A Swearing Expert Discusses the State of Profanity
Cursing is coursing through society. Words once too blue to publicly utter have become increasingly commonplace. “Language is just part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle,” said Timothy Jay, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Mass.
Dr. Jay has spent a career studying the use of profanity, from what motivates it to the ways in which it satisfies, signals meaning and offends. Although officially retired, he has continued to edit studies on profanity and he recently offered an expert opinion in an ongoing legal dispute in Michigan over whether the phrase “Let’s go Brandon” (a euphemism used to denigrate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.) should be reasonably interpreted as “profane.” (It should not, Dr. Jay opined.)
Dr. Jay posits that the increasingly casual nature of the spoken word derives in part from the way people communicate on social media. One study, published in 2014 by other researchers in the field, found that curse words on Twitter, now known as X, appeared in 7.7 percent of posts, with profanity representing about 1 in every 10 words on the platform. That compared to a swearing rate of 0.5 to 0.7 percent in spoken language, the study found.
If that data troubles you, Dr. Jay has some thoughts on how to dial back the profanity. F*@%-free February, anyone?
Tis interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, and scrubbed of some of the vernacular that Dr. Jay conceded he regularly uses on the golf course.
Why does social media contribute to more casual use of language?
People are remote, so they can be aggressive without any physical retaliation. By and large, you’re anonymous, so there’s no personal consequence. It’s also part of a larger shift to a more casual lifestyle. What kids are wearing to school these days would have been disgraceful in my day.
Is that a problem — not the clothes, the swearing?
Our culture is constantly evolving and will continue to evolve. One place it is a problem is the way that women are increasingly attacked online and harassed.
So you don’t really see this development as positive or negative?
Slang is made to confront authority and to create a code that identifies one as an in-group member. Misuse of slang means you are an outsider. Slang must change with time.
The casualness of language coexists with the casualness of clothing styles, workplace behaviors, music lyrics, television content, table manners, et cetera, which have trended in general to a more relaxed state post-World War II, especially notable in the 1960s.
You’re saying that curse words that people once avoided they now say regularly.
For years, I asked people to rank swear words on a scale of one to 10 of which words were the worst. A five would be “damn” or “hell.” That was the middle range. A hundred years ago you couldn’t have used them on the radio; now they’re in the comic strips in the newspaper.
What ranks as a 1?
“Sugar.”
What about other alternatives to longstanding curse words? Can I run a few by you?
Go ahead.
“Fudge” — satisfying?
Not to me.
I hear a lot of people say “flipping” or “freaking.” Which one do you prefer?
I like “frickin’” — I’ve used, “Shut the frickin’ door!”
What do you like about that?
It’s similarity to … [expletive].
So if something is phonetically similar, that makes it satisfying?
It’s how it feels in your entire body — an autonomic nervous-system reaction to hearing someone say [expletive] or saying [expletive] yourself. It raises your pulse, heart rate, breathing rate all above the use of a nonoffensive word such as “calendar.” We recorded skin-conductance tests that demonstrated that taboo words produce a more emotional reaction than nontaboo words. The word arouses us in knowing that we are going to say it and continues to arouse us even after speaking.
Do these words provoke physical aggression?
My research group has recorded over 10,000 people swearing in public. Not once have we seen these usages turn into aggression or violence. Most swearing is casual, conversational and pretty harmless. At the same time, we are more sensitive to language issues surrounding sexual harassment, racial-ethnic-gender discrimination, verbal abuse and threatening language than in the past.
What draws us to a particular word?
It’s personal. One’s psychological history with hearing and saying a word mainly in childhood, and then the consequence of using the word again, brings about the feelings previously associated with the word.
It’s social, meaning the words that are important emotionally not only depend on the speaker’s psychological relationship with the word but also the value and valence of the word within a speaker’s community.
And it’s physical.
Does that suggest that euphemisms may not satisfy, and that therefore we can’t curb our cursing?
The key to breaking a habit is being aware that you do it and then trying to circumvent that.
So you can change the pattern should you wish to?
Yes. If you think about how memory works, what you’ve done is you’ve activated the new word in your brain. And so by activating “freakin’” or “sugar,” you’re making that more salient.
In other words, with practice, you can diminish the potency of the curse word and strengthen the lure of the euphemism.
Yes, but you have to be aware of both pieces and that one of them has natural salience.
Recently, I was watching my grandson, a mogul skier, when he went off course. And I just said, “dang.” He’s 18 years old, and I try not to swear around him. But I have to think about it, especially when I play golf.
From where you sit in retirement, do you feel that swearing research is in good hands?
I gave a keynote speech to a group of international scholars meeting on swearing and cursing in Cologne, Germany, in 2015, two years before I retired. I was 65 years old at the time and most of the speakers were in their 30s and 40s. I realized that there was a new generation continuing to study taboo words in a manner that I pioneered in the 1970s. It was about time to step aside and let them have the glory.
