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A couple of obscene words spoken to the place can cheer up no worse than morning exercises. And if you swear, cutting your finger, the pain will be noticeably less. Why do forbidden words shock us so much, and why is cursing so…pleasant?
When the airliner taxied onto the runway and pulled away, a woman of about forty, who had just calmly read a magazine, abruptly straightened up, clutched the arms of her chair, and there was such a cursing that you rarely hear.
“Mom, you don’t allow me to say such words!” the teenage daughter sitting next to her was indignant. But the lady, suffering from aerophobia, was clearly not up to decorum – an involuntary outburst of foul language turned out to be an excellent sedative. Otherwise, you would have to call a doctor …
Where can you hear them?
If most of us occasionally swear occasionally, this does not necessarily mean that we are poorly educated, prone to shocking, have a poor vocabulary or do not know how to control ourselves. In some situations, almost everyone swears. For example, hitting his fingers with a hammer.
Moreover, not any curse breaks out from us, but one of the ones fixed for this case in the language. In Russian, it can be “damn”, “damn” or something stronger, but not “god” or “not a fig to yourself”.
Situations in which strong expressions ask for language are much more diverse than it might seem. Swearing is appropriate during sex and unites closed male communities, serves as a sign of adulthood for teenagers and emancipation for feminists.
With their help, we are able to offend and humiliate, or we can express the highest degree of praise or delight.
Italians sometimes, without hesitation, shout “Idioto!”, Embracing old friends on the platform. It is clear that they are just happy to meet, unlike the driver in Germany, who helped the writer Vladimir Voinovich overcome the language barrier by shouting to him from the car: “Dubist ein Idiot!”
Well, some people just speak obscenities out of love for art: swearing has always interested people with a literary taste, so profanity is present in English limericks, and in the prose of Yuz Aleshkovsky, and even in Pushkin’s letters.
Why do we pronounce them?
“The common denominator of all swearing is a powerful emotional charge that we generally avoid using just like that,” says psycholinguist Steven Pinker.
Different swear words evoke different strong feelings in those who hear them – awe (before God), fear (of hell and disease), disgust (of bodily secretions), hatred (of traitors and minorities) or lust (when it comes to sex).
“Since we perceive the meaning of words automatically (having seen or heard a well-known word, it is impossible not to realize what it means), uttering a curse makes the listener involuntarily think in an unpleasant direction,” continues Steven Pinker. So the speaker imposes on others (or himself) a certain train of thought, and he can do this in different ways.
The strongest use of swear words is insults directly directed at another person.
But you can use taboo words and descriptively, to express your attitude to what we are talking about, if decent vocabulary seems not adequate enough. We use idioms containing obscene words for aesthetic reasons (for a red word) or in order to emphasize a close relationship with the interlocutor.
The most forgivable are emotional epithets used from the fullness of feelings (“Ah yes Pushkin, oh yes son of a bitch!”), And exclamations that escaped from pain, fear and intense tension, since they have been proven to mitigate stress.
So, volunteers were asked to keep their hand in ice water and endure pain, using foul language. Then it was necessary to do the same, pronouncing neutral words. In the first case, the subjects endured longer, and the pain subsided faster.1.
“Why some words become taboo and others don’t is a big mystery”
What areas of life provide the “raw materials” for cursing?
Stephen Pinker, professor at Harvard University (USA): Data from many languages show that this is the realm of the sacred (blasphemy is the historical root of swearing), sex, bodily excretions, diseases, and the names of social categories despised by society (the Jew or the prostitute).
The taboo of sex is familiar and understandable. True, at one time feminists advocated the right to speak openly about such a pleasant pastime, but then it turned out that in vain: due to the asymmetry of sexual relations, abuse related to sex is “beneficial” to men and more offensive to women, so now sexual words are equated to harassment.
As for secretions, even mild terms like slobbery, snotty, and purulent are offensive, not to mention more repulsive substances. One explanation is that human excretions were the most common way for diseases to spread and therefore caused fear and disgust.
