April 20, 2017 • 48 mins
Swearing is something that's been done across all cultures, virtually since humans began speaking. What is it about these taboo words that offend some, and are beloved by others? Does it help to relieve stress to swear? Are there general rules of thumb about when it's OK to swear? All of your questions are answered in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh and Jerry's over there.
So this is stuff you should know beep. Addition, are
(00:21):
we gonna beat No? I don't think so we're above that. Um.
I'll tell you what. It was a joy to read
this Tracy V. Wilson article. Tracy stuff you missed in
history class. Used to do a lot of writing, and
her articles are always she leaves no stone unturned. Yeah,
the V. The V stands for very good article. It
(00:43):
really was good. Yeah, it was very good article, very good,
so very good. Did you did you notice her images
in the article on the site? No, oh they were
all like star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter. What later in
(01:05):
the article? Or was that from that other thing you
sent me? Oh that was from another thing. Okay, No,
I kind of just put it all in together, so
I was like, man, Tracy really went for it. A
lot of bombs. That was not Tracy. That was well.
There are a couple of other articles I sent you.
One was James Harbick wrote a good one on the
BBC and another was from Rebecca roach On a On.
(01:30):
Was that that swearing in other countries? Yeah, that was
really good. Um, I'm excited about this one because I
loved to curse and swear, and you folks don't know
that because we've always kept our show g rated. I know,
which is I'm glad we do that because I kind
of stand out these days among podcasts. Yeah, that's true.
Plus it's kind of like, um, it just makes it
(01:54):
you have to get a little more creative when you
have limitations like that. I found like working within a
structure or makes you think more rather than just like
letting it all hang out being loosey goosey lazy. Yeah,
I'm very lazy than in my regular life. Well, my
wife and I both have sailor mouth. Should we be
(02:16):
telling people this? I don't think it's fine, Okay, because
this is a good lesson to kids that, um, you know,
there are appropriate times to say certain things in inappropriate times,
and when you're podcasting, apparently it's inappropriate exactly at least
with us. But chuck. Um. One thing you might be
happy to hear is that a longstanding myth called the
(02:39):
poverty of vocabulary hypothesis is not held to be correct
any longer. Well, what's the myth? The hypothesis was that
people swore because they couldn't think of other words, and
that you were basically lower, lower class, poorly educated um
with a small vocabulary, which is why you cursed. And
(03:00):
up until fairly recently, I think it was a two
thousand sixteen maybe fifteen journal article that really put the
nail in the coffin and said, nope, we tested people.
The people who came up with the most swear words
were also the ones who had the most extensive vocabulary
elsewhere too. So the idea that you're just dumb if
(03:21):
you if you swear a lot normally gone. Yeah, But
I mean there, it spends on how you do it.
Like sometimes you can tell someone I can't think of
a better word, you know what I mean? And sometimes
like I know some people that are just some of
the best swearers. Was most creative, intelligent swears And it's
(03:44):
like a music almost. I love it it is, and
it is a music. It's definitely not just words. As
we'll see, swearing is its own thing. It's kind of phenomenal. Actually,
there's a hypothesis that language came out of swears originally
that the first took took, Yeah, it took took was
(04:04):
basically hit his thumb with a club against the rock,
shouted something, and that became the S word as we
know it today. Well, Tracy, one of the first things
she points out was a thought super interesting and that
it's a very paradoxic, paradoxical thing, and that they are
a taboo. But it's not a taboo that people avoid.
It's one of the few taboos like everybody, not everybody,
(04:27):
but many, many people in brace right, I think like
seventy eight percent of men. And we're talking for the
most of this show about sort of Western countries except
at the end. But as far as we know, and
we being like humanity, uh, swearing is universal. Here we
go se of men and fifty eight percent of women
(04:47):
swearing in public. It's not even in their private life. Yeah, yeah,
you know. Yeah. And apparently that's a longstanding understanding of swearing,
is that men do it more than women. And back
in the seventies there was a Berkeley linguistics researcher named
Rebecca lack Off, and um, she noticed that women tended
(05:12):
more to use what are called minced oaths, which is
saying like fiddle sticks instead of the F word, basically
talking like ned flanders in places where men would have
cursed otherwise um. And she surmised that it was because
women are taught from a young age to be polite
and preferential, um, whereas men are allowed to curse and
(05:32):
kind of let it all hang out. But that just
put women in an awkward situation or damned if they do,
damned if they don't, uh situation. And that if they
are polite and deferential, they're treated like a fractional person um.
But if they transgress and and curse, they they've broken taboos.
(05:53):
And like in Western society, it's way worse for a
woman to curse than a man, at least in public
or may be even private, which is a double standard
that we need to do away with. Agreed, because it's
much like the First Amendment episode where I got all
rile up against obscenity. The idea that some words can't
be said because it's taboo just irks me to no
(06:14):
end as well. I don't think it's a big deal,
but I do respect that others do, and I really
do try to curb my how loud I curse in public?
Public in public's Um, I really do. I try to, like,
and this isn't just since I've had kids. Have always
just sort of tried to be aware. Maybe it was
my Baptist upbringing, but um, it's bad of a mouth.
(06:36):
As I have, I've always tried to just sort of
be aware of my surroundings because I never wanted to
be that guy that was making someone else feel bad
or whose parents had to like shuffle their kids away
from me because of the language I was using. You know. Um,
I've had a hard time with Emily. Yeah, yeah, she's
just she doesn't now she's louder and doesn't just she's
(07:00):
just not a She's in the moment, you know. She's
very free spirited, and I'm always like, oh, you know
there's kids right out there, can you keep it down.
She's like, if it f that kid, if that kid,
just it. Um. But Tracy just has a lot of
little tidbits here at the beginning. I think we should
mention because they're just interesting. One is that people, and
(07:22):
I found this to be true when I worked in
at a Mexican restaurant. We all learned the curse words first,
and when you learn a new language, it's one of
the first things you learn if you learn through immersion
rather than in a classroom, are colloquially colloquialisms and curse words,
although she says curse words and swear words are different. Yeah,
so we should you want to say, with the differences, so, um,
(07:45):
most people use them interchangeably. But a curse word is
where you're basically hexing something. You're you're calling for someone
to be well damned, yeah, or anything good. Idea like
F this window that I can't get open, that's a
curse on that window, exactly, you're right, um. Whereas swearing
(08:07):
is kind of different. It's like by Odin's raiding, where
you're invoking the name of like a deity or something
religious or whatever, and you're doing that to like give
weight to your your words, your or I swear to
God as a swear and technically, if you are a
if you're a pious type, swearing to God, it's going
(08:30):
to be as bad as saying F that window, if
not worse. Actually the worst is you know, if you
say g D. I remember growing up and as a
church kid, that was that was the worst of all
swear words. Yeah, right, you know, taking the Lord's name
in vain? Yeah, and that can be and most basically
all words, will you swearing curse interchangeably like any normal
(08:51):
human being. But um, most most swear words are all
swear words I believe can be broken down into two
category and one of them is deistic, where it involves
a like a higher authority, God, religion, something about that, right,
and um. The other is visceral, and that is basically
(09:14):
everything else it involves body parts, body function. It's funny
they really do break down into this. Yeah, basically everything
does it related to the body? Are related to God?
Pretty interesting? Yeah it is. And and again that seems
to be universal. But what one culture emphasizes another culture
might not. And even within the same culture over a
(09:37):
period of time. Uh, words can change. Emphasis on words
can change. Like, for example, in the nineteenth century, you
did not say bull as in look at that bowl
over there, yes, because it was associated with sexual virility.
So you would say, look at that brute cow over there,
(10:00):
or look at that sea docks, anything but bull because
it was a bad word at the time. And then
now it's like someone would look at you like, what
what the Hell's the sea docks. Is that why bs
is has bull in front of it. I wonder if
it's like a particularly virulent type of of fallacy or lie,
because I don't see why else it would. That's what
(10:21):
I thought too. Tracy also says that UM, no one
really knows because cursing came before writing what the first
swear words were UM, but researchers agree. And this I
thought was super interesting is that um they called it
word magic, early forms of word magic, or where they
came from, which um basically means, especially in cultures that
(10:44):
didn't have writing, they believe that words had a lot
of power and you could curse something like we said,
like words could be really good or words could be
really bad, and that swearing kind of evolved out of that, right,
which is just awesome. I love it. It is um
And there is a good example of this. Apparently. Our
word for bear here in English is rooted from the
(11:08):
Germanic word for brown, and it was based on the
pagan Germanic taboo against saying the name of a wild
animal because it might make that wild animal appear because
of word magic. So that's why we say bear today.
So interesting because something like ursa would have been. It
(11:28):
would have made the bear appear and killed everybody, and
it would have been your fault because you didn't say brown.
He said, ursa. Did you ever hear the for unlawful
carnal knowledge acronym? That's completely not true. Um that the
F word is old, very old recording in English since
(11:49):
the fifteenth century, and they found some roots of it
back in Middle Dutch f o k k e n
was to thrust or copulate, Norwegian f u k k
a was copulate, and in Swedish f o uk meant
penis uh. And apparently even though it was around, it
wasn't really used in common speech though much It was
(12:10):
like a word in English. Yeah, but it wasn't really
used as a curse word until much later on. Yeah,
like the I think the sixteenth centuries when it first
appears in writing, and even then it seemed kind of casual. Yeah,
just a casual. I've got another one. You're ready. Zounds.
