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<title> Taboo or Not Taboo </title>
"Cleaning up the language" is the title of Shirley E Peckham's article which concerns young people and their bad language. Her thesis is clear; children and teenagers use too many swear words and bad expressions but the arguments that support this opinion are not clear and convincing. I think it is important that we are careful with our language and try to use the right words but I do not see this problem from the same point of view as the writer of the article and therefore I cannot agree with her. Peckham puts forward a few arguments which mostly concern how other people feel when they hear these words rather than the situation of these bad speakers. Is this problem not more complicated than that it is annoying for older people to hear swear words? Since society is changing what was taboo fifty years ago is not necessarily taboo today and different generations have to meet half way. 
	 As we shall see Peckham shows a very bad attitude towards young people which makes it very difficult to agree with her. She explains several times how troublesome it is for older people to hear all this bad words at the train, in the shops and other places. When you read her text you feel how hard it is for her to print these swear words down to exemplify. For me, this is not the worst part of the problem, since I am more concerned about how the bad speakers feel and if they know the importance of a good vocabulary. It must be the adults' responsibility to transfer the right language to the children. It cannot be the children themselves who come up with these words, did Peckham ever think about that?
What she surely did not think about is that in her article she contradicts her self. In one paragraph she claims that she looks down with disgust on people who use swear words, which I think is a very hard judgement. On the other hand she takes it back later in her article when she describes some teenagers with bad language at the railway station; "And those boys looked respectable, and were no doubt from respectable families". Peckham uses her common sense and seems to realise that you cannot judge people by listen to their language. But, still you can feel her bad attitude towards teenagers because she does not give one good example of youths which I think she should have to be taken more seriously. I do think that many people at her age look down on these people. They think that they are from less educated families and it is sad if the gap between generations will increase just because of the language. Language is supposed to get people closer, not tear them apart, and we cannot let prejudices control our behaviour towards each other. 
	 As I have already mentioned Peckham does not support her arguments sufficiently. A few causes of this problem which Peckham discuss are: that teenagers feel "big" by using bad words, they take after parents language and they might not know what speaking normally is. As a reader of her text I would have enjoyed some effects and solutions to this important problem such as: every parents' responsibility, education in school, and the importance to emphasise respect between people. The only solution she gives, which is according to me very old-fashioned is "to box the children around the ears". I think most of us agree on the fact that violence will not solve any problems. 
	 To clean up the language is more complicated than blaming children and teenagers for today's hard and cruel vocabulary. It is all about respect, which I think Peckham is trying to explain but she never really gets there. She does not realise that old and new views have to get closer and be adapted to each other. Fifty years ago it was allowed to smack pupils in school, today it is against the law and it scares me if experienced adults like Peckham thinks that violence can put an end to bad language. The language will get much cleaner if we show respect and try to understand each other's behaviour.
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