Every so often I get a student who thinks that (since we're now in college and we're all big boys and girls) it's OK to use the "F" word in an essay. Or some other troubling word, perhaps the "N" word. And I've had students appear in class wearing T-shirts with astonishing words on them (one had cartoons of women's breasts with cute little labels below them, classifying them).
Well yes, we're big boys and girls. In fact, we're bigger than that.
Two questions are really basic to all writing:
- Who is your audience? Perhaps some of the people in the room fit best into the "bunch of teenage drunks telling dirty stories" audience, but not all of them do. One in particular who doesn't is the teacher, the guy with the red pen. This red-pen guy also knows that he has a responsibility to protect the interests of everyone in the room, so a T-shirt that offends women, an essay that disparages a minority, or an essay that is generally offensive becomes a problem
- What are you trying to do to your audience? There are a lot of legitimate answers to this question: entertain, inform, persuade, and so forth. I doubt if "convince your audience that the author is insensitive and immature" is an aim you should pursue. And if nobody is on your side by the end of the essay, you can't accomplish any aim besides alienating them.
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