You know that word, uh, zounds? I think like Shaggy
(12:34):
used to say it a lot, He said, zinks. Yeah,
somebody said zounds Encyclopedia Brown. I don't know, so zounds
sounds like that yeah. Is Um, it's related to God's wounds.
So you're saying God's wounds, Yeah, invoking a deity, So
that would be a deistic curse. Wow. I can't wait
(12:57):
till the end when we go around the world. Some
of those are really funny. Um, should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, we'll take a break and talk a little
bit about why people swears skulk Alright, So this makes
(13:32):
a lot of sense. There's a lot of there's a
line of thought that says that swearing eventually it comes
to take the place of crying. Yeah. I thought this
was there's a lot of anecdotal evidence. It makes perfect sense,
makes total complete sense. Yeah, because when you're a kid,
you cry about things, and then when you grow up
(13:53):
here in the West, you're, for some reason taught not
to cry anymore, especially little boys, which is totally us,
says Rosie Greer. Yeah, I cry all the time. Uh,
And so that swearing becomes a what they call an
instinctive response for if you're upset, or if you're afraid,
or if something bad happens, if you're frustrated, and that
(14:17):
just kind of takes the place of crying. Yeah, which
again both makes it tremendous. Do you swear while you're crying?
Because no, I don't do the ugly cry. We should
probably get a judgment call from our legendary producer Jerry
about is it okay for us to say if it
in place of actual bad words here Jerry says, yes,
(14:39):
we need a ding ding ding. So Um, that makes
total sense to me that you learned to swear. And
one of the reasons why it makes total sense to
me is that swearing is a way of letting off
pressure valve suddenly and quickly, almost involuntarily, right, um. And
(15:01):
if you can do it out of anger, you can
do it out of frustration, you can do it out
of shock, surprise, pain, um. And yeah, and and at
least in the context of our society, it would be
weird if you cried in all those situations of an
adult when you can get it over with just by
saying shouting the S word or the F word or
something like that. You know. Um. And Actually, there's a
(15:21):
linguist named Jeoffrey Nowmberg. I probably screwed up his name,
but he had this great description of swear words. He said,
swear words don't describe your feelings. They manifest them, which
is absolutely true. I've seen it put as like a
quick verbal hand grenade. Um. It encapsulates a feeling and
in in like a really potent condensed form. It's true.
(15:46):
So bam um. Another really cool um thing that that
Tracy wrote about was that um they do a lot too.
They can establish a group identity, They can make you
feel like a part of a group. UM. They can
express like intimacy or trust with someone. They aren't just
regular words beyond shock value and humor, which are all valid,
(16:10):
but beyond camouflaging your fears which is valid. They really
can Like I remember, I remember in our one of
our first editorial meetings and how stuff works years ago
when our former boss who gave us the the charge
to do stuff you should know, dropped f bombs in
the meeting. And and this was the first kind of
(16:31):
like my stupid chicken killer software job that I had.
I was like a frat house, so that didn't count.
Like the language and there was terrible, But this was
my first like real job where yeah, where I thought like,
all right, I'm in my first like meeting and he
starts dropping f bombs and I immediately felt a kinship
and I was like, all right, this guy is doing something.
(16:54):
He's laying this out to the room, and that means something.
You know, it wasn't a casual thing. If you drop
an F bomb in a meeting like that, you're you're
telling people something. Yeah, like it's okay to use that
language here, or this is what kind of person I am.
It really gives off a lot of social cues. Yeah,
you know, I've always loved them for it. It really does.
(17:14):
It's also um it also kind of presents the person
of higher authority on on your level. You know, it
can turn people off, though I did think about that, like, man,
I wonder if there's people in here that are offended
by this? Well it is, there's a real um. I mean,
foul language can be offensive, and the this really great
(17:37):
article by Rebecca roach On Aon basically posits that it's
offensive because when you are using foul language in front
of somebody, you know that there's a chance that it's
going to offend them, and you're doing it anyway. So basically,
purposefully creating an atmosphere where someone probably will be offended
(17:59):
is the whole reason why bad language is offensive. Yeah,
it's like it's agreed upon between the two parties, Like,
there are certain words that if I use in this conversation,
you might get offended or you might feel more included. Right,
And because I know that you might get offended, and
I'm doing it anyway, I'm saying to heck with your offense,
(18:20):
which again creates the offensiveness in the first place. It's
oh wow, what could you It's a dirty word. Um, well,
I guess we should talk about social response a little bit,
because that's kind of where we're headed. But um it
didn't like obscenities and dirty words weren't even really looked
(18:42):
it that way until after the eighteen hundreds. Now, there
were taboo words for sure, but they weren't considered dirty.
It was just taboo like don't invoke Odin's raven right.
But like, the word profanity didn't come around till the
nineteenth century, which is really interesting. Yeah, you know, and
originally profan the and blasphemy meant the same thing. They
(19:03):
both had to do with basically insulting the sacred um,
and then over time they started to diverge. Blasphemy for
me still means the same thing, whereas profanity now is
a general catch all for for what we would call
swear words or curse words are dirty words. Right, Even
though there's a in all cultures, there's a definite hierarchy. Yeah,
(19:26):
of you know, if your kid says d A M N,
not the biggest deal, No, just maybe to bed without
dinner for a few nights. And if your kid is
dropping F bombs, you know that it ranks or worse.
You know, some people think the F bomb is the
worst thing you can do. That there, Yes, that's just
(19:48):
playing wrong. I'm sorry, at least in this day and age. Yes, Um,
that hierarchy you talk about seems to fall into a
couple of categories. Even though have a hierarchy is universal,
what is at the top of the hierarchy is not. UM.
One of the things that frequently is found at the
top of the hierarchy around the world is UM, moms
(20:13):
your mother. There are plenty of very different cultures around
the world, UM where insulting your mother, particularly either a
sexual act with your mother or UM bringing up your
person's mother's genitalia UM is the is the worst. It's
(20:34):
the worst of the worst. Oh yeah, I remember, like
I said in college, when I worked at that Mexican place.
We learned all the course words first, and the guys
in the kitchen. I was like, man, you guys talk
about each other's mom more than anything I've ever heard
in my life. It was remarkable, and that must be
And I guess in Um, I guess, is Spain listed
or Spanish languages? Well, it's a it's Latin languages, Latin
(20:57):
based languages, so Spanish would definitely fall under that togory. Yeah,
but also um, I believe Mandarin, um Arabic, some Arabic
languages just languages around like like really disparate cultures have
said like leave the moms out of this. Well it
was also funny too because she followed up with um.
(21:18):
Sometimes in Bosnia it's uh, your father, it can be
a really big insult or grandfather, um in Albanian your family, Turkish,
your extended family. And finally Mandarin, which is your ancestors
to the eighteenth generation. There it is man that is
the best swear on the planet. F your ancestors to
(21:42):
the eighteenth generation. I wish I knew how to pronounce this.
It's just that's as good as it gets. Cow needs
a zong sheba dae oh you know we this is
available in China. Yeah good, I'm gonna learn how to
say that, like for real, little kids in China listen
to this. The whole classics point. I need to learn
(22:05):
how to say very sorry. Then gasping is universal too.
But speaking of swearing at work, um, supposedly swearing at
work makes up three of the conversation. That's what it said.
That sounds low to me. I saw a two thousand
and sixteen study that found that women curse more than
men at work. More women admit to cursing at work
(22:28):
then man, but frequency wise, men curse more. So if
the average man who curses at work is placed beside
the average woman who curses at work, the man's gonna
curse more frequently. But if you fill the room with
the women who curse at work and the man who
curse at work, there'll be more women. Does that for explained?
(22:49):
Really confused? Well? And then apparently among millennials, sixty six
percent of millennials say they curse at work, and then
of baby boomers curse at work, which if you put
that together, comes out to be a hundred and twenty.
So that makes like zero sense. If you fooled me. Um,
(23:14):
if you're talking about the law. Depending on where you are,
there may be some arcane laws on the books that
prevent you from cursing in public. Um, but it's definitely
you know, we did one on free speech recently. It
definitely does not qualify as protected speech. It depends what
can Yeah, alright, So like if you're just walking down
the street and you say, if you pig to a cop,
(23:37):
you're gonna get arrested, but there's a pretty good chance
that your case is going to get ultimately thrown out
if you, Um, if you were in Pennsylvania, you are
going to well, depending on the town, and you curse
in public, you say, f the Steelers, Oh man, you
made you you you should count your lucky stars if
(23:58):
you make it safely to jail, unless you're in Philadelphia,
well there you go. Um. Apparently in Pennsylvania they were
arresting people left and right for um, well citing them,
giving them citations for cursing in public, and UM, it
finally got to the point where the A c L
You got involved and said, what are you doing. You
can't do this. This is protected speech. This is curse
(24:21):
in public, and it's a. It's a gray area. Actually,
like states, there are states, like you said, that have
some laws on the books, and apparently one of them
is Pennsylvania, and they were enforcing it, and I don't
know if they still are or not, but pretty recently
they were, um, they were giving people citations for it.
