Where once the use of profanities would appal right-thinking members of society, nowadays words like fuck, shit and bollocks are practically mother\u2019s milk to many of us.<\/p>\n
A recent study<\/a><\/strong> in the UK found that people are more comfortable with swearing on television than they used to be, for example.<\/p>\n And research in the US indicates that<\/a><\/strong> people are increasingly likely to use bad language at work.<\/p>\n So in honour of our wonderfully creative and filthy lexicon, here are some fascinating facts about swearing \u2013 and, yes, this article contains lots of explicit references.<\/p>\n A popular \u201cfact\u201d<\/a><\/strong> doing the rounds is that people who swear are more intelligent and have larger vocabularies.<\/p>\n Sadly, this is not quite accurate.<\/p>\n It misreads a study<\/a><\/strong> that demonstrated that people who performed well on tests of verbal fluency \u2013 such as \u201cname as many words as you can starting with the letter \u2018s\u2019\u201d \u2013 also tended to do well when asked how many swear words they could name.<\/p>\n The conclusion was that although many a teacher and parent have argued that swearing is indicative of a lesser vocabulary, the ability to be creative with your swearing is actually another measure of verbal fluency.<\/p>\n Crucially, however, it\u2019s not how much you swear but how creatively you swear that counts.<\/p>\n So if you are a fucking person who fucking says the fucking word fuck between every fucking word, your vocabulary is probably quite limited because you\u2019re relying on the same word over and over.<\/p>\n If you are the type of person who variably refers to someone they don\u2019t like as a cock-munch or a piss-ass twat-wank, your general verbal fluency is probably good even though you are really quite rude.<\/p>\n Swearing is also considered<\/a><\/strong> more offensive the wider the gap in status between speaker and listener.<\/p>\n If an entry-level employee was to swear at their chief executive, or if Michael Gove was to swear at Theresa May, that would be viewed as worse than if two students swore at each other.<\/p>\n This can also be used to positive effect, however, promoting social cohesion by signalling that the swearer does not believe the difference in status to be that large.<\/p>\n My line manager has yet to address me as \u201cDr fucking Nordmann\u201d but if it ever happens I\u2019ve decided to take it as a sign that I\u2019m on the right track.<\/p>\n It is sometimes said<\/a><\/strong> that \u201cproper\u201d languages are arbitrary, meaning there should be no relationship between the sound of the words and their meanings.<\/p>\n Yet<\/a><\/strong> the sounds we use turn out to be a lot less arbitrary than we used to think. Lots of words in English that refer to \u201clight\u201d start with \u201cgl\u201d, such as \u201cglitter\u201d, \u201cglimmer\u201d and \u201cgloss\u201d.<\/p>\n This is known as sound symbolism.<\/p>\n Not only do these patterns exist but we\u2019re very good at picking up on them even if we\u2019re not aware of it \u2013 children are faster<\/a><\/strong> to learn new words if they\u2019re symbolic and tend to learn<\/a><\/strong> them at a younger age.<\/p>\n The bad news for parents trying to keep their kids\u2019 mouths clean is that swear words exhibit sound symbolism.<\/p>\n They tend to have harsh aggressive sounds to match their harsh aggressive meanings. This means we don\u2019t actually have to know the meaning of a word to know it\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d.<\/p>\n Sound symbolism also provides one explanation for why some swear words don\u2019t survive.<\/p>\n In Chaucerian English<\/a><\/strong>, \u201cswyve\u201d was a crass term meaning \u201cto copulate with\u201d.<\/p>\n To quote<\/a><\/strong> The Canterbury Tales, for instance, \u201cIf that I may, yon wenche wil I swyve\u201d.<\/p>\n One reason why \u201cswyve\u201d lost its place in our dirty lexicon is likely to be that \u201cgive it a good swyve\u201d sounds like something Mary Berry would ask you to do on the Great British Bake Off<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Women swear less<\/a><\/strong> than men and when they do swear they use milder swear words.<\/p>\n Since many swear words refer to sex and sexuality, it is suggested that<\/a><\/strong> women use these words less than men because if they use words that refer to sex casually, it implies they think the act of sex is a casual matter.<\/p>\n If so, the asymmetry of expectation for men and women for the act of having sex has spread to our use of language and the vocabulary we have available.<\/p>\n The clearest example is that there is no male equivalent for the word \u201cslut\u201d.<\/p>\n Social class is predictive of the frequency of swearing.<\/p>\n An investigation<\/a><\/strong> of the British National Corpus<\/a><\/strong>, a massive collection of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources, found that lower working class speakers swore significantly more than speakers from higher social classes.<\/p>\n A later study<\/a><\/strong> added nuance to this, however.<\/p>\n Although \u201cbloody\u201d, \u201cbugger\u201d and \u201cfuck\u201d are used approximately twice as often by those from the lowest social class \u2013 the upper middle class, famously led by BBC radio journalist Jim Naughtie<\/a><\/strong>, are the most common users of the profane word for female genitalia that rhymes with Jeremy Hunt \u2013\u2013 yes, cunt.<\/p>\n Thankfully, they only rarely use it during live radio broadcasts.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a><\/strong>. Read the original article<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The right words for every occasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":108173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,20],"tags":[17704,13932,22819,22815,21843],"class_list":["post-108165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-features","tag-conversation","tag-facts","tag-five","tag-swear","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108179,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108165\/revisions\/108179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1) Some swearers are smarter than others<\/h3>\n
2) Who you swear at counts<\/h3>\n
3) Swear words sound sweary<\/h3>\n
4) Men\u2019s mouths are pottier<\/h3>\n
5) Princes swear less than paupers \u2026 sort of<\/h3>\n
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