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Bad Language and BBC Radio Four in the 1960s and 1970s

2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/tcbh/hwi065

1477-4674

David Hendy,

Freedom of Expression and Defamation

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a new intensity to complaints from listeners to BBC Radio about the strong language they heard on the air. There had long been a public expectation that the BBC had some form of ‘guardianship’ over the English language, but there was also now a desire from many producers within the BBC to reflect contemporary society more closely than it had done in the past, and the use of demotic speech in dramas and documentaries was one dimension of this change. Such a desire was part of a broader move towards ‘decensorship’ in literature, film, theatre, and popular mores in Britain in this period. The tension this caused between broadcasters and listeners was especially acute on Radio Four—the main ‘broad brow’ speech network of BBC Radio, and one characterized by a fiercely conservative audience. Through previously unpublished records of its internal discussions between c.1968 and c.1979, this article explores the response of the BBC to listeners’ complaints and press coverage about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 a whole also affected decisions over language. In so doing, it illustrates a previously neglected dimension to the BBC's task of negotiating a precarious consensus on matters of taste and decency.