pardon this, codger!

[Dennis R. Preston]

1) How do you know what people are capable of by just listerning to them?
You don't know what they didn't choose to say.

2) You mean to say you are always on the defensive when people sear? Didn't
nobody every swear to you out of friendship, solidarity, closeness? Where I
grew up, it was a common as .....

Well, I'm taking a little shit for my mouth, so I'll draw back a bit.

dInIs (who reckons that the biggest percent of dirty stuff he has said was
in solidary rather than angry use)

PS: In fact, an old study of Antarctic researchers (where have I heard that
Antractic word before?) in whch a psychologist kept count of all
obscenities, found that the research team she worked with fell off
considerably in their use of obscene language when they were angry or faced
serious problems. For them (upper middle class scientists, for the most
part) obscenity was play and friendship, not anger and seriousness.

>--- Pafra & Scott Catledge <scplc at GS.VERIO.NET> wrote:
>> Would you characterize those who are seemingly
>> unable to express themselves
>> without obscenities as either deliberately offensive
>> or merely suffering
>> from an exteme paucity of vocabulary?
>
>I would add "angry" to the list of choices.  When I
>hear someone unable to express themself without
>profanity, en guarde!
>
>Jim SMITH
>
>
>
>=====
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com

Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736