Keeping Up Appearances: The Sexist Attitudes towards Swearing — Attitudes to Language
As a kid, during the summer holidays I would spend one day a week at my Nanny and Grandad’s house. On some days, if it was raining outside or I just didn’t feel up to much, I would sit in the living room with decor unchanged from the 70s, eating Jaffa Cakes and watching daytime TV. One of the shows that always seemed to be on the rerun channels was Keeping Up Appearances. I was raised on a lot of 80s and 90s British sitcoms like Red Dwarf and One Foot in the Grave but Keeping Up Appearances really stuck with me.
For those who haven’t had the privilege of watching, the show follows the life of Hyacinth Bucket (who insists her name is pronounced bouquet) as she tries to maintain an upper class persona to become socially mobile. She would do quite well at it too if she wasn’t constantly hindered by her working class family. Overall it’s just a very silly, very British good time.
Having grown up a lot since back then, I’ve realised that the idea of ‘keeping up appearances’ is quite relevant to my family. I’m originally from a working class background and although my family never really tried to act “better off” than they were, some aspects of my upbringing, particularly linguistically, were definitely in this vein.
My parents swear quite a bit. They always have and they continue to do so nowadays, especially as both me and my sister are grown up. But to the best of my knowledge, I am still not allowed to swear in front of my family. I’m 21 and I’ve been living independently since 2016 but I still can’t use swear words in a joke or yell ‘shit!’ when I spill my tea.
When I’ve asked in the past why I can’t swear at home, I’ve been told ‘swearing isn’t ladylike’. I’ve heard similar things from my Grandma when she’s watching TV — “she’s so pretty but I wish she wouldn’t swear so much” — or from my Nanny when listening to pop songs — “why does she need to eff and jeff every 5 words?”.
There are many things that I have an issue with in this situation. First of all, I’m not a girl, let alone a lady. I’m nonbinary so I don’t conform to ‘ladylike’ speech styles anyway. Secondly, swears are just words. We’ve been conditioned to think they sound worse or more vulgar than other words from history (more on that later) but really they’re just regular words. They’re being used more and more in everyday speech as time goes on.
My main issue is that this statement from my female family members that ‘swearing isn’t ladylike’ is hypocritical. My nanny and grandma don’t swear super often but I’ve definitely heard them do it, and my mum swears all the time! So why is everyone telling me not to swear?
Then I realised maybe it’s similar to the Essex accent thing. Maybe my family want me to act higher class, just like Hyacinth Bucket, to raise the family’s status.
Like I mentioned before, in the 18th and 19th centuries, swearing was seen as a mark of being lower class, poor and even a criminal. This attitude has still continued somewhat today, as seen by the continued stigmatisation of swearing. Due to something called the Doctrine of Subjective Inequality (oooo fancy linguistics terms!) which related linguistic appearances to social attitudes, the link between swearing and class/status became cyclical. If you were poor, lower class or a bad person, you swore. Therefore, if you swore, you must be poor, lower class and a bad person (Phyfe, 1885).
So, my family don’t want me to be seen as lower class or a criminal. But what about the ‘ladylike’ part? This can also be linked to 18th and 19th century attitudes towards language. Women were seen as ‘the fair sex’ and were told they must pay even more attention to their speech habits than men as with women it was very much all about appearances rather than content. See what I’m getting at here?
This applied especially to the upper class lady. Sangster (1882) said that “A lady’s accents must be pure, her tones sweet”. If that doesn’t highlight the focus on appearances, I don’t know what will.
So, despite all of this, it turns out swearing can be ladylike. If you are a lady and you like to swear, go ahead! It doesn’t make you lower class or a criminal. All of these attitudes were developed in a highly classist and patriarchal time and have just continued into our (still classist, still patriarchal) society.
My family kind of achieved their social mobility goal anyway. Was it because I wasn’t allowed to swear? Definitely not. Should we keep telling people it’s not ladylike to swear? Nope, also definitely not. There are definitely bigger issues in the world than if your child swears or not.
References:
Insomnia Cured Here. (2007, November 29). Keeping Up Appearances [Digital image]. Retrieved November 22, 2018, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-margie/2073727127
Phyfe, W. H. P. 1885. How Should I Pronounce?. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Sangster, M. 1882. Hours With Girls. New York: Thomas Whitaker.
Wikipedia. (2018, November 06). Keeping Up Appearances. Retrieved November 22, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
