Rude health for men: When’s a good time for bad language?
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The language of health promotion can be serious, professional and neutral in tone. Sometimes there’s a special explaining voice. Vaguely nannyish, occasionally sisterly. It does grate if you have read enough of it. It can be anodyne, assiduously monotone, plodding and largely without humour. It is not without style. That is the style.
To be of use to the largest number of people health information has to be ‘accessible’ to the largest number of people. Ideally the sentences are shortened for less fluent readers and to suit an approximate reading age of about 12. All design should favour clarity over style – so do not let graphics interfere with the text, make sure there is sufficient white space, do not feel obliged to use all the font options available in MS Word. If you use wingdings, rest assured your readers will assume a wingding wrote it. And step away from THE CAPS LOCK KEY.
Those are uncontroversial though not necessarily well respected conventions.Those are all style concerns but what about the actual words?
Gay men’s sexual health literature is another world. The four letter word route to health promotion is startling to those unused to it. It is an uncomfortable read for me but it’s not my language and I’m not a gay man. I do not object. I am irrelevant. It is not for me. I do not subscribe to the general grumbling about the coarsening of language and behaviour and how exposure to it inures us to it. I know a lot of Anglo Saxon, hear it daily, understand what it means and never use it.
How many men are excluded from health promotion because of the special tone of voice and the words used? What happens to those men who bellow things from building sites and to each other, travel in boisterous groups with builders’ bum and beer guts and roll home from the pubs swearing like troopers? Or, indeed, what about the swearing troopers?
Gay men’s literature is written the way it is because that is what works for many gay men. It is not done to annoy the shrill and the bigot. What about the language of health for the sweary troopers, long term unemployed, men in manual occupations and with fewer educational qualifications? They are the men most likely to suffer shortened life spans, psychological ill health, accident, self harm and smoke or drink to excess. Anxiety about ‘causing offence’ to people who aren’t in this demographic dampens any interest in re-evaluating the language of health for these men.
Could slang versions of basic health literature work for some men? – it is a testable hypothesis after all. Producing it could be seen as stereotyping and patronising, but maybe it isn’t. Humour works with men, we know that. Maybe being what I would call ‘rude’ does too.
Writing for men about their heath might be a really good time for bad language.
