“Swearing is emotional language”

When I asked my dad about his view on swearing, he said "I used the c-word when I was younger and I got into a lot of trouble". From this I decided to do some digging around for 2 reasons: 1) "the c-word" and 2) "when I was younger". Taboo language, or more commonly known as swearing, have been around since the Anglo-Saxons in the 5^th Century, but it seems as when time went on, swear words have become more offensive. "Fuck" has been abbreviated to the "f-word", and others go as far as "see you next Tuesday".

Richard Stephens, a senior psychology lecturer at Kew University did an experiment on this: how long can people hold their hand in ice cold water. One group were able to swear their heads off to see if it eased the pain whilst the other group used neutral words, this was carried out over a dozen times and the same result occurred: people who used swear words kept their hand in for longer. Another example is a personal story from Richard where he explained that when his wife's labour reached the 20 hour mark she started getting really bad contractions. When this came on she would scream and swear. From this it's obvious that swearing can be used as a way to decrease pain.

On the other hand it can also be used in a more positive way, for example in the Olympics they interviewed a windsurfer when she unexpectedly won a bronze and she responded with "I feel fucking amazing". So swearing is emotional language.

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do" is something I, and no doubt others, go by. 0.7% of the words a person uses in a day are swear words, which doesn't sound like a lot but we use them at the same rate as pronouns. So despite taboo language being seen as unacceptable, we still do it. It seems like the older generations more frequently abbreviate swear words as they were brought up that way, whereas this generation supposedly know at least one swear word before the age of 2.

So what is it about swearing that makes it so satisfying? The phonetics of the words could have something to do with it. One thing they have in common is that they emphasise fricatives: /f/ /s/ and /ʃ/. "Fuck", "shit", "piss" etc have these sounds, so I could potentially make up some words including these emphasised fricatives and turn it into something nasty. If I can create a word with no meaning but with fricatives, for example "shiseff", this could be just as satisfying because you can put feeling, emotion and passion into the emphasised letters.

Or maybe it could be down to meaning; regardless of the phonetics, the meaning of the word "fuck" is more powerful than the sound alone because it has a sexual connotation. Overall, swearing can act almost like a guilty pleasure, no matter what the place, time or scenario. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2625581/Swearing-emotional-creative-language-say-researchers-claim-GOOD-you.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/10/nine-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-swear-words/

Alex Bingham