And in Michigan they had a law overturned as recently
(24:43):
as two thousand two where it was illegal to cuss
in front of women and children. And some guy was
canoeing down the Rifle River. His canoe was overturned. He
was in the water cursing up storm and there were women, children,
elderly there. He he was arrested and um taken to jail,
(25:06):
and the Michigan Court of Appeals said, no, this is
a hundred year old law. While and the guy overturned
his cannete like give him a break, right exactly, give
the guy a break, and he um he got off.
His case was thrown out and they said, we're this
law of null and void. By the way, so there
is speech protection and it is taken to extend to
(25:28):
the state level. But again it's a gray area because
if you did that on TV, you could certainly be
fined and that would be upheld because we've long agreed
that there are certain situations where you shouldn't curse because
kids might hear it. But what's the difference of doing
it on TV and doing it in front of a kid?
Only the courts can say, well, yeah, and that's an
(25:48):
FCC thing. And there are certain words, like you know
George Carlin's famous words you can't say on television. Um,
but those are rules more than laws, aren't they Or
I guess yeah, I guess they are rules, rules and regulations. Yeah,
but but they are upheld. Yeah. But like private organizations
(26:09):
and like if you're in a store or a movie
theater or at work, like they can they can prevent
you from doing that stuff. Can you can be asked
to leave? Um, you can be asked off a plane,
you know stuff hopefully while it's on the ground. Yeah. Yeah,
if you're if you're a company, you can. Yeah. It's
like in the mall episode, I think we talked about
(26:30):
where First Amendment protection doesn't extend to private area. Yeah,
you can have a policy, um yeah, and it can
be like some people can consider that a hostile work environment. Yeah,
if you have you know, a real potty mouth boss.
It makes everybody feel uncomfortable because cursing can go. You know,
it's one thing to say you know bs or F this,
(26:51):
but if you like get really creative with your curse words. Well,
Plus there's a difference between F this and F you,
especially coming from a boss. Sure, so yeah, you can
switch it really is. It's the best. Um, all right,
should we take a break and talk about the brain?
Yess sk sk So we're back, ready to talk about
(27:34):
the brain. Got the top of my skull removed and
Chuck has finger in the ventral dorsal interior postulate. If
I'm not mistaken, I thought this is where it got
really interesting. Yeah, because it supports all that anecdotal evidence,
all of it. Yeah, alright, so the parts of the brain, um,
(27:55):
the cerebral cortex. I guess we should go through all this. Huh.
I was gonna break it down to the big line
at the end, but we'll go through it all. Yeah,
you gotta build it up where showman. If anything that
the cerebral cortex has pre motor and motor areas. They
control the speech and writing. It's kind of like the
higher function. And then we talked before about Wernike's area. Um, jeez,
(28:19):
we talked about that a bunch. I feel like, well,
it's pretty interesting it is, uh. And they recognize and
process words spoken words, and then you have your prefrontal cortex,
which like helps regulate your what's your social behaviors and stuff.
It's a higher, higher function. It's all these things. Was
about to say, you're working together, but they're kind of
not when it comes to cursing, right when it comes
(28:41):
to language, they're all working together, but like we said before,
swears there something different. They're separate, yes, and scientifically in
fact they are. Yeah. So they they involve different parts
of the brain than language processing. UM. The limbic system,
which is part of your reward system or the basis
of your word system, but also has to do with
(29:02):
housing memory UM, has to do with regulating emotion, basic behaviors. UM.
And apparently they think that in primates and some animals,
vocalization is based in the Olympic system, just like like
that thing that Tim Allen does that would be limbic
system based, weird, like oinking bark he does. I've literally
(29:24):
never seen anything, Tim Allen. I'm not about to do it.
So you're gonna have to go look it up on YouTube. Uh.
And then the basil ganglia, which is motor motor function, yeah,
and impulse control. Those two things which have basically nothing
to do with language processing, higher processing and humans are
what governed swear words. Yeah, Like Tracy says that they're
(29:47):
the scientists think that it all takes place in those
lower regions. It's all emotion and instinct, and that the
brain doesn't even process a swear word like a word
like as what are they called phone ms phonemes, Yeah, phonemes,
Like the parts that make up the word. The curse
word is just the word as a whole as far
(30:07):
as the brain is concerned. Like when you hear the
word articulation, there's a part of your brain in the
left hemisphere. The region is going to work taking articulation
emphasis you put on it, putting it together, running it
against your memory banks or context or whatever, and saying, oh,
I know what you just said. But if somebody shouts
the S word, those parts of your brain are not
(30:31):
springing into action. It's the parts of your brain that
are involved in experiencing, in recognizing emotions, The very very
ancient parts of your brain that are involved in which
gives credence to that hypothesis that language evolved out of expletives. Well,
and also in that one article you sent the theory
that it's not even a theory, just kind of the
(30:53):
thought that a curse word isn't even a word so
much as it is like a yell yes, I mean,
it could might as well just be yeah. It's just
you've got four letters, and if you think about it,
it makes uttering complete sense, like even the worst of
the worst, you know, where you're involving somebody's mom in
the worst possible way. You're when somebody says that, even
(31:15):
when they're especially I should say, when they're saying it
to insult you specifically, your brain doesn't dial up that image.
It doesn't have to know. You're not thinking about the
actual meaning of the word. You're responding to the emotional
punch and the gut you just took from that word,
Like you know what that word means. I mean, the
(31:37):
thing they mean on a on a very emotional level,
like you have it stored away in that sense. Yeah,
because most times curse words almost always there aren't to
be taken literally, right like when uh in the one
who was the guy who wrote that one, Uh, that
that you sent from the BBC James Harbick. Yeah, like
talking about the F word, they're like ten different ways
(32:00):
you can use it. Well, that was Stephen Pinker. He
was refrained, Okay, yeah, and none of them are you
should take literally, and no one does take them literally.
You just know what it means if you say it
or F or F you you're not literally saying engage
in sex with this thing, you know. Yeah, and you
think the person was a weirdo who just topped you
if they did at your command. Well, which is another
(32:20):
reason why we let people that are just learning to
speak English off the hook when they say curse words,
because they don't understand the difference between the literal meaning
and the expression, right, So no offense is intended, right, right,
so that social contract is not there yet exactly. It's
(32:41):
just hilarious when they do it accidentally. It really is. Yeah,
was it? What was it? Stripes to speak English? You know.
Framus is teaching them very good stuff. Uh. And so
they've done f m r I studies to that show
that functional magnetic resonance imaging tests uh, to show that
(33:04):
higher and lower parts of the brain can struggle with
each other when they swear. And apparently the people who
really pride themselves and being super educated and very literate people, uh,
they respond to slang and illiterate quote, illiterate phrases the
same as they do swear words. And this one is
weird to me. Um. They've done studies where you identify
the color or word is written in, not the word,
(33:26):
but the color, and the swear word distracts them from
the color of that word. This's is crazy. They literally
exist in their own space. Yeah, they are their own
thing for sure, you know. Yeah, and you remember them
supposedly you remember swear words four times better than other words.
It's nuts. But what makes it, I think what's super
(33:49):
interesting to me is that there's their universal and there's distinctions,
but they're also you know, you can divide most things
in most swear words into just a couple of different
categories across the board, you know, but there they're not
given thought, but they're based on things that you learn.
So for example, chuck starting to go around the world,
(34:11):
shall we alright, are we there yet? So? In uh
French Quebec, it's an extraordinarily catholic Um society and basically
all of their swear words have to do with the
Catholic Mass, like the chalice, the tabernacle, the host um,
(34:32):
the these literally these words like you say tabernacle and
it's that's bad man, that's a really bad, bad word.
And it has to do with the idea that you're
bringing the sacred into um. You're basically blaspheming and it's
a it's a big time taboo. But the idea that
(34:52):
that's a learned like you have to, like you don't
look at a a tabernacle and a true church as
a kid without being you know, the first time you
were walking to a church and say that's the holiest
thing there is. I understand everything there is to know
about it so much so that I can break a
taboo by saying that word. You have to learn that.
(35:14):
But the idea that that when you do learn it,
it's stored as an emotion in your brain, as a
motor function, rather than as a word that your higher
cognition refers to or brings forth. It's just astounding to me.
