If you only do one thing this week … mind your language
March 15, 2010 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
Swearing in the office is quite common, but it can create an intimidating atmosphere. Photograph: Aiste Miseviciute/Alamy
Watch television these days and you could be forgiven for thinking that we spend all day at working swearing. Expletive-laden tirades against hapless chefs and kitchen staff have become Gordon Ramsay’s signature dish, while Malcolm Tucker, the BBC’s fictional Downing Street director of communications in The Thick of It, barely opens his mouth without uttering a four-letter word or six.
Most workplaces aren’t like that, but it seems true that using the kind of language that may have caused your grandmother to blush is now acceptable in many walks of life. Swear words are casually woven into everyday sentences by all sorts of people in everyday working situations, from canteen staff to chief executives.
And there are, apparently, advantages to turning the air blue. A 2007 study by the University of East Anglia found that swearing at work can help employees cope with stress. The university’s professor of management, Yehuda Baruch, even warned that trying to stop people from swearing could have a negative impact: “In many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Banning it could backfire.”
He added: “Managers …
Read the original article at Guardian
