TOP 10 RULES
The rules are divided into “do’s” and “don’ts.” Here are the 1st 3
NETIQUETTE DO’S:
1. USE APPROPRIATE PROFESSIONAL LANGUAGE: Avoid smiley faces and other “social” symbols (save them for Facebook), Web jargon, unfamiliar abbreviations, and any offensive language, such as sarcasm, profanity, vulgarity, and sexual innuendo. Your writing should be that of a professional, not a buddy on a social network. If Google detects your use of “blue material,” your Website, blog, or other network may be demoted in the search engine ranks. This rule also applies to jokes.
2. USE PROPER GRAMMAR AND SPELLING: Chek adn thowroughlee pruf-reed alll mesags. Use SPELCHEK! Don’t hurry to hit the send button. This applies when you e-mail, tweet, text, blog, face, goog, wik, or some other 3–5 letter communication. Although, we are all our own worst proofreaders, try to let your message sit for a while, at least a minute or 2, but a day is best. Seeing it again totally cold often makes the errors jump off the screen. Wait for this jumping. Your writing ability and the care with which you produce any written product will be reflected in your messages and blogs. Your communications also reflect on the institution that hired you. Send only your best work into cyberspace. Anything less may come back to bite YOU in your butt-tocks.
3. BE HONEST AND TRUTHFUL: Don’t even think about it. If you lie or even streeetch the truth in what you communicate, especially your online profiles on your Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks that display your credentials, your career will hang in the balance. Be truthful in everything you say. Professional credibility is almost impossible to regain once it’s lost. Who will believe you?
If you use humor in your writing, as I do frequently, make sure your readers know you’re joking. Most professors and students, in particular, interpret everything they read seriously, unless they are familiar with the source as a jokester. Also, be careful with the types of humor you use. Self-effacing jokes are usually the safest.
This list continues in my next blog with 3 more do’s related to copyright, signature lines, and timely responses. Stay tuned.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
THE 7 HABITS
This series has addressed the following categories of offensive material:
1. PUT-DOWNS
2. SARCASM
3. RIDICULE
4. SEXUAL CONTENT AND INNUENDO
5. PROFANITY
6. VULGARITY
7. SENSITIVE PERSONAL ISSUES AND TRAGEDIES
There’s been a lot of reaction to these topics on the LinkedIn higher education groups. Since most professionals do not systematically consider these categories and the consequences of offending people in their daily conduct in the classroom or workplace, I hope that some of the content, examples, and guidelines in my blogs and the healthy discussion of these topics will generate some thought on WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE.
The consequences of disregarding my OFFENSIVE ALERT can be devastating to your students and your co-workers. Remember: This is all about them, not you.
If you are serious about making this work, you need to consider a pre-emptive strike to set standards everyone can accept before you or your students offend someone.
SHOULD YOU MIRANDIZE YOUR STUDENTS OR CO-WORKERS?
This blog level one head conjures up the mental image of a Shawshankian line-up of our students or co-workers facing a wall, with their hands up and feet spread, as they’re read their rights on what offensive content is out-of-bounds in the classroom or workplace. While some you may be drooling at the idea of executing such a sweep, I don’t recommend it for two reasons:
1. It may be difficult to find a clear wall long enough without pictures of dead past deans or college presidents on it.
2. That’s probably not the best approach to get these people to buy in to these rules of behavior or conduct for their learning or work environment.
The final blog in this series will proffer specific guidelines for executing a pre-emptive strike against offensive material in your classroom and workplace. It’s almost over.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
VULGARITY
Telling jokes with vulgar images and sounds for laughs belongs in a comedy club or a Jim Carrey movie, but not in your classroom or workplace. Similarly, any music or video clips containing vulgar material is out of bounds.
EXAMPLES: Who can’t forget the flatulence and toilet humor in Blazing Saddles, the Nutty Professor, and the animated PG-rated Shrek and Shrek 2? Most recently, the TV cable series Jackass takes the prize for “Extremely Vulgar.” What an honor. The parents of executive producer Trip Taylor must be so proud. (Note: Sarcasm is excusable when writing about vulgarity.)