It is it's like a parallel process to learning language. Absolutely, um,
(35:37):
there are languages where uh like it's different in a
lot of countries, but it's also the same. Like when
you talk about like the feces. Uh, there are many
different languages that use the word feces there whatever word
for it as a swear word. Um, including English of course, UM, French, German, um,
(35:58):
they all have Albania, They all have words for feces
that are curse words. But then it's not arbitrary. I
guess it just spends on how it, you know, came
to be in that country. But in Sweden, which is
you know, in that neighborhood, Uh, you can say skit
when you're annoyed, but it doesn't count as a curse word, right,
(36:20):
like you could They said you could say to run
a grandmother. Yeah, so so it's a curse word. But
the the importance, the emphasis that of a taboo that
it breaks depends on the culture. Yeah, or like another
kind of like in Polish they'll use cholera, and other
countries use types of disease like canker in in the Dutch. Yeah,
(36:44):
isn't that crazy, Yeah, the canker meaning cancer, So you
you are basically wishing cancer on somebody, which is pretty awful. Yeah,
that would be a curse that's not done here, But
if you did do it in in you know, normal
discussion or even an argument here in the West, there'd
be like a record scratch, a needle scratching off a record,
(37:05):
be like, what did you just say? That was the
worst thing that's been said to me in months? But
you just have a word for it. Yeah, I never
really thought about that. That That would be terrible thing to
say it if you said that just in a sentence
to someone in English, especially if you were like jabbing
your finger in their chest while you're saying it. You know,
that's right. I know. We have a lot of listeners
in Sweden, uh, Swedish um people apparently the same with
(37:30):
finn Finland and uh, Norway and Denmark. They put a
lot of emphasis on the devil. Oh yeah, so like
some of their worst swear words are um based on satan,
hell um, the devil, that kind of thing. Yeah, so
you don't want to you don't want to bring that up,
or else you might offend your hosts in Sweden. Prostitution
(37:54):
apparently a lot of cultures. Uh. And this this theory
makes sense. Process it's defire wife's exclusivity in a man's ownership,
which is why a lot of words people will use
for prostitute can be a swear word against somebody. Yeah,
and apparently cultures that where bringing someone's mother into it
is is the is the top of the hierarchy will
(38:17):
also have um words for prostitutes, like plenty of words
for prostitutes, and those will be extremely bad words as well.
So it's like those things kind of go hand in hand, yeah,
which from what I've seen, has to do with the
patriarchy creating the moral hierarchy, right, because it's such a
male view of things, like you're my mom, so you're
(38:39):
the most sacred thing around, and you're a prostitute, which
means I can't control you. So invoking those things are
the two worst things you can talk about. And then
our last step to me chuck in Japan, yes, bacca
Bacca means basically idiot, but it you don't call people that,
it's a really bad word, which I think is so sweet.
(39:02):
I love that country. Idiot that's bad, yeah, and I
think about how much how often we call people idiots
here in the US. Yeah, but that's bad though. I
remember my mom team like, don't don't say that. Word.
Oh she was right. Yeah. Still she's not even Japanese,
she's some Tennessee a little Japanese in it, maybe so
Japanese streak. UM. So I guess we will finish up
(39:25):
here with a little bit on um. What can happen
when your brain is damaged. And we've talked about a
little bit of this stuff before, but there's some pretty
interesting things uh. In terms of brain injury UM. Something
called aphasia UH is a condition where you can lose
your ability to speak or pronounce words because of disease
(39:47):
or brain damage. But UM A phase A, PHASEX have
an interesting thing. They can return to their ability of
automatic speech, which is just like saying things like um
and uh uh. But the other thing that comes back,
or swear words, which ties all back into the thing,
is they exist as their own in their own category,
(40:09):
almost like non speech exactly. So that's one of the
first things that can come back um or never go away,
yeah or never go away. And when they um, their
ability pronounced words can evolve while they're recovering, but the
swear words stay the same. Right Like apparently you can
have a hemispherictomy on the left of the left lobe
(40:31):
where a substantial part of the left lobe goes away
and you can't talk any longer, but you can say, yes,
we're just fine. That must be startling, I'm sure you know. Yeah. Uh,
and we did. We did a great episode on Tourette
syndrome quite a while back, and we talked about corporalia
(40:53):
and that is um. I think a lot of people
have this image of someone with turette, you know, just
constantly screaming swear words. And it's actually a very small
number and it's that's actually called copper laia, not turette,
and um, a very small number of people with GTS
exhibit copper lawya, right, very very very small. Yeah, and
(41:13):
it's I think it even I think you even grow
out of it in most cases too. Right. Apparently younger
males are the ones who are more likely to have
that as a tick with Tourette syndrome. But it also
makes sense in that um swearing can be viewed as
a motor function with a motion attached, right, Yeah, And
(41:33):
a tick is a has to do with the motor function,
whether it's your head twitching or shouting the S word
a few times. Yeah, still a tick, um My last
thing here is I think Pinker, I think it was
really interesting and that he noted that swear words were
often most often just very uh just the sound itself,
(41:56):
you know, being real, just harsh, and that that contributes
a lot to their function, like when you get hurt
or when you're just trying to exclaim something loudly, like
the F word, it's as that very sharp k at
the end um. And if you expressed anger using gentler
sounds like he says wiffy and slush, it's just he
(42:20):
compares it. What do you say, It's like slamming a
door fitted with a compressed air hinge. It's just not
the same thing, right, There's something about those sharp quick
words ends and kay's and teas, you know that our
staccato that just sort of provide that visceral you know release. Yeah,
I think yeah that was Rebecca Roach who use the
analogy with the hydraulic which is perfect its wify door. Yeah. Um,
(42:46):
But but we should finish on Pinker's um seven functions
of swearing. All right? What are they? They? So? I
swear word? No, I'm sorry. Five functions that we could
make up another two swear words. They can be used descriptively. Uh,
I can't give an example of that one. Idiomatically. Okay,
(43:07):
it's ft up abusively f you Yeah, emphatically, this is
an amazing yeah. Um and cathartically, which is f right,
which it makes swears pretty interesting things. Yeah, and um,
I mean Tracy puts some tips in there for when
(43:28):
you have children on how to regulate that and explain things.
But um, you know, just a parent the way you
want a parent apparently though you're not supposed to laugh,
that's impossible. Yeah, laugh and clap and pat him on
the head. Yeah, by my toy. Yeah, my kids at
the age where she repeats everything. And I hurt myself
(43:50):
the other day and let out an F bomb and
she said it right after me. And there's nothing funnier. Wow.
Do you have it on tape? No? Um, But she
does say the word fox, the animal fox. Um, she
says that as the other word, and we do have
that on tape. It's funny. I'd like to see that. Yeah,
I'll show it to you. It's um, it's good. And
you know, it's just a reality that we curse in
(44:12):
my household. And you know, my kids probably gonna be
one of those kids that curses earlier than other kids.
But I'm hoping to kind of cross that bridge and
be like, hey, listen, can't say these things in school.
You can't say him in front of teachers. I remember
when a teacher would curse, how like no shocking that was.
I don't think I ever experienced no like the teacher
(44:34):
on a bad day that the class is just pushed
and they would just break down and scream a curse
word that never happened. Oh man, I had. It happened
a couple of times, and it is talk about like
the social contract. Nothing will make a bunch of kids
like straighten up faster than hearing you. They're just like,
oh man, like Mrs So and so, has we've pushed
her too far? Or when a kid curses at a teacher,
(44:56):
there was also that like oh boy, yeah, that's huge,
like trouble. Yeah. So yeah, I'm hoping to teach my
daughter it's too pick and choose. Yeah, maybe she'll grow
up to be like Red Fox make money off of
the cursing. Maybe so or Sarah Silverman, Yeah, who's like
the modern Red Fox. Well, she definitely has made a
career out of breaking taboos with language for shock shock value.
(45:21):
She's great. Yep yea. So it's Red Fox so too
r I p uh red Fox not Sarah Silverman's. If
you want to know more about Red Fox there Silverman swearing.
Any of that stuff. You can type those words in
the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this notable Canadian filibuster. You folks may have noticed
(45:44):
we had a Saturday episode on filibusters. And that's a
new thing we're doing called s Y s K selects,
where we we republished a Saturday episode that we think
was great or relevant. Um, in case you missed it.
And um, thanks for the support on those apparently support
we mean thanks for listening, right yeah, yeah, they're still free. Um.
(46:09):
So Blake listened to the filibuster one and he wrote
in about a Canadian filibuster. Hey, guys quite enjoyed the
episode about filibusters. Although I've worked for several years at
various legislatures throughout Canada can tell you that filibustering is
not unique to the U. S. Senate. My favorite example
of the filibuster took place in the Canadian Senate. Parliamentary
proceedings in Canada are recorded and published verbatim and hands
(46:30):
aard uh. Canada being a bilingual country means that the
hands are hands. Art is available in both English and French,
meaning that staff not only have to transcribe everything said,
but translators also need to translate English speeches into French
and vice versa for official publicity. I'm sorry, publicly available record.
Why is this topical because during one particularly contentious filibuster
(46:52):
believe related to trade agreement in the late eight nineteen eighties,
one senator stood and read the entirety of his autobiography
into the record. As you can expect, this took quite
a bit of time. That not only did it delay
passage of the bill, the common mythology to the senator
also to this in order to get a free, professional
quality translation of his autobiography, which was subsequently published in French. Wow,
(47:15):
that's from Blake Evans. That's that's a good one, Blake.
Thank you for the Canadian history lesson. We don't get
enough of that down here. Um. I have one. I
have a call out for Canadians. I've always just made
fun of it as fake Thanksgiving, but I realized I
never have figured out why Thanksgiving as celebrated a month
or so early, well early compared to the US in Canada,
(47:39):
so let us know exactly that's a different way of
looking at it. Yes, okay, So if you want to
get in touch with us so let us know, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
or join me josh Um clark Um. You can join
and Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or
Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, send us
an email of the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
(48:01):
dot com and has always joined us at home on
the web Stuff you should Know dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics because at how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh and Jerry's over there.
