Words can get you into trouble

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a familiar playground chant to many, but it's not strickly true. Words can get you into a lot of trouble, especially when they are printed on a T-shirt for everyone to see. This BBC article examines some of the problems people have with offensive (or implied offensive) words on T-shirts. The discussion came about after a Cambridgeshire man was handed an £80 on-the-spot fine for wearing a T-shirt that said " Don't piss me off, I'm running out of spaces to hide the bodies". Other people have been fined for having swear words or overtly sexual references on thier clothes. Clothes shops have been asked to cover up or move stock after complaints from members of the public.

Meanwhile, TV companies get in trouble for broadcasting swear words before the 9pm watershed. But why does swearing cause such a fuss?

Johnathon Green, who has written loads of books on slang and swearing tells us how the worst swear words used to be to do with religion, "There have been three stages of swearing in modern English. From about 1500, swearwords were simply euphemisms for blasphemy: oddsbodkins - God's body, cor blimey - god blind me; bloody - by our lady. Today's swear words were perfectly acceptable, apart from the c-word.

"From 1700, blasphemy lost its potency, and as England became a world power, there was an effort to clean up the language. So then words for parts of the body and what you do with them, such as defecation, became taboo. You wouldn't find them in Dickens, for example.

"In the past 40 years, young people have become less concerned with the traditional swear words. Now it's racist, sexist, homophobic language - the sort my father's generation wouldn't think twice about using - that are totally forbidden.

"The right to swear is a necessary human expostulation. I've no qualms about swearing, although I would tame my language depending on who I was speaking to."