Shouts from the desert

This week the Prime Minister followed a speech by Chief Justice Spiegelman of the New South Wales Supreme Court discussing a possible loss of civility in society by associating civility with the use of "vulgar" language and maligning people who use such language.

I fail to see the link between "bad" language and bad manners.

If a person is being offended by the mere use of a word, it is because they want to be offended. A complete sentence may well convey an objectively offensive meaning, but a single word is not offensive - if you think about it, every "offensive" word in the language has another word, identical in meaning that is not classified as offensive, so it is not the meaning that offends. I fail to see how the particular vibrations of the air that the use of the word produces can offend. No, the particular word offends because the offended person has chosen to be offended by that particular word.

Is there a deficiency in manners? Perhaps, but considering that we are a multi-cultural society and that classical expectations of manners are heavily based in particular cultural backgrounds, expecting everybody to share the same views on the particular manifestations of manners is unrealistic. We should be looking at the substance of the actions of people, rather than at the form.

When the Prime Minister speaks of manners, he speaks of particular forms. Forms such as: not using words that some in society choose to be offended by; using particular words at particular times; holding your eating utensils in the correct hands and in the correct way; and not belching in public. Expectations in these areas vary across cultures such that what is forbidden in one is often mandatory in another.

When we look at the substance of the actions of people, that is where we find the true measure of a person's manners, but I can understand this being a system of measuring politeness that the Prime Minister would rather avoid.

Concentrating on substantive rudeness means it is not the person who uses words that somebody has chosen to be offended by who has the bad manners. When choosing to be offended by a word the person choosing to do so also chooses to look down on people who use those words. In itself that is absurd and likely to lead to inequity, however when it goes further to advocate that those who use those words therefore lack civility, it serves to publicly belittle such people, and amounts to substantive rudeness. It is not the person who uses the words who lacks manners - the person who lacks manners is the person who would put down those who use the words.

The Prime Minister is guilty of choosing to treat particular words as offensive and then putting down those who would use them - that is substantive rudeness.

When you look at the speech given by the Chief Justice you see he was talking predominantly about substantive civility. He made a passing reference to vulgarity on reality TV, however I suspect he was referring to substantive rudeness there too - substantive rudeness was in plentiful supply on last year's series of Big Brother and usually directed at the women - rather than mere forms and language as the Prime Minister did.