So this is stuff you should know beep. Addition, are
(00:21):
we gonna beat No? I don't think so we're above that. Um.
I'll tell you what. It was a joy to read
this Tracy V. Wilson article. Tracy stuff you missed in
history class. Used to do a lot of writing, and
her articles are always she leaves no stone unturned. Yeah,
the V. The V stands for very good article. It
(00:43):
really was good. Yeah, it was very good article, very good,
so very good. Did you did you notice her images
in the article on the site? No, oh they were
all like star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter. What later in
(01:05):
the article? Or was that from that other thing you
sent me? Oh that was from another thing. Okay, No,
I kind of just put it all in together, so
I was like, man, Tracy really went for it. A
lot of bombs. That was not Tracy. That was well.
There are a couple of other articles I sent you.
One was James Harbick wrote a good one on the
BBC and another was from Rebecca roach On a On.
(01:30):
Was that that swearing in other countries? Yeah, that was
really good. Um, I'm excited about this one because I
loved to curse and swear, and you folks don't know
that because we've always kept our show g rated. I know,
which is I'm glad we do that because I kind
of stand out these days among podcasts. Yeah, that's true.
Plus it's kind of like, um, it just makes it
(01:54):
you have to get a little more creative when you
have limitations like that. I found like working within a
structure or makes you think more rather than just like
letting it all hang out being loosey goosey lazy. Yeah,
I'm very lazy than in my regular life. Well, my
wife and I both have sailor mouth. Should we be
(02:16):
telling people this? I don't think it's fine, Okay, because
this is a good lesson to kids that, um, you know,
there are appropriate times to say certain things in inappropriate times,
and when you're podcasting, apparently it's inappropriate exactly at least
with us. But chuck. Um. One thing you might be
happy to hear is that a longstanding myth called the
(02:39):
poverty of vocabulary hypothesis is not held to be correct
any longer. Well, what's the myth? The hypothesis was that
people swore because they couldn't think of other words, and
that you were basically lower, lower class, poorly educated um
with a small vocabulary, which is why you cursed. And
(03:00):
up until fairly recently, I think it was a two
thousand sixteen maybe fifteen journal article that really put the
nail in the coffin and said, nope, we tested people.
The people who came up with the most swear words
were also the ones who had the most extensive vocabulary
elsewhere too. So the idea that you're just dumb if
(03:21):
you if you swear a lot normally gone. Yeah, But
I mean there, it spends on how you do it.
Like sometimes you can tell someone I can't think of
a better word, you know what I mean? And sometimes
like I know some people that are just some of
the best swearers. Was most creative, intelligent swears And it's
(03:44):
like a music almost. I love it it is, and
it is a music. It's definitely not just words. As
we'll see, swearing is its own thing. It's kind of phenomenal. Actually,
there's a hypothesis that language came out of swears originally
that the first took took, Yeah, it took took was
(04:04):
basically hit his thumb with a club against the rock,
shouted something, and that became the S word as we
know it today. Well, Tracy, one of the first things
she points out was a thought super interesting and that
it's a very paradoxic, paradoxical thing, and that they are
a taboo. But it's not a taboo that people avoid.
It's one of the few taboos like everybody, not everybody,
(04:27):
but many, many people in brace right, I think like
seventy eight percent of men. And we're talking for the
most of this show about sort of Western countries except
at the end. But as far as we know, and
we being like humanity, uh, swearing is universal. Here we
go se of men and fifty eight percent of women
(04:47):
swearing in public. It's not even in their private life. Yeah, yeah,
you know. Yeah. And apparently that's a longstanding understanding of swearing,
is that men do it more than women. And back
in the seventies there was a Berkeley linguistics researcher named
Rebecca lack Off, and um, she noticed that women tended
(05:12):
more to use what are called minced oaths, which is
saying like fiddle sticks instead of the F word, basically
talking like ned flanders in places where men would have
cursed otherwise um. And she surmised that it was because
women are taught from a young age to be polite
and preferential, um, whereas men are allowed to curse and
(05:32):
kind of let it all hang out. But that just
put women in an awkward situation or damned if they do,
damned if they don't, uh situation. And that if they
are polite and deferential, they're treated like a fractional person um.
But if they transgress and and curse, they they've broken taboos.
(05:53):
And like in Western society, it's way worse for a
woman to curse than a man, at least in public
or may be even private, which is a double standard
that we need to do away with. Agreed, because it's
much like the First Amendment episode where I got all
rile up against obscenity. The idea that some words can't
be said because it's taboo just irks me to no
(06:14):
end as well. I don't think it's a big deal,
but I do respect that others do, and I really
do try to curb my how loud I curse in public?
Public in public's Um, I really do. I try to, like,
and this isn't just since I've had kids. Have always
just sort of tried to be aware. Maybe it was
my Baptist upbringing, but um, it's bad of a mouth.
(06:36):
As I have, I've always tried to just sort of
be aware of my surroundings because I never wanted to
be that guy that was making someone else feel bad
or whose parents had to like shuffle their kids away
from me because of the language I was using. You know. Um,
I've had a hard time with Emily. Yeah, yeah, she's
just she doesn't now she's louder and doesn't just she's
(07:00):
just not a She's in the moment, you know. She's
very free spirited, and I'm always like, oh, you know
there's kids right out there, can you keep it down.
She's like, if it f that kid, if that kid,
just it. Um. But Tracy just has a lot of
little tidbits here at the beginning. I think we should
mention because they're just interesting. One is that people, and
(07:22):
I found this to be true when I worked in
at a Mexican restaurant. We all learned the curse words first,
and when you learn a new language, it's one of
the first things you learn if you learn through immersion
rather than in a classroom, are colloquially colloquialisms and curse words,
although she says curse words and swear words are different. Yeah,
so we should you want to say, with the differences, so, um,
(07:45):
most people use them interchangeably. But a curse word is
where you're basically hexing something. You're you're calling for someone
to be well damned, yeah, or anything good. Idea like
F this window that I can't get open, that's a
curse on that window, exactly, you're right, um. Whereas swearing
(08:07):
is kind of different. It's like by Odin's raiding, where
you're invoking the name of like a deity or something
religious or whatever, and you're doing that to like give
weight to your your words, your or I swear to
God as a swear and technically, if you are a
if you're a pious type, swearing to God, it's going
(08:30):
to be as bad as saying F that window, if
not worse. Actually the worst is you know, if you
say g D. I remember growing up and as a
church kid, that was that was the worst of all
swear words. Yeah, right, you know, taking the Lord's name
in vain? Yeah, and that can be and most basically
all words, will you swearing curse interchangeably like any normal
(08:51):
human being. But um, most most swear words are all
swear words I believe can be broken down into two
category and one of them is deistic, where it involves
a like a higher authority, God, religion, something about that, right,
and um. The other is visceral, and that is basically
(09:14):
everything else it involves body parts, body function. It's funny
they really do break down into this. Yeah, basically everything
does it related to the body? Are related to God?
Pretty interesting? Yeah it is. And and again that seems
to be universal. But what one culture emphasizes another culture
might not. And even within the same culture over a
(09:37):
period of time. Uh, words can change. Emphasis on words
can change. Like, for example, in the nineteenth century, you
did not say bull as in look at that bowl
over there, yes, because it was associated with sexual virility.
So you would say, look at that brute cow over there,
(10:00):
or look at that sea docks, anything but bull because
it was a bad word at the time. And then
now it's like someone would look at you like, what
what the Hell's the sea docks. Is that why bs
is has bull in front of it. I wonder if
it's like a particularly virulent type of of fallacy or lie,
because I don't see why else it would. That's what
(10:21):
I thought too. Tracy also says that UM, no one
really knows because cursing came before writing what the first
swear words were UM, but researchers agree. And this I
thought was super interesting is that um they called it
word magic, early forms of word magic, or where they
came from, which um basically means, especially in cultures that
(10:44):
didn't have writing, they believe that words had a lot
of power and you could curse something like we said,
like words could be really good or words could be
really bad, and that swearing kind of evolved out of that, right,
which is just awesome. I love it. It is um
And there is a good example of this. Apparently. Our
word for bear here in English is rooted from the
(11:08):
Germanic word for brown, and it was based on the
pagan Germanic taboo against saying the name of a wild
animal because it might make that wild animal appear because
of word magic. So that's why we say bear today.
So interesting because something like ursa would have been. It
(11:28):
would have made the bear appear and killed everybody, and
it would have been your fault because you didn't say brown.
He said, ursa. Did you ever hear the for unlawful
carnal knowledge acronym? That's completely not true. Um that the
F word is old, very old recording in English since
(11:49):
the fifteenth century, and they found some roots of it
back in Middle Dutch f o k k e n
was to thrust or copulate, Norwegian f u k k
a was copulate, and in Swedish f o uk meant
penis uh. And apparently even though it was around, it
wasn't really used in common speech though much It was
(12:10):
like a word in English. Yeah, but it wasn't really
used as a curse word until much later on. Yeah,
like the I think the sixteenth centuries when it first
appears in writing, and even then it seemed kind of casual. Yeah,
just a casual. I've got another one. You're ready. Zounds.
