Language is all context. Street urchins or drunkards mouthing off obscenities are foul and crude but educated people (at least inmy neck of the woods) are not chastised for swearing in public because the 'f' word is used for emphasis in conversation and the 's' word is used to downgrade something or to show disapproval. I never thought my parents (or grandparents) swore because I realise now that they wanted us to be raised clean-mouthed. Now I find they swear(swore) more than I could ever hope to. I know that it shocks some of you to hear swearing and that you highly disapprove but they are only words. The next generation will be immune to this generations' swear-words as we are to the past generations'.
After all, in the early 1900's such words as 'bloody' and 'goddamn' were enough to get books banned and the authors censured.
