Harvard psychology prof Steven Pinker has an interesting demo of this in one of his stump lectures on language an emotion. He recites fifty English swear words in raid succession. By the end of that minute the audience is cringing. Who could think a distinguished Harvard professor could go potty mouth like that? Pinkers point is that swearing is processed by an alternative language system deeply tied to emotion and can override normal language emotion.<p>P.S. Pinker has several video lectures on his website and one of them might have this demonstration.
This is actually a really awesome article, though poorly titled for the HN crowd. It is about brain research in brain injured individuals and how that impacts use of language:<p><i>Studies from people with different types of aphasia have delineated different brain regions that regulate different aspects of communication. Wernicke’s area is like a dictionary: it helps us to understand the meanings of the words we hear and to choose the words we want to use in a particular context. People with damage to this area can’t understand language, yet they can pronounce words and assemble sentences—it’s just that the sentences they come up with don’t make any sense. Broca’s area is in charge of producing sounds; people with damage to this area have trouble articulating words and sentences.<p>But both Wernicke’s aphasics and Broca’s aphasics, and even global aphasics, can swear. These swear words are coming from somewhere else in the brain, not the parts known to be responsible for generating the rest of language.</i>
Matlab had a f##k command. On the prompt, it returned "your place or mine"... Then, in V4, it returned "this command is obsolete". Then it was gone in V5.
Speaking of "fuck" I read a paper in the 80s (unfortunstally I've lost it -- it was back when papers were, well, printed on paper) that analyzed why you can say "fan-fucking-tastic: but not "fantas-fucking-tick".<p>I wish I could find it again -- I'd surely understand it better now.
Perhaps this is partly why it’s so hard to stop cursing.<p>I curse like a sailor, even though I'm consciously aware that it’s an unhelpful, unprofessional, unarticulated form of communication.
I'm kind of surprised HN doesn't implement censorship of swear words. Also I worked at a company where Fuck was dropped all the time. I'm not sure why people think it's unprofessional.
What is the appropriate age to begin using profanity? If I'm out at a restaurant with my "brogrammer" friends, and a mom with kids is at the next table, is swearing inconsiderate, or OK?
All swearing reveals to me is that you're inarticulate, vulgar, don't respect others, and are probably of low birth. Hahaha, JK. I love swearing and most of my favorite people swear a lot.