SENSITIVE PERSONAL ISSUES
Many years ago, Jay Leno launched a relentless joke attack night after night on former New York Yankee Darryl Strawberry’s cocaine addiction. The jokes were so cruel and inappropriate that they still stand out in my mind as one example of “humor” in this category. He probably is still doing those types of jokes with other celebrities now.
Entertainment, political, and sports personalities are especially vulnerable to jocular barbs about divorce, abortion, sexual infidelity, cosmetic surgery, DUI arrests, alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and personal tragedies. This category also includes what are called “sick jokes” in the humor literature, which make fun of death, disease, dysfunction, or deformity, usually following a significant disaster or tragedy.
CELEBRITY TARGETS: Individuals who engage in humor on these topics or disseminate those types of YouTube videos in the classroom or workplace exhibit screamingly bad taste. The jabs at entertainers and sports celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Tiger Woods, and all the politicians, religious leaders, and talk-show comedians (aka David Letterman) guilty of sexual indiscretions are examples of this type of derisive humor by talk-show comedians? Steer clear of this category. DO NOT jab your students, co-workers, or celebrities.
FINALE: My next final blog in this long-winded series on offensive material will address how to Mirandize your students and co-workers on rules for humor and media to minimize the chances of offending them. Refreshments will be provided.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
What better way to start off the week on Easter Monday then blog on profanity and vulgarity with a sarcastic rhetorical question? Talk about blogger’s license! Instead of an Easter Egg Hunt, we’re going on an Expletive Hunt. However, before we start bleeping out bad words, there is one additional bad news thought I want to add on the previous sexually explicit topic.
SEXUAL CONTENT AND INNUENDO (Addendum)
One addition to my previous blog is sexting, a combination of “sex” and “texting,” I think. Downloading and texting sexually explicit material from the Internet at large, YouTube, and personal videos in class or in the workplace presents another new set of problems. If it’s out there to abuse, the technology enables evil minds to find it and disseminate it. Stop it before it starts if it’s within your power to do so.
PROFANITY
You hear expletives just about everywhere. What the “&!%#” is going on? It’s pervasive in our culture and workplace. There are no boundaries or profanity ceiling. In water-cooler jokes and conversations with students and colleagues, usually their first or second sentence or fragment will set the profanity tone for the dialogue, hopefully not the barrage of filthy, Tarantino-type language. (NOTE: Quinton Tarantino’s Motto—“No Profanity Left Behind.”)
EXAMPLES: This "blue material" appears in all forms of media. What used to be considered the language of police officers, soldiers, athletes, and stand-up comedians is now used regularly by most comedians, foulmouthed TV cops and perpetrators (Law & Order: SVU, CSI: NY, NCIS, The Closer, Reno 911!), lawyers (The Good Wife), doctors (House, Grey’s Anatomy), and school kids (South Park). Movies rated PG-13 and worse are larded with gratuitous profanity. YouTube videos run the gamut.
LEVEL OF DISCOURSE: This coarsening of media in our culture suggests that nothing is sacrosanct. However, despite the increasing frequency of profane language around us, its use in the classroom is unnecessary and inappropriate. It cannot be bleeped out of your lecture or conversation with students. Whenever it occurs, its crudity debases the level of discourse and the “discourser.”
Please consider what you say and how you say it. Your students are always listening. Be creative in your use of our language and stretch your vocabulary, and, maybe even, encourage your students to do the same. Consider the plethora of unusual words you can use to express your elation or discontent. Don’t stoop to the lowest common denominator.
Next up is vulgarity. We’re coming to the end of this series on offensive humor and media. WHEW!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
IMPACT ON STUDENTS (continued)
My previous blog listed 6 possible negative effects of offending any student in your class. So what’s the impact?
