Offensive Language

3 Pages 689 Words

Offensive and Assaultive

Due to the differentiating lifestyles and the changing values of today’s society, the line between assaultive and offensive language is unclear. To know the boundaries of certain people or groups is important when discussing particular issues or subjects that some hold close to heart. Figuring out these boundaries is a problem that people experience everyday.
The audience judges what language is offensive and what is not. Then again, it is a subject that depends mostly on the ideas of the audience. For example, you would not discuss detailed sexual interactions with a kindergarten class. You would also not tell your grandmother how nice women’s breasts appear. These are all things that can be found offensive. Offensive language is rude, in that it is not polite or accepted in the place where it is being spoken. It disagrees with the personal beliefs of those who find it offensive. The line between offensive and assaultive language is so narrow and unclear that many of today’s disputes come by misinterpretations of both.
Assaultive verbal language is at times taken simply as bad language or crude comments. It lies much deeper that many realize. To degrade something that many are proud of or hold dear to them is assaultive. It makes someone feel that they are less than what they are. If someone told a military general that the army was a waste of time, that would degrade the things he believes in. Telling a baseball player that sports are a waste of time is assaultive. Assaultive is anything that takes away from a person’s mental piece of mind. Telling someone that you will kill him or her is the more typical type of assaultive language, but there are many things such as petty name calling and childish insults that people never take into account. Many assaultive comments are taken for granted because in many places they are very common. It, however, is our constitutional right t...