Blowing Water | Foul language in Hong Kong: it’s not what you say but how you say it
Luisa Tam says it’s a bit rich for the police, who are notorious for their foul mouths, to push for criminalisation of insults against officers, and that obscenities do not always come with ill intent or hostility
I don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet someone who has not uttered a swear word in their life. If you’ve lived in Hong Kong for any stretch of time, you are probably used to hearing casual curse words in daily conversations among the locals. Cantonese profanities, while distinctly unsavoury and unapologetically rude, are also very colourful and entertaining at times.
It would be fair to say that on most occasions no one would even bat an eye at the interjection of an expletive here and there in everyday conversation.
At the first newspaper I worked for more than three decades ago, swearing was second nature to the majority of journalists and my news editor was one of the most foul-mouthed individuals I had ever met. To my utter surprise, swearing was not just a way to vent his anger and frustration at work, but he would customarily greet people with a stream of expletives. In his personal vernacular, swear words were akin to friendly forms of address such as “mate” or “pal”.
Hong Kong’s police chief recently raised a few eyebrows when he said he would support a move to criminalise insults against police officers during the course of their duty. Although this may not sound significant, the announcement coincided with a Baptist University debacle in which the student leader of a protesting cohort landed himself in hot water after swearing at a female lecturer during their demonstration over the university’s Mandarin language assessment. That student has since been suspended, pending the outcome of an inquiry.
Hong Kong police chief steps up call for law against insulting officers
The police chief is not the first to campaign for the outlawing of swearing in Hong Kong. In 2006 a district councillor launched an effort to make it a criminal offence for people to make rude references to people’s mothers by swearing. She wanted legislation to ban swearing in public and make it punishable by fines. Naturally, her campaign was not a successful one.