You know that word, uh, zounds? I think like Shaggy
(12:34):
used to say it a lot, He said, zinks. Yeah,
somebody said zounds Encyclopedia Brown. I don't know, so zounds
sounds like that yeah. Is Um, it's related to God's wounds.
So you're saying God's wounds, Yeah, invoking a deity, So
that would be a deistic curse. Wow. I can't wait
(12:57):
till the end when we go around the world. Some
of those are really funny. Um, should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, we'll take a break and talk a little
bit about why people swears skulk Alright, So this makes
(13:32):
a lot of sense. There's a lot of there's a
line of thought that says that swearing eventually it comes
to take the place of crying. Yeah. I thought this
was there's a lot of anecdotal evidence. It makes perfect sense,
makes total complete sense. Yeah, because when you're a kid,
you cry about things, and then when you grow up
(13:53):
here in the West, you're, for some reason taught not
to cry anymore, especially little boys, which is totally us,
says Rosie Greer. Yeah, I cry all the time. Uh,
And so that swearing becomes a what they call an
instinctive response for if you're upset, or if you're afraid,
or if something bad happens, if you're frustrated, and that
(14:17):
just kind of takes the place of crying. Yeah, which
again both makes it tremendous. Do you swear while you're crying?
Because no, I don't do the ugly cry. We should
probably get a judgment call from our legendary producer Jerry
about is it okay for us to say if it
in place of actual bad words here Jerry says, yes,
(14:39):
we need a ding ding ding. So Um, that makes
total sense to me that you learned to swear. And
one of the reasons why it makes total sense to
me is that swearing is a way of letting off
pressure valve suddenly and quickly, almost involuntarily, right, um. And
(15:01):
if you can do it out of anger, you can
do it out of frustration, you can do it out
of shock, surprise, pain, um. And yeah, and and at
least in the context of our society, it would be
weird if you cried in all those situations of an
adult when you can get it over with just by
saying shouting the S word or the F word or
something like that. You know. Um. And Actually, there's a
(15:21):
linguist named Jeoffrey Nowmberg. I probably screwed up his name,
but he had this great description of swear words. He said,
swear words don't describe your feelings. They manifest them, which
is absolutely true. I've seen it put as like a
quick verbal hand grenade. Um. It encapsulates a feeling and
in in like a really potent condensed form. It's true.
(15:46):
So bam um. Another really cool um thing that that
Tracy wrote about was that um they do a lot too.
They can establish a group identity, They can make you
feel like a part of a group. UM. They can
express like intimacy or trust with someone. They aren't just
regular words beyond shock value and humor, which are all valid,
(16:10):
but beyond camouflaging your fears which is valid. They really
can Like I remember, I remember in our one of
our first editorial meetings and how stuff works years ago
when our former boss who gave us the the charge
to do stuff you should know, dropped f bombs in
the meeting. And and this was the first kind of
(16:31):
like my stupid chicken killer software job that I had.
I was like a frat house, so that didn't count.
Like the language and there was terrible, But this was
my first like real job where yeah, where I thought like,
all right, I'm in my first like meeting and he
starts dropping f bombs and I immediately felt a kinship
and I was like, all right, this guy is doing something.
(16:54):
He's laying this out to the room, and that means something.
You know, it wasn't a casual thing. If you drop
an F bomb in a meeting like that, you're you're
telling people something. Yeah, like it's okay to use that
language here, or this is what kind of person I am.
It really gives off a lot of social cues. Yeah,
you know, I've always loved them for it. It really does.
(17:14):
It's also um it also kind of presents the person
of higher authority on on your level. You know, it
can turn people off, though I did think about that, like, man,
I wonder if there's people in here that are offended
by this? Well it is, there's a real um. I mean,
foul language can be offensive, and the this really great
(17:37):
article by Rebecca roach On Aon basically posits that it's
offensive because when you are using foul language in front
of somebody, you know that there's a chance that it's
going to offend them, and you're doing it anyway. So basically,
purposefully creating an atmosphere where someone probably will be offended
(17:59):
is the whole reason why bad language is offensive. Yeah,
it's like it's agreed upon between the two parties, Like,
there are certain words that if I use in this conversation,
you might get offended or you might feel more included. Right,
And because I know that you might get offended, and
I'm doing it anyway, I'm saying to heck with your offense,
(18:20):
which again creates the offensiveness in the first place. It's
oh wow, what could you It's a dirty word. Um, well,
I guess we should talk about social response a little bit,
because that's kind of where we're headed. But um it
didn't like obscenities and dirty words weren't even really looked
(18:42):
it that way until after the eighteen hundreds. Now, there
were taboo words for sure, but they weren't considered dirty.
It was just taboo like don't invoke Odin's raven right.
But like, the word profanity didn't come around till the
nineteenth century, which is really interesting. Yeah, you know, and
originally profan the and blasphemy meant the same thing. They
(19:03):
both had to do with basically insulting the sacred um,
and then over time they started to diverge. Blasphemy for
me still means the same thing, whereas profanity now is
a general catch all for for what we would call
swear words or curse words are dirty words. Right, Even
though there's a in all cultures, there's a definite hierarchy. Yeah,
(19:26):
of you know, if your kid says d A M N,
not the biggest deal, No, just maybe to bed without
dinner for a few nights. And if your kid is
dropping F bombs, you know that it ranks or worse.
You know, some people think the F bomb is the
worst thing you can do. That there, Yes, that's just
(19:48):
playing wrong. I'm sorry, at least in this day and age. Yes, Um,
that hierarchy you talk about seems to fall into a
couple of categories. Even though have a hierarchy is universal,
what is at the top of the hierarchy is not. UM.
One of the things that frequently is found at the
top of the hierarchy around the world is UM, moms
(20:13):
your mother. There are plenty of very different cultures around
the world, UM where insulting your mother, particularly either a
sexual act with your mother or UM bringing up your
person's mother's genitalia UM is the is the worst. It's
(20:34):
the worst of the worst. Oh yeah, I remember, like
I said in college, when I worked at that Mexican place.
We learned all the course words first, and the guys
in the kitchen. I was like, man, you guys talk
about each other's mom more than anything I've ever heard
in my life. It was remarkable, and that must be
And I guess in Um, I guess, is Spain listed
or Spanish languages? Well, it's a it's Latin languages, Latin
(20:57):
based languages, so Spanish would definitely fall under that togory. Yeah,
but also um, I believe Mandarin, um Arabic, some Arabic
languages just languages around like like really disparate cultures have
said like leave the moms out of this. Well it
was also funny too because she followed up with um.
(21:18):
Sometimes in Bosnia it's uh, your father, it can be
a really big insult or grandfather, um in Albanian your family, Turkish,
your extended family. And finally Mandarin, which is your ancestors
to the eighteenth generation. There it is man that is
the best swear on the planet. F your ancestors to
(21:42):
the eighteenth generation. I wish I knew how to pronounce this.
It's just that's as good as it gets. Cow needs
a zong sheba dae oh you know we this is
available in China. Yeah good, I'm gonna learn how to
say that, like for real, little kids in China listen
to this. The whole classics point. I need to learn
(22:05):
how to say very sorry. Then gasping is universal too.
But speaking of swearing at work, um, supposedly swearing at
work makes up three of the conversation. That's what it said.
That sounds low to me. I saw a two thousand
and sixteen study that found that women curse more than
men at work. More women admit to cursing at work
(22:28):
then man, but frequency wise, men curse more. So if
the average man who curses at work is placed beside
the average woman who curses at work, the man's gonna
curse more frequently. But if you fill the room with
the women who curse at work and the man who
curse at work, there'll be more women. Does that for explained?
(22:49):
Really confused? Well? And then apparently among millennials, sixty six
percent of millennials say they curse at work, and then
of baby boomers curse at work, which if you put
that together, comes out to be a hundred and twenty.
So that makes like zero sense. If you fooled me. Um,
(23:14):
if you're talking about the law. Depending on where you are,
there may be some arcane laws on the books that
prevent you from cursing in public. Um, but it's definitely
you know, we did one on free speech recently. It
definitely does not qualify as protected speech. It depends what
can Yeah, alright, So like if you're just walking down
the street and you say, if you pig to a cop,
(23:37):
you're gonna get arrested, but there's a pretty good chance
that your case is going to get ultimately thrown out
if you, Um, if you were in Pennsylvania, you are
going to well, depending on the town, and you curse
in public, you say, f the Steelers, Oh man, you
made you you you should count your lucky stars if
(23:58):
you make it safely to jail, unless you're in Philadelphia,
well there you go. Um. Apparently in Pennsylvania they were
arresting people left and right for um, well citing them,
giving them citations for cursing in public, and UM, it
finally got to the point where the A c L
You got involved and said, what are you doing. You
can't do this. This is protected speech. This is curse
(24:21):
in public, and it's a. It's a gray area. Actually,
like states, there are states, like you said, that have
some laws on the books, and apparently one of them
is Pennsylvania, and they were enforcing it, and I don't
know if they still are or not, but pretty recently
they were, um, they were giving people citations for it.
