I swear I swear.

This week I wanted to rant about language again after reading some utterly abhorrent abuses of English recently. An example of this is a post I saw which stated "I shud of cum wiv u". After some time I deduced that the meaning the individual was trying to convey was "I should have come with you".

As I was saying I wanted to rant about language abuse this week but decided to ignore my instinct to abuse the abusers and instead stand up for a useful but often discouraged and frowned up on part language, profanity. At this point I'd also like to point out that there is some bad language coming up later, and I don't mean split infinitives, there will be some swearing.

Profanity, swearing, cursing, expletives, dirty words and my favourite sentence enhancers, call them what you like, and there are many other names, but the result is still the same. Some people find them shocking, inappropriate, insulting, rude, vulgar, desecrating and disrespectful, however they can also be humours, joyful, light-hearted and an important tool to add emphasis to a sentence.

Now I like to think I know when and how to use a good old swear but I thought I'd look at their prevalence in language, Patrick (1901) published a paper asking why do we swear and when do we swear. Since then there has be a great deal of psychological research into aspects of swearing. Jay (2006) suggests that past research states that 0.5% to 0.7% of all words spoken are swears. Which is a really fucking small amount when you consider that first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words.

The good people at Keele University have published a paper which suggests that swearing is in fact beneficial to us. Stephens, Atkin and Andrew (2009) state that swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. So next time you stub your toe or slice off an arm just shout your favourite swear. However, overuse does seem to diminish their wonderful power.

I do believe there is a time and a place for profanity but sometimes "dropping the F-bomb", is both funny and therapeutic. So fuck what society thinks and do what makes you feel better, cut loose, tell 'em all to fuck off.

Although I still find it hard to say the C-word (the worst of all the English swears). I'm going to do it... here goes... Nick Clegg what a fucking cunt!

Quote of the week, as the article this week is on swearing I thought this weeks quote could be from Nofx's song "Perfect Government":

"Even if it's easy to be free what's your definition of freedom? And who the fuck are you, anyway? Who the fuck are they? Who the fuck am I to say? What the fuck is really going on?"

References:


Patrick, G.T.W. (1901). The psychology of profanity. Psychological Review, 8, 113–127.

Stephens, R., Atkins, J. and Kingston, A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. Neuroreport Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. 20(12), 1056-1060.