How do forbidden words change over time?
Some taboos disappear, but new ones arise in their place. For example, the English word tits (“boobs”) was obscene until recently, but is now acceptable. The word “nigga” in the stories Mark Twain expressed only neglect, now for its use you can go to jail.
Curses like “Damn you!” or “A plague on both your houses” were taken seriously before and therefore aroused strong emotions, but now they sound harmless: we are not afraid of the plague or the devil.
On the other hand, new fears and new taboos arise: for example, instead of the word cancer (“cancer”), euphemisms such as Big C (“word in C”), neoplasm, tumor, oncology, and, finally, the wording of obituaries are increasingly appearing. : “severe prolonged illness.”
It is believed that in the Russian language there is a very strict ban on obscene language. Is the power of taboo really different in different languages?
Certainly. The extreme case known to me is the Dirbal language, in which all ordinary words are tabooed if the conversation takes place in the presence of some relatives of the wife or husband. You need to use another vocabulary that is acceptable in this situation.
Usually there are not many words in the language that are unacceptable in polite conversation, but it is impossible to predict which words are the most indecent. So, for the French and English, the word with the meaning “shit” sounds much tougher than for the inhabitants of Quebec. But curses of sacred origin (meaning “tabernacle”, “chalice” and “holy gifts”) for French Canadians are the height of obscenity.
The Catholic Church was so worried about this that it decided to enlighten fellow citizens with the help of billboards, where these words were written in large letters, and under them – an explanation of their true (religious) meaning. One journalist responded to this campaign like this: “Is there really nothing sacred?”
Sometimes we swear in a foreign language: in Moscow you can hear Russian swearing in foreign speech of visitors or English swearing in the speech of Russian youth. What does it say?
The emotional halo of a word is acquired in childhood, therefore, in the native language, obscene words cause more excitement than in a foreign language (this is evidenced by the different degree of change in skin conductivity in response to them). Therefore, it is better to swear in your native language to relieve pain, and to express yourself flamboyantly, not wanting to shock, in a foreign language. As, however, and listen to criticism: foreign abuse seems softer.
The sweetness of the forbidden fruit
Swearing acts not only as anesthesia, but also as adrenaline. Helps in difficult situations, allows you to focus, gives courage.
But nevertheless, it is a shame to admit the pleasure of swearing, because naming certain actions and parts of the body is almost as indecent as demonstrating them in public. If there was nothing reprehensible in this, bad words would lose their power and attractiveness.
We know from experience that already in early childhood swearing is a source of positive emotions, so it is hardly worth punishing children for “bad words” severely.
It is enough to indicate the boundaries of what is permissible, as the grandmother of 29-year-old Nina did: “Can I say “damn”?” I once asked. And Grandma said, “When you feel like cursing, make sure no one is around. And then you can say out loud all the bad words you know!”
Any curse words are also magic words that introduce – albeit not for long – to the world of adults.
“Teenagers like to swear, because it seems to them that they speak an “adult” language, the “language of cinema”, and this gives them an adult status, explains psychologist Sergei Enikolopov. “By the way, for women, swearing has also always been a sign of equality with men, like a short haircut or a cigarette.”
Children communicate swear words to each other like a password or secret knowledge. As we grow older, we continue to use them—while judging others for the “bad habit.” According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 67% of our fellow citizens believe that obscene expressions in speech are unacceptable under any circumstances, but about the same number (68%) actually use them.
True, the majority rarely do this (55%), and 30% (45% of women and only 13% of men) never swear.
Nine points on the scale of rudeness
The list of obscene roots most children learn by the fifth grade. These are the words that are not printed in newspapers and are not spoken on television and radio (it is more difficult with books and films). Anyone who accidentally or deliberately swears in a public place risks being fined or administratively arrested.
Rude, obscene and swear words are not prohibited in public speech, but sometimes it is even more unpleasant to hear them, because their meaning is clearer than in “universal” obscene expressions that can mean anything.
