Harvard professor Steven Pinker agrees with me. We've seen that happen in the twentieth century. That occurs on every episode of Jersey Shore and lots of other TV shows. A study—slyly titled "Habitat for Profanity"—of network prime-time programming by the conservative advocacy group Parents Television Council found the use of a muted or bleeped F-word jumped 2, percent from to It went from 11 total instances to over those five years.
And that research doesn't even include cable-network reality shows, where it's possible to hear bleep used as a verb, noun, pronoun, adjective, and gerund—all in one sentence. Incidentally, serial swearers do get their comeuppance when it comes to pain management. In a follow-up to his original study, Stephens found that people who cursed excessively—up to 60 times per day—didn't get any pain relief from it, because the emotional response in the brain weakens after repeated exposure.
You'd never catch me chain-swearing. The power and appeal of bawdy language lie in its ability to disarm. Someone like Snooki reeks of profanity from her pouf to her toe ring. You're not surprised when she detonates six F-bombs in a sentence. I liken that kind of abuse to overaccessorizing. If a sentence—or a little black dress—calls for bold jewelry, a silk scarf, and a fedora, it's time to reevaluate your wardrobe or your vocabulary. I prefer a woman who can casually curse with originality, elegance, and authority.
Carole Lombard earned the nickname "the profane angel" because she looked like a sylph but swore like a stevedore. But my own personal foulmouthed icon will always be the late Elizabeth Taylor. A decade or so ago, I interviewed her in her Bel Air home, with its quicksand-white carpeting and blinding Baccarat on every surface. People warned me that she could be as unpredictable as an electric eel. I was petrified. But within minutes of my arrival, Taylor referred to the hue of her pot of hot-pink lip gloss as "Slut" and told me that a certain colleague "really chapped my ass.
Taylor had a psychic sense that the flight was going to crash. She turned to her husband and said, "Screw the luggage. I'm leaving. Johnny Depp once said that Taylor "cusses like a sailor, and she's hilarious. But unlike me, Taylor didn't have a young daughter who mimicked her every word at the time. Plus, celebrities don't really have to pilot their way through polite society. As I get older, I notice that my peers now censor themselves, and I feel like the last girl at the bar, slurring and sloshing her cocktail.
I don't remember anyone saying "last call" when it comes to cursing. Some friends tell me that they shed the habit when they became parents. Plus: Why do people say bad words?
Why aren't kids allowed to say cuss words? Why is the middle finger bad? Adults, don't worry: we won't actually be using any bad words in this episode! But we will explore the psychology and brain science behind bad words with Benjamin Bergen , professor of cognitive science at University of California, San Diego. It's hard to give a single answer to the question of why some words are bad, while others aren't, because each word has a different history.
Words and their meanings change over time. So one word might be considered "bad" to one generation, and not bad years later. In addition, words carry different meanings in different families, communities, and cultures.
So what is bad to one culture might not be considered bad to another. Other words that are often considered bad relate to negative ways of talking about people and their religion, skin color, ability, gender etc. Those words are called slurs. And many people consider those the worst kind of bad words. Often people say bad words when they're experiencing strong emotions, and those words are link to our emotions.
Kids are no exception. So when we have these strong emotions, we use those words as well," Bergen says. Listen to the episode to learn about the brain science behind bad words and how young people have an impact on language and swearing. I found this article in a Google search. I was trying to find the supposed study showing how people who swear tend to be more trust worthy. I do see where some truth would come from it. Simply because people who tend to swear also tend not to care about what others think about them so therefore they have less of reason to tell white lies.
Having incited such violence personally, using utterances primarily constructed with swear words, and having witnessed the same in close proximity on more occasions than I am proud to admit, it strikes me as though the research may have had biases that tainted the results.
Swearing at Disney world be expected to result in fewer negative outcomes than f-bombs tossed strategically at a bar, a ballgame, or family reunion. For as long as I remember, I have considered that folks who use swearwords had not developed sufficient vocabulary to say what they had in mind. This was an article clearly describing explorations into the social mechanics of the use of profanity and it consequences, with what was obviously an exhortation for more investigation into the phenomenon, not liberal propaganda note how this word is spelled correctly.
All that, without a single profanity. Terrific article. Needs expansion. Try to ignore the trolls. Leave those clodhoppers to me. Thanks, James. Have just read the article today and the comments. Keep fighting the good fight against the trolls. You are guilty of the same logical fallacy. I totally disagree with this finding, if it really is a finding. Half the time the person swearing is swearing because they are covering up a lie, or trying to prove a point that is unrealistic. I notice that people tend to swear just to relieve anxiety and stress.
Believe me, my daughter swears like a sailor and so did one of my sisters. To heck with Behavioral Studies. I spent 45 years in engineering on the shop floor where swearing was the norm, I never got used to it. I compared it to picking your nose in public, i. It will probably become socially unacceptable though time.
As well as the example above, if the words were substituted with a loud hand clap, I think that would have a similar effect. As these two words are between 3 and 4 times older than the US they clearly fulfil some type of linguistic need, which must be worthy of a level of attention above the tut-tuttery and value judgements of some of the posters here.
This was apparently a commonly used street name in medieval England. Apparently, so named because of the prostitution which was rife. This name was actively used until Victorian times when use of what they saw as obscene language came to be frowned upon in polite society — the source of much of our current attitudes towards swearing, not to mention their legacy of sexual hypocrisy which was partially responsible for this stance on linguistic mores.
There were at least 3 streets of this name in London, one of which was euphemistically renamed as Threadneedle Street — now the location of the Bank of England. More research on this rich and interesting linguistic heritage and the role that it seems to have played in human history would seem to be more than justified. According to HBO dramas, ancient Rome and the American frontier West were scenes of far more potty-mouth than contemporary society.
