I sit on a bench on a college campus.  Near me, students are carrying on conversations, either with one another or on their cell phones.  Since they're usually loud (the typical boisterousness of youth), I can't help overhearing what they say.  What stands out most is the frequency of their use of the f-word in all of its possible forms.  (ironically, as widely used as it is, most people would consider it wrong or at least inappropriate for me to spell out the word here, even though everyone knows what I mean.)  An 18- or 19-year-old young woman yells to a friend who is 100 yards away, "Hey, Corinne, 'Hurry the f--- up!"  None of the twenty students who are within earshot react in any way.  This is, I assume, perfectly acceptable, not shocking at all, not even worth a reproachful look.

Later, I ask my class what they think of people who use the f-word routinely in conversation.  Though a few use adjectives such as "crude," most seem to wonder why I'm asking about it.  They're a little more critical of the individual who shouts it out, but apparently no stigma is attached anymore to someone who is in the habit of punctuating conversation with "f--- this and f--- that" or "the f---ing whatever."  It passes almost unheard, along with uses of like and y'know that permeate contemporary speech.  I suspect, on the evidence of what I overhear around campus, that they use it themselves.  Curiously, though, if I were to use the word even once in the classroom, they would be more than a little shocked – and I could probably count on having several students march to the authorities with reports.

One might argue that it's simply a matter of propriety.  The f-word is not appropriate in a classroom.  However, what kind of "propriety" is that?  If it is widely accepted and widely used in ordinary conversation and in public places where it can be overheard by anyone, what makes it tabu in the classroom?  Why, when a word is routinely a part of everyday conversation, is it forbidden in, say, a classroom discussion where, in essence, I am engaged in a conversation with my students?  If I can't use it because of my position as the professor or because I am supposed to "set a good example," should my students, who have no such restraints, be permitted to do so?

What's going on here?  The answer I get from many people is that, since movies have begun to use the f-word freely (perhaps to depict realistically how certain characters talk, perhaps to shock – though it doesn't anymore), kids believe it's OK.  Yet, once more, we have a double standard.  What's "acceptable" in a movie or TV drama is forbidden on the nightly news, so much so that, when the news reported a Congressman's use of the f-word to criticize someone else, reporters had to avoid uttering it.  If they had, the FCC would have fined the network.  Thus, we promote a double standard that amounts to gross hypocrisy.  In fact, the existence of such a double standard casts doubt on whether we have any real standards in the first place.

As I ponder the current prevalence of the f-word and its apparently widespread acceptance, I travel mentally back in time.  No, Junior, I'm not going back to Puritan America (I am old but not that old); I'm going back only a few decades.  I recall quite clearly when people who worked in offices were expected to be discreet about the language they used.  A man might get away with an occasional "damn" or "hell," but that was about as far as tolerance for cursing went.  I also remember once using the four-letter word for human excrement in the office when something went terribly wrong – and having shocked my coworkers.  That was a mere forty years ago.

I also recall vividly the first time I heard (many years later) anyone use the f-word in an office.  It startled me, even though the man was known for his outbursts of uncontrollable rage.  I believe that he was severely reprimanded, but standards were collapsing very rapidly.  Not many years later, I heard a woman (an educated woman, mind you, with a quite responsible position) casually toss off the f-word in mixed company in the office.  Nobody blinked.  This was around the time that women's liberation was being celebrated and advertisements were proclaiming, "You've come a long way, baby."  Well, ladies (and I must now use that word loosely), you certainly have – but I have to wonder what direction you're going when your kids are yelling, "Hurry the f--- up" at the top of their lungs on a college campus – and possibly thinking that it's "cute."

I just don't get it.  I have never considered myself to be a prude.  I've used my share of "bad" language and told my share of off-color jokes in privacy or among people I know well and am certain won't be offiended.  I find it rather silly that, when Clark Gable said, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in the film of Gone with the Wind, the utterance supposedly shocked many movie-goers.  That was exactly 73 years ago, and I'll readily concede that we were probably far too uptight back then.  I'm also aware that language, manners, customs, and morals evolve over time – usually gradually and across a span of several generations.  The parameters of propriety do shift.

However, what seems to have been happening in the last twenty or thirty years is vastly more extreme and rapid.  It is less like a shift in the parameters of propriety than the rescinding of the principles of propriety altogether.  In itself, the use and widespread acceptance of the f-word may be inconsequential, but it stands as a blatant symbol of a broader and more significant decline of standards.

A certain amount of hypocrisy is involved here.  Adults can't blame young people for their use of the f-word if adults are using it widely themselves.  The younger generation didn't start this practice all by themselves.  Kids create their own slang, but that isn't what's happening here.  The younger generation also tends to reject or question the standards of the previous generation, but that isn't what's happening here either.  Indeed, if that were the case, kids would avoid the f-word simply because adults use it so much.  Nor can we blame the movies or the media entirely.  "Damn" was commonly used long before Rhett Butler, Clark Gable's character, uttered it in Gone with the Wind.  (In fact, the only reason that Rhett didn't say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a f---" is that the f-word would have been anachronistic in a film set in the nineteenth century.)    

Perhaps one reason that kids start using the f-word so eagerly in their teens is that they see it as an adult entitlement.  It is one of a long list of things that are prohibited when they're very young but seem to be permitted when they get older.  Teenagers are walking contradictions – they don't want to be like adults (they have their own culture), but they are eager to grow up.  They aren't supposed to be admitted to movies in which the f-word is used (though they see these films anyway), so apparently the right to hear the f-word is an adult prerogative.  Therefore, they logically conclude the right to use it is also an adult prerogative.  This logic is reinforced when they hear the f-word used in real life.  Kids have already concluded, with some justification, that adults are hypocritical, so they take the next logical step.  They use the f-word to show that they're grown-up, and they use it shamelessly because to pretend that it is tabu when everyone does it is to be a terrible phony.

Does it matter?  It's clearly preposterous to assert that society is sinking into depravity and immorality simply because people are walking about spewing dirty words.  The acceptance of hell and damn as common curses did not mark the end of civilization as we know it.  When Clark Gable said, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in a movie, it did not begin a precipitous descent into immorality.  All the fuss about that utterance now seems quaint, like the puritanical insistence that women hide their ankles from public view.  Our ideas of what is publicaly "proper" have always been shifting.  They have even shifted back and forth.  It's possible to argue that Elizabethan England in the 17th century was bawdier than Victorian England in the 19th (though one suspects that what people did in private was much the same).  Nevertheless, we need to recognize that there must be some invisible line that marks the limits of public propriety and civility – or, more appropriately, impropriety and incivility.

Civility and propriety are the glue that help to hold civilization together.  Barbarians probably go about saying "F--- this" and "F--- that" a lot.  They lack the vocabulary to achieve emphasis without using obscenity, and they lack the sophistication to deliver a witty insult.  The habitual use of the f-word does more damage to its user than it does to the target.  It shows him or her to be a creature of habit, with a mind mired in mud, lacking both creativity and imagination.

I am not suggesting that we attempt to strip the f-word entirely from the language.  It is here to stay.  Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to exercise some restraint in its use.  It might even do some good.