The next category is euphemisms: we use them as a substitute for obscenities in order to formally stay within the censorship vocabulary. “Fig”, “pancake” and “fir-trees-sticks” are spoken even by children, unaware of their true meaning; adults, pronouncing “arc fox”, “garbage” and “your mother”, defiantly emphasize the “original source”.
In a frank conversation about the sexual sphere, the language is rather poor: you have to choose between obscene designations, anatomical terms and lisping that came from the nursery. In this situation, many prefer selective swearing – in bed, dirty swearing is often exciting.
emotional brain
Most often, we swear when emotions overwhelm us: 47% utter swear words under the influence of negative feelings, 2% – under the influence of positive ones, another 19% use foul language in both cases.
Emotionally triggered, swearing provokes a powerful emotional response, both individual and social. Why? After all, these are just words…
The fact is that swearing affects the deep and ancient areas of the brain located in the right hemisphere. In addition, the right hemisphere is more involved in emotions, especially negative ones.
“Saving the ability to swear in the event of loss of articulate speech means that taboo vocabulary (like other ready-made speech formulas) is stored in the right hemisphere, in contrast to speech generated from words according to the rules of grammar and expressing a combination of ideas, which corresponds to the cortex of the left hemisphere” Steven Pinker explains.
There is a special area of the brain, violations in which can lead to coprolalia – an uncontrollable desire to swear
“The basal ganglia usually keep us from bad thoughts and deeds by marking them with a sign “No way here!” explains Steven Pinker. “If these defenses weaken or collapse, thoughts that we have labeled as unthinkable and unutterable break out.”
Another reason for the special power of swearing is our magical thinking. Even hardened materialists knock on wood and say “pah-pah, so as not to jinx it” if they express hope for something good, and add “God forbid” when it comes to possible troubles. No parent, even the most cold-blooded, would casually swear on the life of his child.
“Although the whole science of language is based on the fact that the relationship between the sound appearance of a word and its meaning is arbitrary, most of us intuitively believe otherwise,” says Steven Pinker.
“Curses, prayers and curses,” adds Sergei Enikolopov, “are ways that people try to influence the world through words, and taboos and euphemisms are an attempt to avoid such (undesirable) influence.”
Meeting without ties
It can be nice to swear in the smoking room (it’s better to relax), by the fire over barbecue (they taste better), in front of the TV (oh, this one … hmm … Beckham). Among our own, we can afford to deviate from the norms of literary language in the same way that we can take off our jacket and loosen the knot of a tie.
Often, swearing becomes the norm of communication at work. According to a survey conducted by HeadHunter, profanity is used in 85% of teams. In this case, foul language is the language code of the community, an element of the corporate “culture”. You swear – it means yours.
In addition, while the workers are arguing, they are still doing their job, although they are not too happy.
“Swearing allows you to overcome fatigue and find a solution in a crisis or conflict situation. In addition, foul language puts the company’s employees on the same level, strengthening the solidarity of the team,” says HR specialist Yehuda Baruch.
However, there are no rules without exceptions. An everyday verbal code is one thing, and a direct appeal to a colleague or employee is quite another: strong expressions in this case are perceived in accordance with their literal meaning – as symbolic rape.
carnival start
Obscene words are heard everywhere today: 72% of Russians often hear them on the street, in transport and other public places, and 64% have heard obscene words from famous people. Taboos are broken, but they don’t disappear.
“Earlier, the intelligentsia could swear even more than ordinary people, believing that this was a protest against the authorities,” Sergei Enikolopov notes. “Now you won’t surprise anyone with obscenities, the bans have weakened.
Swearing, obscene language is permission to talk about the “low”, as during the carnival
But today society is in a semi-carnival state all the time due to strong tension. This leads to breaking the rules and blurring the boundaries between different forms of the language.”
It is a pity if we do not have strong means in case of emergency. After all, swearing can be exciting and useful if done infrequently, appropriately and taking into account the feelings of other people.
1 R. Stephens et al. «Swearing as a response to pain». Neuroreport, Vol. 20, 2009, Issue 12.