Foul language

I was on a plane recently and the two guys sitting in the row behind me were speaking loudly throughout the flight. That was painful enough on its own; what made it worse was that these two guys delighted in punctuating their sentences with liberal use of the F word.

Got me thinking about why some people can seem to get away with using foul language and others can't. Here are my thoughts.

Foul language does not rile people when the speakers and the listeners are very familiar with each other. We could be far more tolerant of our dorm mate using foul language because, in all likelihood, that is exactly how we remember him anyway. The other situation where foul language does not seem to be contrived is when the situation being discussed is so bad that foul language is the least of our problems.

The most important factor however might be whether the listener has given the speaker and explicit or implicit licence to use foul language.

I have realized that I have not always sought this sanction before I let fly. Sometimes, I have incorrectly presumed that I had the licence granted to me implicitly.

Time to watch my tongue.