Crude/obscene language is not uncommon to be heard among adults.
As entertainment like music and movies are essentially commentaries on real life, we have got it wrong if we start blaming the media and the entertainment industry for the use of foul language among the young. What these media do instead is to reinforce such usage (power of repetition!) and make it perhaps fashionable (!), but make no mistake as to its origins which is real life.
What's the effect on the young who are sponges at their age, absorbing all kinds of influences from their environment of unguarded adult communication? I would say the impact is incalculable but some of its symptoms can be felt.
Like when children start spouting in general communication crude/obscene terms that they barely understand. Occasionally, it can also be heard in anger among teens, and then again in electronic communication like emails and internet community forums.
On the internet, the use of crude and obscene language can be fuelled by a sense of anonymity, with the sender thinking that the recipient victim may not be able to trace the identity/location of a sender. How wrong an assumption that is, when everything leaves a digital trace on the internet?
Since language (spoken or otherwise) is an essential communicating tool, I would dare say that its disintegration in the form of crudity and obscenity makes its more challenging to grow a strong sense of personal morality in the young.
But I'm thankful to note that such usage is not prevalent among children here, up to and including the teens. Well, not least openly. We are thankful because the situation could be much worse but for the daily efforts of concerned parents, educators and related adult stakeholders, who help to form the so-called wall against such deplorable use of the language.
What can we do when we as concerned adults encounter such language among children?
Yes, we could perhaps stand back and do nothing or let it go with a shake of our head! And retreat into a conversational analysing of the circumstances surrounding the child that must have given him or her the tragic opportunities to pick up such bad habits.
Or we could act! That is, we should not regard it an accident that we ourselves happened to encounter it in a child at that particular time. It's instead to be seen as an opportunity to be presented to the child to learn to be better. Through our encounter, we fairly but firmly become that child's opportunity to be better.
How firm we should be is dictated by the occasion and our sense of fairness, noting that our educating response will echo into that child's future, and not immediately be seen to bear fruit.
Now, isn't that much like what parents and educators encounter on a daily basis with respect to their own charges?
