| Abstract: | In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a new intensityto complaints from listeners to BBC Radio about the strong languagethey heard on the air. There had long been a public expectationthat the BBC had some form of ‘guardianship’ overthe English language, but there was also now a desire from manyproducers within the BBC to reflect contemporary society moreclosely than it had done in the past, and the use of demoticspeech in dramas and documentaries was one dimension of thischange. Such a desire was part of a broader move towards ‘decensorship’in literature, film, theatre, and popular mores in Britain inthis period. The tension this caused between broadcasters andlisteners was especially acute on Radio Four—the main‘broad brow’ speech network of BBC Radio, and onecharacterized by a fiercely conservative audience. Through previouslyunpublished records of its internal discussions between c.1968and c.1979, this article explores the response of the BBC tolisteners’ complaints and press coverage about swearing.It suggests that BBC Radio reacted strongly to audience concern,but that wider anxiety about the reputation of the BBC as awhole also affected decisions over language. In so doing, itillustrates a previously neglected dimension to the BBC's taskof negotiating a precarious consensus on matters of taste anddecency. |
