Vulgarity

Photo from Downton Abbey (Maggie Smith as Lady Violet Crawley)

Over the course of the last 30 to 40 years, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of public discourse and comment. Rather than delivering an elegiac response to the great tragedy of the El Paso Walmart massacre last month, Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said “This is f**ked up!” Yes, it is, Beto — but is that the best way to start the conversation?

Or would we be better off by describing the event in a way which emphasized both its individually tragic nature and the continued breaking of our social bonds, leading us into the pit of nihilism?

Are we so limited in our use of the English language that our communications have devolved into the grunts of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers? Not necessarily. But what would explain the decay of our communications skills?

The Role of Advertising

In the previously-mentioned 30–40 years period, advertising (and its courtesans in the news media) have brainwashed us into speeding up the pace of communications. Rather than addressing context by thinking in complete sentences, or — God forbid, entire paragraphs! — we are taught to hurry up, move on to the next thing, quickly — quickly! — so that we have more bright and shiny objects to look at (and, possibly, salivate over). This pattern has forced us to think in bullet-points and to communicate as did President George H.W. Bush…