Is $&%*# acceptable in YA lit?
By Morgan on May 22nd, 2012
I am obsessed with words. This is, of course, the reason I’m a writer and a reader at heart, and why I still tote around an old, massive copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, ever since I learned how illuminating it is to trace the linguistic roots of words and see how they evolved into the words we use today. Words can can spark revolutions, inspire change, and summarize our deepest, most intimate feelings. The power of words is why I take a serious interest in using my own words as precisely as possible.
And yes, that includes the occasional curse word.
A study by professor Sarah Coyne, released last week via the journal Mass Communication and Society, analyzed the use of profanity in 40 young adult books on the Young Adult (YA) bestseller list. Her research showed that, while “profanity in teen novels varies greatly from book to book,” those characters that used foul language tended to “also be the most popular, attractive and rich,” and “tended to be of higher social status, better looking and have more money than their non-swearing counterparts.”
In other words: all the cool kids are doing it.
I am, as Megan called it yesterday, a bit of a genre junkie, and for me, that genre is (mostly contemporary) YA. I have read books with no noticeable curse words, books with occasional curse words, and some books where characters who curse feel perfectly natural. Those are the kinds of books where the characters are so vivid, and so well-written, that I couldn’t imagine them speaking any other way than the way the author chose them to speak.
Teens — the intended audience for YA novels — in the process of forming their identities, and sometimes that includes testing out ways of speaking and exploring just how much impact their voices can have. It can be a way teens start to challenge their surroundings, an event that “is characteristic of identity formation for all adolescents and young adults, especially in Western culture,” Dr. Steven Schlozman, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says in the article from ABC News.
What do you think — does cursing have a place in YA lit? And what does it mean that the characters who curse the most in YA may be the aspirational characters (on the surface) readers are supposed to look up to?
Posted: May 22nd, 2012 under Books. Tags: books, in the news, YA.
4 comments
Comments
In the past year I’ve written two YA books. One set in the 19th century and one set in contemporary times. In the former, nary a 4-letter word. The latter–yes, there are a more than a few.
I really believe that young adult books, particularly those written in first-person with a teenage protagonist, need to authentically represent the world they seek to describe. The narrative decision on swearing is best made in service to this authenticity, rather than as a knee-jerk or incendiary reflex. Young adult readers are keenly aware of fakery. Adding or deleting words for the sake of market, and only market, does not serve the author, the reader or the future of literature.
Comment on May 22, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Swearing in dialogue when character appropriate is useful and real. Expletives repeated in backstory is lacking imagination. If YA is going to be read by a 17 year old boy, real language brings the characters closer to where adolescents live. Recommendations for “age appropriate” are not yet used in fiction, – I suggest the author can make note of the content. It might be preferable to note this rather than have some rating system such as ESRB does for video games. As a Mom and aunt of teens who went looking to purchase the older rated games just for the “bad” ESRB label, it might be best if we police it ourselves. ( I did so in my last novel)
Comment on May 22, 2012 at 4:06 pm
As a writer of YA historical horror, I will admit…sometimes my characters curse. However, I feel that script that doesn’t move without a four letter ‘bad’ word every other well, word, is too much. I don’t even like reading them repeatedly in adult fiction. It is my opinion that characters should talk like real people. Such as, everyone knows at least one person that could out swear the proverbial sailor, but they know many others that swear only occasionally or not at all. Writers should strive to make their characters real and not just try to shock their readers with their massive four letter word vocabulary.
Comment on May 22, 2012 at 4:43 pm
I write contemporary YA and even though my work is void of swear words, no one seems to notice, including other YA authors who do use profanity in their work. Foul language doesn’t necessarily add authenticity. I think most readers notice when it’s there but don’t miss it when it’s not.
Comment on May 22, 2012 at 10:06 pm
