Sep 10, 2009
Freakin' freakin'
I have to know. Do any teenagers actually say "freakin'"? I see this word invariably when adults are trying to write teenage parts in their books, but I never said this myself or knew anyone who did. Maybe occasionally in jest, when imitating a parent or something, but never seriously. Which causes me to wonder - where did adult writers get the idea that the inclusion of this word will cause a character to resonate with teen readers?
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6 comments:
I probably used it a bit when I was younger--probably when I didn't want to swear in front of my parents / other adults. It depends on the character of the person, though.
It does...I'm sure there must be teenagers out there somewhere that say this on a regular basis.
But that's the thing...they're out there somewhere. This isn't something that a preponderance of teens say, like...I don't know, "cool" or "that sucks" or "your mom." ;)
Perhaps the writer who is using this is hearing these teens say "freakin'" because they don't want to swear in front of them... giving them the false impression that they actually use the word.
You're right, though-- I certainly think it'd be a minority who use the word, but I'm not exactly hanging out with teenagers anymore, now am I.
I agree with Chris and also posit that maybe the author is using "freakin" as a substitute for real swear words because they either don't want to swear in their writing or think that they're not supposed to.
I definitely heard people use it when I was a kid, and used it myself... but not in a very long time. It's an obsolete word - perhaps your authors are just not caught up?
So I'm confused. Are we saying that using "freakin" is someone's idea of a juvenile form of the more "adult" use of a particular expletive? If so, than I would like to posit that an analysis of the label "adult" is in order. As in the use of "adult entertainment" as a euphemism for pornography.
And then there's the odd relationship between "freakin" and "f.......". The latter being a (hopefully) paradoxical representation of sex and violence. How, one might ask, does "freakin" fit into that picture?
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