Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Steve and Lai Ming.
If you've ever overheard Gen Z talk, whether on a campus lawn, a group chat or a gaming stream, you may notice something surprising.
The words that used to be considered the peak of vulgarity barely register anymore.
But say something that targets someone's race, gender or ability.
That's where the red line is drawn, instantly and firmly.
Clearly there is a new hierarchy of what counts as bad language, and it says more about society than about sentences.
Neolinguistic research suggests that the boundaries of taboo language are shifting dramatically among younger generations.
While classic profanities have lost much of their sting, words that determine identity groups have become the most socially unacceptable forms of expression.
So please enlighten me.
What are now considered okay and what are not?
Yeah, so this is just kind of a... a changing of the times.
And, by the way, this um chat will be focused on uh Western language, English language culture, for at least a part of it.
Although I do want to ask about um Chinese as well.
But yeah, what they found from their research is that your traditional swear words or curse words, if you will, the words that my parents' generation may find offensive upon hearing them now don't have the same weight.
Don't carry the same weight as they did say 30 40, 50 years ago.
Now I'm not going to go through a list of words, but you can use your imagination and guess what those might be.
What they did find through the research though, is that Gen Z is very much offended by words that are considered racist or sexist, words that demean others, other people or groups of people marginalize them.
Those are kind of the quote unquote new curse words to them.
Interesting.
I remember when I first started working in this line of work in media, I was told that well, especially in English, you don't say disabled people.
You say people with disabilities, because they're people and disabilities is just something that they have.
You should not be defining them with their disabilities, which I fully agree.
I think the concept is similar, isn't it?
It's about the connotation.
It's about what you focus on.
It's about the kind of phenomenon or way of addressing people that are not acceptable in today's world.
I'll say yes and no, because there you're talking about politically correct terms, but these are talking about slurs, these are derogatory terms um, with the intent of, usually with the intent of hurting people, and even if there is not much intent to hurt other people.
If certain people were to hear those words in public particularly, then they would be considered offensive, perhaps even by everyone.
Enlighten me, if you may because um, i have an impression that uh, Many of the words that you've just described, that are maybe racist or sexist or derogatory with regard to people's abilities or their weight or their age, has to do with politics, with political correctness.
I don't think it's politically correct to demean certain people just because of the lack of competence or just because their inability to manage their weight, or It sounds unfair and you risk offending a large group of people when you say that.
Let me explain it like this.
For example, when I was in high school, when I was watching a movie with my dad and the F word would be in the scene, my dad would get upset.
And he said, why...
Why does this need to be a part of the scene?
It doesn't contribute anything to the art itself.
It's gratuitous.
And I had a hard time disagreeing with him.
But the F word, for example, it's not directed at anyone.
It's not used to attack someone.
Right.
So that's the classification of one group, the F word, the S word or whatever other words.
They're just the old time curse words that people used to find offensive.
Are they okay now?
Because well, part of the part of the reason and this is part of the research is because of social media, is because people have now become desensitized to these words because they see them so often.
They've become normalized.
And the more often we use words, the more often we hear them, the less impact their meaning has.
For example, if I were to say to you 35 times a day, I love you well, the first doesn't mean a lot.
The first time you might wow.
That's really amazing, but the 35th time the word would lose its meaning a little bit.
That's what's happening here, because in my dad's generation, my dad had access to i don't know, 40 or 50 people on a daily basis.
He was a high school vice principal who he would interact with, including his students, who never used bad language in front of him.
He would come home to his family where nobody his children did not use bad language in front of him.
I've never heard my dad swear.
So he never... had access to any of those words, right?
The only time you would hear it would be in a movie or something like that, which would mean the sensitivity level would be really high.
The point of this research that we're talking about today is that because Gen Z has been so exposed through social media, through film, through music, through different forms of art, through games, through interaction with each other, that those old school curse words are.
They don't have the same meaning that they used to.
I think they ranked New York City the 17th most vulgar city in America or something like that.
Because you hear the F word all the time.
Because it's just every... Well, it's not... As an adjective?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean I don't want to For people who have never been to New York City.
I don't want to make it sound like it's just a constant bombardment of swear words.
Of course not.
But at the same time...
Those words have become... Less serious.
Not necessarily a part of formal situations.
You're not going to go to a job interview and drop the F-bomb.
That's common sense.
But it's just become desensitized now.
At the same time, you mentioned this a little already.
That is the internet.
I think the internet responses to outdated or even current slurs very... very actively.
They use them in internet slams.
They use them in different memes, making jokes.
And that joke, that kind of joking meme takes away the weight, takes away the seriousness.
You're talking about swear words or slurs?
Slurs.
Slurs.
Yes, I think both swear words and slurs.
When you see them in the kind of funny memes, you know it's not serious.
And one other important point is that you know it's not directed to anybody or not there to intentionally hurt the feelings of anybody.
So I'm curious, do you think intentions matter?
Let's say, no matter if we're talking about the traditional slurs and swear words or the currently recognized as unacceptable ones, the Gen Z version of slurs, if they're not using it as a slur, if they're using it as an adjective...
Does it matter?
It does, yeah.
And this is my opinion as a Canadian.
But words have a lot of power.