SIL strode upstairs and read the three women, the riot act. If my SIL has a rather irrational approach to a famly member getting easily and emotionally reactive by swearing, then pehaps it is SHE who needs he counseling.
At least IMHO. I do have bipolar disorder so there might be some impulse control issues. I am working towards finishing my M. I promise you there are plenty of intelligent people who swear on a regular basis. It is systematic.
Not impulsive. It is not speculation. It is just like you learned in school—do some research on the topic you are targeting, forming a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test that hypothesis, then doing it and finally analyzing the data, drawing a conclusion and writing up your findings. So FairBairn— you say people who swear when they are hurt are babies. The swearing helps bear the pain.
Remember the part where the author mentioned that children start this fairly young? Not liking swearing does not make it untrue that there is a correlation between wearing and honesty. Have you no understanding at all of the concept of science, or of its methodology? I never used to swear. I have always leaned way to far on the soft heart scale, far to passive when i believe you need to balance between a harder heart, and softer one, somewhere in the middle.
I never have to worry about the balancing act because my tendencies for compassion, and a soft heart i dont think i can lose , so i just try to be as hard as i can , and the balance takes care of itself. I know exactly why I swear. I swear because it is the only way I can find, and feel the aggression I need to meet the aggression that life throws at me.
I not talking about people Im talking about the thing that you wake up to every morning trying to bring you down. Swearin has really made a difference in my aggression of spirit. You have to be harder then life or life will break you. She told me that she has noticed me starting to cuss recently and asked me why. She also told me, however, that she, in order to determine the continued results of her own study, would have to keep spying, on not only me but also my own husband.
I guess there must be more rationale behind the use of profanity in language…. It would be interesting to see more studies about the use of profanity. Interesting article, but in my opinion it is not always a good approach to omit certain findings from similar scientific studies done from a different area of specialization, as they can lend credence to the psychological study done here.
Neurolinguistics, for example, could give some useful background on just why it is that aphasics swear more prolifically than other psychosociological groups. A nurse was bringing hot coffee to a patient in the hospital where we worked; he had had a severe stroke and was unable to speak at all. That incident opened up an area of study in neurolinguistics that has helped many patients, mute for whatever medical reasons, to relearn how to produce speech by repurposing the pathways the brain normally reserves for swearing.
The original patient was taught to speak again after a prolonged period of no doubt frustrated silence, using those neuropathways… His family was beyond grateful and he himself was thrilled to no end.
To get back to my original point, what I believe is that overspecialization in a given area of science can sometimes put the blinders on, even to the extent of reinventing the wheel sometimes. Better to cull from several areas of study, to round out your psychological findings and to give them a broader context. And by the way, the F word came to us from the Latin form, probably through the Norman rule of England for over years.
But the description provided by 2manyprojex definitely has a ring of truth to it see the March, comment above. I love this stuff! Was this a rhetorical question raised for effect to draw attention to the fact the disconnect certainly seems to exist?
This is an interesting question that exceedingly relevant in politics. Why such a large disconnect between the folk psychologies of average American communities and the formal communities of the softer sciences known as psychology and sociology?
The subject of this article is interesting, as are some of the questions. After obscene gestures and racial epithets, swearing is likely the biggest precursor no pun intended to violence. Do all people swear? In my experience yes, although frequency varies greatly from person to person. There are exceptions of course — like Tourette Syndrome.
Kudos to the people whose entitled moral ground makes them think they know more and better than a Behavioral Science PhD. Do they really think the world revolves around their own moral values? As for the article. Well written and informative, as much as should be. I would be interested to know how the research progresses. Reference anger to infantile expression shows a lack of connection to our language. I do not choose to revert to anal attachment to feces, when I am frustrated.
Likewise, I do not choose to use a word for intercourse, inviting people who I do not even like to intercourse. That sex and hatred are so intertwined speaks volumes of our inability to differentiate between the two.
To reference a woman as a female breeding dog and then teach her to be proud to insult herself, defies all logic. I could get more into profanities, if they made more sense, raising themselves out of poop, piss, sex, into words that make logical sense. Well, Mac your remarks were hilariously forthright and candidly serious. Your colorful discourse was quite amusing to me, although you appear to be quite sincere with no intention of being comical. I like. Thank you for sharing. Here is a great explanation on how context makes all the difference.
Of course saying words with negative associations, are going to give rise to negative feelings and stress. This does not apply to light-hearted situations in which the swear words are being used for dramatic effect. A cleverly placed swear word in a funny situation can be very amusing.
There is no credible evidence to back up your preconceived notions. Perhaps those who are more reserved with their use of language are fraudulent, and limit themselves as to who or what they can be due to fear of judgement.
Cry babies. Get over it. I grew up in a home with parents who swear. What happened? My repertoire is just more extensive and colorful than some. Cry me a river…. When I was going to school I had a woeful stammer in my speech and had great difficulty conversing socially and answering questions at school. Found that when I swore before starting to recite a poem especially in class it got the first word out easier especially if the poem began with a broad consenant.
If the poem began with a vowel it made it that bit easier to start the recitation. I had to swear under my breath of course as swearing might not go down well if expressed loudly. Stammer is hardly noticeable nowadays. Thanks for your inspirational findings. I cringe at the sound of it, or any of the other curse words that people use. It is offensive in mixed company. I personally feel that when someone swears, they are displaying the fact that they do not have a good vocabulary.
Most of the people in my school swear just for fun. For example, one of the sentences I overheard in the lunch-line contained at least 10 swears, in like a 20 or so word sentence. This problem has to stop. Swear words are designated in the dictionary as swear words. When they are used, you, by definition, are swearing. If used in a different context, of course, they are not swearing, but that does not excuse the offensive nature of swear words.
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