Words like cunt and wank actually have two consonant sounds at the end. Interestingly, consonants seem pretty important in general—all but a few like ass or arse begin with at least one consonant, and many begin with two, like crap, prick, slut, and twat.
But really the strong generalization here appears to be that syllables of profane words tend to be closed. Could these two tendencies—a trend toward having just one syllable and another toward that one syllable being closed—be part of what makes profane words sound profane? We can start to answer this by splitting our data in a different way—based not on how many letters a word is spelled with but on how many syllables it has and whether those syllables are closed.
When we do that, we find that not just the three- and four-letter words are closed monosyllables; so are seven of the sixteen five-letter words, like balls, bitch, prick, and whore, but not Jesus or pussy. In all, thirty-eight of the eighty-four words on the list are one syllable long, and thirty-six of these or 95 percent are closed. How does this ratio compare to the words of English more generally? It turns out that whereas 95 percent of our profane monosyllabic words are closed syllables, that number drops down to 81 percent when you look at nonprofane words, which is significantly lower.
You can probably find some profane open monosyllables. Like, potentially, ho, lay, poo, and spoo. These are good candidates. Maybe you can come up with one or two more. But consider: boob, bung, butt, chink, cooch, coon, damn, dong, douche, dump, felch, FOB, gook, gyp, hebe, hell, jap, jeez, jizz, knob, mick, MILF, mong, muff, nads, nards, nip, poon, poop, pube, pud, puke, puss, queef, quim, schlong, slant, slope, smeg, snatch, spank, spooge, spunk, taint, tard, THOT, toss, twink, vag, wang, and wop.
Run the numbers again with these new open and closed monosyllabic words, and you still have upward of nine out of ten profane monosyllables that are closed. Do English speakers think that closed monosyllables sound more profane than open monosyllables? There are different ways to figure this out.
When English speakers invent new, fictional swearwords, do they tend to be closed? Philosopher Rebecca Roache says that as well as the ingredient of offence, swear words tend to have a cluster of other characteristics. We will often use swear words "to vent some emotion", she says. Swearing also centres on taboos. Around the world swear words will tend to cluster around certain topics: lavatorial matters, sex, religion. There's also a paradoxical component to swearing, says Roache.
The whole point is that you're not allowed to use them, but they exist just for that rule to be broken. Or catch up later here. Words develop their power over time; it's a historical process. In the past, many swear words were linked to religion.
But as countries like Britain have become increasingly secular, imprecations such as "Damn" and "Jesus Christ", have begun to lose their force. It's an interesting linguistic hypothesis that the taboos relate to how disease-ridden or dangerous or disgusting we find the effluvia themselves. The emotional release from swearing has been measured in a variety of ways. It turns out that swearing helps mitigate pain. Provided that speaker and audience recognise the same taboos — which is likely if they belong to the same culture and speak the same language — the speaker knows something about which expressions her audience will probably dislike.
She knows that her audience will likely find commonly dispreferred ways of referring to taboos unpleasant. And her audience will know that she knows that they will find such references unpleasant. This enables the offence escalation process to get off the ground. The existence of widely recognised taboos, then, offers a fast-track route for certain expressions to become widely offensive. It also provides a certain motivation for this to happen: breaking widely recognised taboos can unlike calling people by the wrong name be thrilling.
Shocking people can sometimes be fun. However, swear words are more than words that are universally offensive within a given culture. Slurs, too, fit this description. It seems plausible that slurs, like swears, grow to be offensive through a process of offence escalation, yet they differ from swears in that they express contempt of a given group.
Why is it that some widely dispreferred words develop into swear words whilst others develop into slurs? I think that the answer lies in what the use of the dispreferred words is taken by speaker and audience to convey. We might also add — as philosophers who write about slurs sometimes do — that by using a slur, a speaker attempts to make her audience complicit in her contempt, by signalling that she believes herself to be among people who share her contempt. This, too, is offensive to an audience who does not share this contempt, and is insulted to be taken to do so.
Swearing, then, is as offensive as it is not because of some magic ingredient possessed by swear words but lacked by other words, but because when we swear, our audience knows that we do so in the knowledge that they will find it offensive. This explains why we are more tolerant of swearing by non-fluent speakers of our language, such as young children and non-native speakers, than we are of swearing by competent speakers.
When non-fluent speakers swear, often we do not suspect them of doing so knowing that their words are offensive. Consequently, we are less likely to be offended. You would find my refusal to thank you for your good turn rude, but you would probably not deem it morally suspect.
The stronger the norms against using a particular expression, the greater the offensiveness of using that expression. In turn, the greater the offensiveness of a particular expression, the stronger the norms are against using that expression. What does this tell us about whether or not swearing is morally wrong? It is helpful, once again, to compare swearing to etiquette breaches.
The same holds for etiquette breaches. Even so, in most cases, we tend not to view breaches of etiquette as immoral , even where it causes offence. You would make a similar judgment were I to swear in the course of a polite conversation. This is not to say that swearing, or breaching etiquette in some other way, is never immoral. Such situations might involve breaching etiquette with the intention to belittle, distress, harass, intimidate, provoke, and so on. But most cases of etiquette breach — including most cases of swearing — are not like this.
With this in mind, some of our efforts to punish and prevent swearing — such as arrest under the Public Order Act — seem overly draconian. Swearing is often objectionable, but rarely immoral. Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings. 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. This is supposed to be a psychology oriented site, yet the authors of the article seem to be focusing with predilection on the linguistic aspect of the issue.
By the time I read the passage where the authors claim we do not know how our children learn to swear, though, I was looking for a disclaimer announcing this is only for entertainment and that it is a fake news site.
Not only do they offer very little data in support of their claims, their claims defy rational logic, which is probably the reason we find no significant data in the article, other than the claim that the authors were interviewed 3, times regarding this issue, which is obviously not true.
This kind of articles explain why according to recent studies, a vast majority of the population of America does not trust scientists and science journalists. What is even more depressing is the fact that the authors teach in our colleges and universities, which seems to account for the state of profound ignorance of our society.
On that note, as a personal observation, I noticed that most of the swearing is done by individuals that are poorly educated on the subjects they discussed, and that swearing it is used as a cover for their lack of knowledge, as a form of defense mechanism against those who expose them for making false claims.
Through my Sophomore year of High school, I never cussed. A higher shock value, you know? I found it to be a burden, as it lessened some humor, so I took it up my senior year. No one noticed. It would be really nice if any of the studies the authors consulted were cited in this article. It is really difficult to trust the veracity of the information here if none of it is backed up.
I realize that this is now a few years old but it has given me a laugh. So, swearing can be a safety valve to let off steam when you experience stressful events most significantly from those close to you. Before people think I am a brain challenged moron, I am an Oxford qualified pathologist and to be frank, I like swearing.
Some of the people responding here are straight from Victoiana and I shoukd know as I am living with one! I have specific questions. Thank you. After seeing so much profanity on the Social sites. I got curious and wound up here. To put it simply, there are 3 things that are basic. You need a sender, a receiver and a medium to communicate a subject matter.
In my case, the medium is the internet. When the communication is sent there is a context. The receiver evaluates the message and responds. The use of the internet as the medium is important to the context by veiling the sender and receiver. With face to face there is the advantage of seeing facial expressions as tone of speech.
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