And in Michigan they had a law overturned as recently
(24:43):
as two thousand two where it was illegal to cuss
in front of women and children. And some guy was
canoeing down the Rifle River. His canoe was overturned. He
was in the water cursing up storm and there were women, children,
elderly there. He he was arrested and um taken to jail,
(25:06):
and the Michigan Court of Appeals said, no, this is
a hundred year old law. While and the guy overturned
his cannete like give him a break, right exactly, give
the guy a break, and he um he got off.
His case was thrown out and they said, we're this
law of null and void. By the way, so there
is speech protection and it is taken to extend to
(25:28):
the state level. But again it's a gray area because
if you did that on TV, you could certainly be
fined and that would be upheld because we've long agreed
that there are certain situations where you shouldn't curse because
kids might hear it. But what's the difference of doing
it on TV and doing it in front of a kid?
Only the courts can say, well, yeah, and that's an
(25:48):
FCC thing. And there are certain words, like you know
George Carlin's famous words you can't say on television. Um,
but those are rules more than laws, aren't they Or
I guess yeah, I guess they are rules, rules and regulations. Yeah,
but but they are upheld. Yeah. But like private organizations
(26:09):
and like if you're in a store or a movie
theater or at work, like they can they can prevent
you from doing that stuff. Can you can be asked
to leave? Um, you can be asked off a plane,
you know stuff hopefully while it's on the ground. Yeah. Yeah,
if you're if you're a company, you can. Yeah. It's
like in the mall episode, I think we talked about
(26:30):
where First Amendment protection doesn't extend to private area. Yeah,
you can have a policy, um yeah, and it can
be like some people can consider that a hostile work environment. Yeah,
if you have you know, a real potty mouth boss.
It makes everybody feel uncomfortable because cursing can go. You know,
it's one thing to say you know bs or F this,
(26:51):
but if you like get really creative with your curse words. Well,
Plus there's a difference between F this and F you,
especially coming from a boss. Sure, so yeah, you can
switch it really is. It's the best. Um, all right,
should we take a break and talk about the brain?
Yess sk sk So we're back, ready to talk about
(27:34):
the brain. Got the top of my skull removed and
Chuck has finger in the ventral dorsal interior postulate. If
I'm not mistaken, I thought this is where it got
really interesting. Yeah, because it supports all that anecdotal evidence,
all of it. Yeah, alright, so the parts of the brain, um,
(27:55):
the cerebral cortex. I guess we should go through all this. Huh.
I was gonna break it down to the big line
at the end, but we'll go through it all. Yeah,
you gotta build it up where showman. If anything that
the cerebral cortex has pre motor and motor areas. They
control the speech and writing. It's kind of like the
higher function. And then we talked before about Wernike's area. Um, jeez,
(28:19):
we talked about that a bunch. I feel like, well,
it's pretty interesting it is, uh. And they recognize and
process words spoken words, and then you have your prefrontal cortex,
which like helps regulate your what's your social behaviors and stuff.
It's a higher, higher function. It's all these things. Was
about to say, you're working together, but they're kind of
not when it comes to cursing, right when it comes
(28:41):
to language, they're all working together, but like we said before,
swears there something different. They're separate, yes, and scientifically in
fact they are. Yeah. So they they involve different parts
of the brain than language processing. UM. The limbic system,
which is part of your reward system or the basis
of your word system, but also has to do with
(29:02):
housing memory UM, has to do with regulating emotion, basic behaviors. UM.
And apparently they think that in primates and some animals,
vocalization is based in the Olympic system, just like like
that thing that Tim Allen does that would be limbic
system based, weird, like oinking bark he does. I've literally
(29:24):
never seen anything, Tim Allen. I'm not about to do it.
So you're gonna have to go look it up on YouTube. Uh.
And then the basil ganglia, which is motor motor function, yeah,
and impulse control. Those two things which have basically nothing
to do with language processing, higher processing and humans are
what governed swear words. Yeah, Like Tracy says that they're
(29:47):
the scientists think that it all takes place in those
lower regions. It's all emotion and instinct, and that the
brain doesn't even process a swear word like a word
like as what are they called phone ms phonemes, Yeah, phonemes,
Like the parts that make up the word. The curse
word is just the word as a whole as far
(30:07):
as the brain is concerned. Like when you hear the
word articulation, there's a part of your brain in the
left hemisphere. The region is going to work taking articulation
emphasis you put on it, putting it together, running it
against your memory banks or context or whatever, and saying, oh,
I know what you just said. But if somebody shouts
the S word, those parts of your brain are not
(30:31):
springing into action. It's the parts of your brain that
are involved in experiencing, in recognizing emotions, The very very
ancient parts of your brain that are involved in which
gives credence to that hypothesis that language evolved out of expletives. Well,
and also in that one article you sent the theory
that it's not even a theory, just kind of the
(30:53):
thought that a curse word isn't even a word so
much as it is like a yell yes, I mean,
it could might as well just be yeah. It's just
you've got four letters, and if you think about it,
it makes uttering complete sense, like even the worst of
the worst, you know, where you're involving somebody's mom in
the worst possible way. You're when somebody says that, even
(31:15):
when they're especially I should say, when they're saying it
to insult you specifically, your brain doesn't dial up that image.
It doesn't have to know. You're not thinking about the
actual meaning of the word. You're responding to the emotional
punch and the gut you just took from that word,
Like you know what that word means. I mean, the
(31:37):
thing they mean on a on a very emotional level,
like you have it stored away in that sense. Yeah,
because most times curse words almost always there aren't to
be taken literally, right like when uh in the one
who was the guy who wrote that one, Uh, that
that you sent from the BBC James Harbick. Yeah, like
talking about the F word, they're like ten different ways
(32:00):
you can use it. Well, that was Stephen Pinker. He
was refrained, Okay, yeah, and none of them are you
should take literally, and no one does take them literally.
You just know what it means if you say it
or F or F you you're not literally saying engage
in sex with this thing, you know. Yeah, and you
think the person was a weirdo who just topped you
if they did at your command. Well, which is another
(32:20):
reason why we let people that are just learning to
speak English off the hook when they say curse words,
because they don't understand the difference between the literal meaning
and the expression, right, So no offense is intended, right, right,
so that social contract is not there yet exactly. It's
(32:41):
just hilarious when they do it accidentally. It really is. Yeah,
was it? What was it? Stripes to speak English? You know.
Framus is teaching them very good stuff. Uh. And so
they've done f m r I studies to that show
that functional magnetic resonance imaging tests uh, to show that
(33:04):
higher and lower parts of the brain can struggle with
each other when they swear. And apparently the people who
really pride themselves and being super educated and very literate people, uh,
they respond to slang and illiterate quote, illiterate phrases the
same as they do swear words. And this one is
weird to me. Um. They've done studies where you identify
the color or word is written in, not the word,
(33:26):
but the color, and the swear word distracts them from
the color of that word. This's is crazy. They literally
exist in their own space. Yeah, they are their own
thing for sure, you know. Yeah, and you remember them
supposedly you remember swear words four times better than other words.
It's nuts. But what makes it, I think what's super
(33:49):
interesting to me is that there's their universal and there's distinctions,
but they're also you know, you can divide most things
in most swear words into just a couple of different
categories across the board, you know, but there they're not
given thought, but they're based on things that you learn.
So for example, chuck starting to go around the world,
(34:11):
shall we alright, are we there yet? So? In uh
French Quebec, it's an extraordinarily catholic Um society and basically
all of their swear words have to do with the
Catholic Mass, like the chalice, the tabernacle, the host um,
(34:32):
the these literally these words like you say tabernacle and
it's that's bad man, that's a really bad, bad word.
And it has to do with the idea that you're
bringing the sacred into um. You're basically blaspheming and it's
a it's a big time taboo. But the idea that
(34:52):
that's a learned like you have to, like you don't
look at a a tabernacle and a true church as
a kid without being you know, the first time you
were walking to a church and say that's the holiest
thing there is. I understand everything there is to know
about it so much so that I can break a
taboo by saying that word. You have to learn that.
(35:14):
But the idea that that when you do learn it,
it's stored as an emotion in your brain, as a
motor function, rather than as a word that your higher
cognition refers to or brings forth. It's just astounding to me.