And it doesn't matter what your intention as the speaker is.
It matters whether it hurts someone else or not.
And there's a lot of history and a lot of reasons for people to be offended by certain language.
So...
I find a huge distinction between curse words and slurs, meme or no meme.
It doesn't matter.
It's unacceptable.
It's absolutely unacceptable from my point of view.
So my answer is, yeah, I think it's really important.
The intent makes no difference whatsoever.
What about in Chinese?
Does this not exist?
I would be surprised it does it definitely?
I was gonna say i would.
I would be surprised if the answer was no.
I don't think we are welcoming uh, i don't like that word a bunch of new slurs or new swear words, but i do see the old, traditional bad language losing its power a little bit or losing its seriousness a little bit in the younger generation.
When you hear primary school students or middle school students talking with slurs and bad languages in their conversations, as an adult, as someone who's old enough to be the mom of at least a uncomfortable, it's that uncomfortable feeling that makes you feel like it's still a problem.
But you look at the people who are talking, the little kids who are talking.
Definitely they are not.
They're not having any seriously bad attitude towards each other.
It's just really a common conversation when they're getting off school to home.
So I think it's also a generational thing.
That is, every generation might have their own list of unacceptable bad language and some kind of slur or swear words that they may accept in a certain age or a certain period in their life.
Maybe when they're older, they started to think, hmm, I do not really need this language in my life.
But again, I'm just gonna to fight with you a little bit.
You're putting slurs and swear words in the same box, in the same category, in in the previous examples.
Yeah but, but again, these are completely and utterly different in this, in the context of our conversation today.
Because swear words are were i don't know i just realized i don't know any chinese swear words.
I really have to good, get up from that um, But those don't have the potential to hurt someone because you're not attacking their character.
You're not attacking their race.
You're not attacking anything else about who they may be as a person or as a group.
They're just swear words.
They can exist on their own.
Slurs are usually intended to hurt someone.
Which is why at the very beginning I thought this has to do with politics.
It has to do with identity politics.
What do you identify with and what do you consider yourself to be, unlike in Western societies where there is a lot of factors in place like religion or race, or you know where are you from?
Here in China, we're used to living in a unified country where people need to integrate, they need to interact.
And so there's been some examples of someone trying to instigate disagreement and conflicts between different groups of people.
But so far we've got along so well and That is not as big of an issue as it is in a different country.
But I have to agree that a lot of what we think is offensive is culturally imposed.
And as cultures, as our civilizations, and as the society change, that is for sure going to change.
Okay, so from a point of view of someone who's an adult, who's not a Gen Z, and we're looking at not only Generation Z but also Alpha,
Alpha, and also those who are still young kids in the playground.
What should we do when we hear them using new swear words or using the traditional ones as a comma or something?
Nothing.
Really?
If it's not directed at you, I agree with you.
It's not nice to be on the subway and hear a group of teenagers using profanity in public.
That's not a pleasant thing.
Would I say anything in that context?
No.
If that same group of teenagers were attacking, not physically, verbally attacking someone physically, based on their race or their gender or any other reason then i would say something but just swearing in general there have been studies done that said that suggests swearing people who swear a lot people who swear a lot yeah stress release pain reliever people who swear a lot have a a more vast vocabulary than those who don't there are certain contexts when i enjoy a good swear word from time to time i'm uh you know not not on a everyday basis with everyone i interact with but yeah there's not too much to be taken seriously sometimes that's just my opinion As an average individual, I don't think there's anything I can do about some casual stranger using profanity or slurs in the society.
I mean, I'm solely responsible for the child that I'm rearing, that I'm trying to educate.
And if he says something that's offensive, then That's only the result.
I need to get to the bottom of this.
Why is he thinking the way he is?
Why is he using that word?
Can I get to the bottom of that?
Has he dropped his first swear word?
Not yet.
Kids pick it up.
You never know where they pick it up.
That's what I was thinking.
They pick it up from their peers and they interact with each other.
They even have conversations. popular ways of saying things.
And so my principle is a bit different from Lai Ming's.
That is not in my room, not under my roof.
If you're in school, if you're talking to your friends, if I don't hear it, it's fine.
It's my way of telling my kid, With my principle, what is right, what is wrong.
But I also understand your reality.
So that's my principle.
But that's my principle as a casual individual, average individual.
But as somebody that's media professional, I think we have a role to play to create an image or instill certain way of thinking in the general public.
We already touched upon this.
It's precisely because people have gotten desensitized to profanity that people are getting used to them a lot.
But then we have a role to play, whether we like to enhance people's ability to sense offensive words or if we want to lower and diminish their reaction to these words.
I mean, we have a choice to make.
I kind of equate it... to just simply being a good speaker.
Because simple swear words, I'm not really offended by.
But if a person, when speaking, was to use them repeatedly, over and over and over, within a five minute timeframe, I would be offended by the fact that they're not a great speaker.
Not by the swear words themselves.
It's kind of my final two cents on that.
I don't know how much as a broadcaster, I don't know how much responsibility I hold in directing the public to be more articulate.
But I think the bottom line is we know words have power and we should be a bit more careful with the language we use.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you so much for listening.
I'm Miao Honglin with Steve and Lai Ming.
Goodbye.
