A foul-mouthed America

This is a story about words we can’t print in this story.

You probably hear these words often, and more than ever before. But even though we can’t print them -- we do have our standards -- we can certainly ask: Are we living in an Age of Profanity?

Nearly three-quarters of Americans questioned last week (74%) said they encounter profanity in public frequently or occasionally, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. Two-thirds said they think people swear more than they did 20 years ago. And as for, well, the gold standard of foul words, a healthy 64% said they use the F-word -- ranging from several times a day (8%) to a few times a year (15%).

Just ask Joe Cormack. Like any bartender, Cormack, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, hears a lot of talk. He’s not really offended by bad language -- heck, he uses it himself every day. But sometimes a customer will unleash the F-word so many times that Cormack just has to jump in.

“Do you have any idea how many times you’ve just said that?” he reports saying from time to time. “I mean, if I take that out of your vocabulary, you’ve got nothing!”

And it’s not just at the bar. Or on TV. (Or on the Senate floor, for that matter, where Vice President Dick Cheney used the F-word in a heated argument two years ago.)

At the community college where Cormack studies journalism, students will occasionally inject foul language into classroom discussions. Irene Kramer, a grandmother in Scranton, Pa., gets her ears singed when passing by the high school near her home.

“What we hear, it’s gross,” says Kramer, 67. “I tell them, ‘I have a dictionary and a Roget’s Thesaurus, and I don’t see any of those words in there!’ I don’t understand why these parents allow it.”

For Kramer, a major culprit is television. “Do I have to be insulted right there in my own home?” she asks. “I’m not going to pay $54 a month for cable and listen to that garbage.” And yet she feels it’s not a lost cause. “If people say, ‘Look, I don’t want you talking that way,’ if they demand it, it’s going to have to change.”

In that battle, Kramer has a willing comrade: Judith Martin, who writes the syndicated Miss Manners column.

“Is it inevitable?” Martin asked in a recent interview. “Well, if it were inevitable I wouldn’t be doing my job.” The problem, she says, is that people who are offended aren’t speaking up about it.

“Everybody is pretending they aren’t shocked,” Martin says, “and gradually people won’t be shocked. And then those who want to be offensive will find another way.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, profanity seems to divide people by age and by gender.

Younger people admit to using bad language more often than older people; they also encounter it more and are less bothered by it. The AP-Ipsos poll showed that 62% of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledged swearing in conversation at least a few times a week, compared with 39% of those 35 and older. And more men admitted to swearing: 54% at least a few times a week, compared with 39% of women.

Wondering specifically about the F-word? Thirty-two percent of men said they used it at least a few times a week, compared with 23% of women.

“That word doesn’t even mean what it means anymore,” says Larry Riley of Warren, Mich. “It has just become part of the culture.” Riley says he uses the F-word a few times a week. And his wife? “She never swears.”

A striking common note among those interviewed, swearers or not: They don’t like it when people swear for no good reason.

Darla Ramirez, for example, says she hates hearing the F-word “when people are just having a plain old conversation.” The 40-year-old housewife from Arlington, Texas, will hear “people talking about their F-ing car, or their F-ing job. I’ll hear it walking down the street, or at the shopping mall, or at Wal-Mart.

“What they do in their own home is their business, but when I’m out, I don’t need to hear people talking trashy,” Ramirez says. She says she swears about once a month -- but not the F-word.

The AP poll questioned 1,001 adults from March 20 to 22, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.