Bastard! Bad Language or Simple Ignorance?

Bastard! Bad language or simple ignorance?

Right off the bat I have a confession to make. I gave this piece the title it has to dramatize it; a more accurate title would have been, ‘Language – its use and abuse’, but I thought that that would have made it sound too academic. And academic suggests a coolness towards the subject which is the complete opposite of how I feel about it, so I beg your indulgence.

In between ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ of language lays the much more obvious category of ‘misuse’, when what you are saying is not actually what you think you are saying. And the best, most enlightening, example of this I have come across is one Brendan Behan gives in his book, ‘Brendan Behan’s Island’. In it he recounts how he was sitting with his stepfather, Stephan and reading a newspaper. He came across a story about a particular politician whom he held in deep contempt. Just seeing mention of him prompted him to exclaim, “Bastard”. When Stephan enquired as to whom he was referring, Brendan told him, “That bastard, so-and-so …”

“Oh,” Stephan replied, “ … the word you’re looking for is, dastard.”

Brendan, thinking that the word, dastard, was just an old-fashioned, and more polite way of saying, bastard, explained that he had no intention of cleaning up what he had to say, “ … for that bastard”. When Stephan told him that they were two completely different words, Brendan asked him what the difference was. Stephan’s reply is a gem:-

“Being a bastard is a simple accident of birth and something the person who is one has had nothing to do with. Being a dastard, on the other hand, is something that has to be worked damned hard at.”

Sad to say, Stephan’s enlightenment is somewhat redundant as there are very few people around who would appreciate the difference. Anyone who Brendan would have wanted to inform about So-and-so being a dastard would have got the full and correct message by Brendan using the word, bastard.

I say sad because it’s an example of the language losing something. It might not seem a lot, but then, isn’t that itself even sadder; that the only way we can refer to someone who is particularly evil is to insult a whole group of innocent people.

If, after having used the word, ‘bastard’ to describe a particularly nasty person you want to make it clear that you are not referring to people who happen to be actual bastards, what do you do? Say, “ … of course I don’t mean bastards when I refer to this bastard as being a bastard.”?

But then, isn’t ignorance bliss?