DISCONNECT: Does the word disconnect come to mind? It should. It's the paragraph head. Those emotional effects can squash a student’s motivation and spirit. More importantly, a single offensive comment can irreparably damage your relationships with those offended students. If collaborative learning activities are an integral part of your teaching repertoire, that collaboration could be uncomfortable or impossible based on the offensive remarks you made to any student. That student may intentionally avoid you to minimize the chance of confrontation. This is an individual issue in each offense because what is offensive to one student may not be offensive to other students.
CONNECT: The aforementioned negative effects of offensive media content are exactly the opposite of the positive effects to accrue from many of the uses of media in the first place. One primary purpose of humor, music, and videos is to improve relationships and connections by leveraging content and media to which students can relate. For example, nonoffensive humor and media content can break down barriers, relax, open up, and reduce stress, tension, and anxiety to foster connections between you and your students. It can grab and maintain the students’ attention and ability to focus or refocus on a particular point.
BEST TEACHERS: Furthermore, consider the characteristics of the “best teachers.” Use of offensive material is inconsistent with some of the affective character attributes of effective teachers, such as sensitivity, caring, understanding, compassion, and approachability.
MAJOR CATEGORIES OF OFFENSIVE CONTENT
In the humor research literature, joke types usually fit the following themes: superiority, aggression, hostility, malice, derision, cruelty, disparagement, stupidity, sex, and ethnic put-downs. Is there anything positive or nonoffensive in that list? I don’t think so.
The problem is that these themes are also prominent in music, movies, music videos, YouTube, and other media products that we could potentially use in our classroom as teaching tools. For example, some music, videos, and comedy with big name performers carry warning labels of “Adult Content.” These media have become increasing risqué by attacking and maligning the police, women, and political and “establishment” figures and issues. They are also chock full of obscenities, profanities, vulgarity, and other crude and explicit language.
I’ve identified seven major categories of offensive content: (1) put-downs, (2) sarcasm, (3) ridicule, (4) profanity, (5) vulgarity, (6) sexual content and innuendo, and (7) sensitive personal experiences. This material appears in jokes, music lyrics, and video content.
My future blogs will address those 7 categories.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHAT IS OFFENSIVE?
Definition: It seems that we should know what is offensive when we see or hear it. We do, but it’s not that simple. Any medium that offends is based on an individual, subjective interpretation. Consider this definition:
Any word, object, or action that violates a person’s values, moral principles, or norms of behavior is offensive.
The operative word here is VIOLATION. A significant violation is what offends. The determination of that violation is very personal. You can not take a vote in your classroom and determine by a majority what is offensive to your students or not. It’s an individual, reflexive reaction. Ah, the plot thickens. Therein lies the difficulty of determining teaching material that could be offensive.
Examples: An example of violation is sexist jokes. They offend feminists because they stereotype and degrade women. Racist or ethnic humor offends people who are strongly committed to the principles of human dignity. Belching and other bodily sounds in comedies such as Shrek, The Nutty Professor, and Doctor Doolittle 2 offend many adults because such noises violate propriety; other adults and children find such behavior hilarious.
The level of attachment or commitment to principles may determine whether the medium is offensive. A violation of others, such as put-downs, does not produce as strong an attachment as a violation of oneself. Disparaging and vulgar lyrics about women in rap music and videos would constitute a personal violation to women. Lyrics, dialogue, and jokes at the expense of other people are more acceptable to performers than spewing put-downs of themselves. Why? Because they are much more committed to their own dignity and comfort than that of others.
IMPACT ON STUDENTS
When a student is offended by something we say, do, or present, he or she experiences this personal violation. What emotional effects are manifested from this offense? It can produce the following negative effects:
• Withdrawal
• Resentment
• Anger
• Tension
• Anxiety
• Turning off/tuning out
If we are offended by something we see on TV, in the movies, or at a concert and exhibit those reactions, we can turn it off or walk out. Our students have no where to go if they're offended by a YouTube clip we showed in class. They have to come back to class over and over again as they fester anger and resentment toward you. Quite possibly, you have lost those students for the semester and may not even be aware it.
My next blog will examine those responses further and suggest a few guidelines for minimizing the chances of these problems from occurring.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