It is it's like a parallel process to learning language. Absolutely, um,
(35:37):
there are languages where uh like it's different in a
lot of countries, but it's also the same. Like when
you talk about like the feces. Uh, there are many
different languages that use the word feces there whatever word
for it as a swear word. Um, including English of course, UM, French, German, um,
(35:58):
they all have Albania, They all have words for feces
that are curse words. But then it's not arbitrary. I
guess it just spends on how it, you know, came
to be in that country. But in Sweden, which is
you know, in that neighborhood, Uh, you can say skit
when you're annoyed, but it doesn't count as a curse word, right,
(36:20):
like you could They said you could say to run
a grandmother. Yeah, so so it's a curse word. But
the the importance, the emphasis that of a taboo that
it breaks depends on the culture. Yeah, or like another
kind of like in Polish they'll use cholera, and other
countries use types of disease like canker in in the Dutch. Yeah,
(36:44):
isn't that crazy, Yeah, the canker meaning cancer, So you
you are basically wishing cancer on somebody, which is pretty awful. Yeah,
that would be a curse that's not done here, But
if you did do it in in you know, normal
discussion or even an argument here in the West, there'd
be like a record scratch, a needle scratching off a record,
(37:05):
be like, what did you just say? That was the
worst thing that's been said to me in months? But
you just have a word for it. Yeah, I never
really thought about that. That That would be terrible thing to
say it if you said that just in a sentence
to someone in English, especially if you were like jabbing
your finger in their chest while you're saying it. You know,
that's right. I know. We have a lot of listeners
in Sweden, uh, Swedish um people apparently the same with
(37:30):
finn Finland and uh, Norway and Denmark. They put a
lot of emphasis on the devil. Oh yeah, so like
some of their worst swear words are um based on satan,
hell um, the devil, that kind of thing. Yeah, so
you don't want to you don't want to bring that up,
or else you might offend your hosts in Sweden. Prostitution
(37:54):
apparently a lot of cultures. Uh. And this this theory
makes sense. Process it's defire wife's exclusivity in a man's ownership,
which is why a lot of words people will use
for prostitute can be a swear word against somebody. Yeah,
and apparently cultures that where bringing someone's mother into it
is is the is the top of the hierarchy will
(38:17):
also have um words for prostitutes, like plenty of words
for prostitutes, and those will be extremely bad words as well.
So it's like those things kind of go hand in hand, yeah,
which from what I've seen, has to do with the
patriarchy creating the moral hierarchy, right, because it's such a
male view of things, like you're my mom, so you're
(38:39):
the most sacred thing around, and you're a prostitute, which
means I can't control you. So invoking those things are
the two worst things you can talk about. And then
our last step to me chuck in Japan, yes, bacca
Bacca means basically idiot, but it you don't call people that,
it's a really bad word, which I think is so sweet.
(39:02):
I love that country. Idiot that's bad, yeah, and I
think about how much how often we call people idiots
here in the US. Yeah, but that's bad though. I
remember my mom team like, don't don't say that. Word.
Oh she was right. Yeah. Still she's not even Japanese,
she's some Tennessee a little Japanese in it, maybe so
Japanese streak. UM. So I guess we will finish up
(39:25):
here with a little bit on um. What can happen
when your brain is damaged. And we've talked about a
little bit of this stuff before, but there's some pretty
interesting things uh. In terms of brain injury UM. Something
called aphasia UH is a condition where you can lose
your ability to speak or pronounce words because of disease
(39:47):
or brain damage. But UM A phase A, PHASEX have
an interesting thing. They can return to their ability of
automatic speech, which is just like saying things like um
and uh uh. But the other thing that comes back,
or swear words, which ties all back into the thing,
is they exist as their own in their own category,
(40:09):
almost like non speech exactly. So that's one of the
first things that can come back um or never go away,
yeah or never go away. And when they um, their
ability pronounced words can evolve while they're recovering, but the
swear words stay the same. Right Like apparently you can
have a hemispherictomy on the left of the left lobe
(40:31):
where a substantial part of the left lobe goes away
and you can't talk any longer, but you can say, yes,
we're just fine. That must be startling, I'm sure you know. Yeah. Uh,
and we did. We did a great episode on Tourette
syndrome quite a while back, and we talked about corporalia
(40:53):
and that is um. I think a lot of people
have this image of someone with turette, you know, just
constantly screaming swear words. And it's actually a very small
number and it's that's actually called copper laia, not turette,
and um, a very small number of people with GTS
exhibit copper lawya, right, very very very small. Yeah, and
(41:13):
it's I think it even I think you even grow
out of it in most cases too. Right. Apparently younger
males are the ones who are more likely to have
that as a tick with Tourette syndrome. But it also
makes sense in that um swearing can be viewed as
a motor function with a motion attached, right, Yeah, And
(41:33):
a tick is a has to do with the motor function,
whether it's your head twitching or shouting the S word
a few times. Yeah, still a tick, um My last
thing here is I think Pinker, I think it was
really interesting and that he noted that swear words were
often most often just very uh just the sound itself,
(41:56):
you know, being real, just harsh, and that that contributes
a lot to their function, like when you get hurt
or when you're just trying to exclaim something loudly, like
the F word, it's as that very sharp k at
the end um. And if you expressed anger using gentler
sounds like he says wiffy and slush, it's just he
(42:20):
compares it. What do you say, It's like slamming a
door fitted with a compressed air hinge. It's just not
the same thing, right, There's something about those sharp quick
words ends and kay's and teas, you know that our
staccato that just sort of provide that visceral you know release. Yeah,
I think yeah that was Rebecca Roach who use the
analogy with the hydraulic which is perfect its wify door. Yeah. Um,
(42:46):
But but we should finish on Pinker's um seven functions
of swearing. All right? What are they? They? So? I
swear word? No, I'm sorry. Five functions that we could
make up another two swear words. They can be used descriptively. Uh,
I can't give an example of that one. Idiomatically. Okay,
(43:07):
it's ft up abusively f you Yeah, emphatically, this is
an amazing yeah. Um and cathartically, which is f right,
which it makes swears pretty interesting things. Yeah, and um,
I mean Tracy puts some tips in there for when
(43:28):
you have children on how to regulate that and explain things.
But um, you know, just a parent the way you
want a parent apparently though you're not supposed to laugh,
that's impossible. Yeah, laugh and clap and pat him on
the head. Yeah, by my toy. Yeah, my kids at
the age where she repeats everything. And I hurt myself
(43:50):
the other day and let out an F bomb and
she said it right after me. And there's nothing funnier. Wow.
Do you have it on tape? No? Um, But she
does say the word fox, the animal fox. Um, she
says that as the other word, and we do have
that on tape. It's funny. I'd like to see that. Yeah,
I'll show it to you. It's um, it's good. And
you know, it's just a reality that we curse in
(44:12):
my household. And you know, my kids probably gonna be
one of those kids that curses earlier than other kids.
But I'm hoping to kind of cross that bridge and
be like, hey, listen, can't say these things in school.
You can't say him in front of teachers. I remember
when a teacher would curse, how like no shocking that was.
I don't think I ever experienced no like the teacher
(44:34):
on a bad day that the class is just pushed
and they would just break down and scream a curse
word that never happened. Oh man, I had. It happened
a couple of times, and it is talk about like
the social contract. Nothing will make a bunch of kids
like straighten up faster than hearing you. They're just like,
oh man, like Mrs So and so, has we've pushed
her too far? Or when a kid curses at a teacher,
(44:56):
there was also that like oh boy, yeah, that's huge,
like trouble. Yeah. So yeah, I'm hoping to teach my
daughter it's too pick and choose. Yeah, maybe she'll grow
up to be like Red Fox make money off of
the cursing. Maybe so or Sarah Silverman, Yeah, who's like
the modern Red Fox. Well, she definitely has made a
career out of breaking taboos with language for shock shock value.
(45:21):
She's great. Yep yea. So it's Red Fox so too
r I p uh red Fox not Sarah Silverman's. If
you want to know more about Red Fox there Silverman swearing.
Any of that stuff. You can type those words in
the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this notable Canadian filibuster. You folks may have noticed
(45:44):
we had a Saturday episode on filibusters. And that's a
new thing we're doing called s Y s K selects,
where we we republished a Saturday episode that we think
was great or relevant. Um, in case you missed it.
And um, thanks for the support on those apparently support
we mean thanks for listening, right yeah, yeah, they're still free. Um.
(46:09):
So Blake listened to the filibuster one and he wrote
in about a Canadian filibuster. Hey, guys quite enjoyed the
episode about filibusters. Although I've worked for several years at
various legislatures throughout Canada can tell you that filibustering is
not unique to the U. S. Senate. My favorite example
of the filibuster took place in the Canadian Senate. Parliamentary
proceedings in Canada are recorded and published verbatim and hands
(46:30):
aard uh. Canada being a bilingual country means that the
hands are hands. Art is available in both English and French,
meaning that staff not only have to transcribe everything said,
but translators also need to translate English speeches into French
and vice versa for official publicity. I'm sorry, publicly available record.
Why is this topical because during one particularly contentious filibuster
(46:52):
believe related to trade agreement in the late eight nineteen eighties,
one senator stood and read the entirety of his autobiography
into the record. As you can expect, this took quite
a bit of time. That not only did it delay
passage of the bill, the common mythology to the senator
also to this in order to get a free, professional
quality translation of his autobiography, which was subsequently published in French. Wow,
(47:15):
that's from Blake Evans. That's that's a good one, Blake.
Thank you for the Canadian history lesson. We don't get
enough of that down here. Um. I have one. I
have a call out for Canadians. I've always just made
fun of it as fake Thanksgiving, but I realized I
never have figured out why Thanksgiving as celebrated a month
or so early, well early compared to the US in Canada,
(47:39):
so let us know exactly that's a different way of
looking at it. Yes, okay, So if you want to
get in touch with us so let us know, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
or join me josh Um clark Um. You can join
and Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or
Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, send us
an email of the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
(48:01):
dot com and has always joined us at home on
the web Stuff you should Know dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics because at how
stuff Works dot com
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