Bad Language

I've been thinking a great deal about language lately. What makes a word "bad"? What makes a word beautiful? How is it that certain words put together sound beautiful to the ear and words that mean the same thing don't? "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun." Beautiful, right? "Oh look, there's Juliet. She's hot." Not nearly as beautiful, or interesting for that matter.

Let's examine for a moment our American curse words, and words that are otherwise considered "bad." I heard Lewis Black once say something to the effect of, "There is no such thing as bad language. We're adults and this is how we choose to express ourselves." I tend to agree. However, as a mother of a four year old who loves to repeat everything I say (and I've been known to cuss like a sailor) I have to teach her about appropriate language so that I'm not called in to the principal's office to discuss my daughter's potty mouth. So I've taken to calling certain words "grown-up words," which she buys into so far. Now, that being said, there are certainly words that are innapropriate to use at certain times and there are words that even I won't dain to utter - the two ugliest words in the American language to me are the dreaded N word and C word. I can't even bring myself to type them. But I like the F word. Why? Is it the words or the meaning behind the words? The F word loses it's original meaning when used in certain ways, but N and C always mean the same thing. I teach an interactive workshop on the pre-Revolutionary War era and I love to teach my students the Colonial swear word "poppycock" because it sounds dirty but they can't get in trouble for saying it. Needless to say, middle schoolers love that word. Will our curse words still be offensive 200 years from now or will they have either become obsolete or traveled into the mainstream? Who's to say?

Shakespeare invented much of the language we still use today. Some estimate between 1500 and 2500 words that we speak on a daily basis were given to us by Shakespeare. He invented some words by putting two words together. In his day, it was the "bed chamber" until he turned it into the "bedroom." Things were "stained with blood" until Shakespeare made them "bloodstained." Other words he completely made up - dwindle, puke, frugal, generous, amd compromise, to name a few. People often talk about how "difficult" Shakespeare's language is and I often hear that students can't understand it. While I agree that it is difficult to understand at first, I also believe that it is a matter of training one's ear to it. I don't understand every word written or spoken while reading a play or watching a production, but a good actor can convey meaning, as long as he or she understands what she is saying. Many a theatre artist has proclaimed that the trick to acting Shakespeare is truly understanding each word, each phrase, each line. If the actor understands it, so too will the audience. This shall be my guiding principle as I experiment this year with giving more of the original language to my actors.