Swearing and Language Science

Prospero takes a look at swearing:

Taboo words can survive underlying social change. Church attendance has plummeted over the past few decades in Quebec, but a distinctive clutch of swear-words in the local variety of French are still some of the roughest words in the language: chalice (calisse!) and “host” (hosti), for example. The words remain powerfully charged partly because they are simply learnt as taboo words, and serve a special function divorced from their original context. Swearing activates a bit of the brain that is used for other kinds of emotional responses like shouting and crying. The reason it is so hard not to swear in front of a child when you stub your toe is that you haven’t consciously processed the words through the same part of the language engine that you would use to explain a maths problem. Studies have even shown that swearing makes physical pain more bearable.

The discovery by modern neuroscience that swearing uses different parts of the brain than other language finally explained for me the appeal of the whole business. I spent my whole youth wondering why people enjoyed swearing so much, found it so funny, etc. But once you understand that swearing comes, not from the highly rational language centers, but from the emotional organs, it all makes perfect sense. (Some people who have lost all speech because of brain injuries or tumors can still swear.) Obviously you can choose to swear in a perfectly logical way - viz, when you are retelling a story or putting words in the mouth of a fictional character. But no matter how you use them, their connection to deep-seated emotions clings to them like an aura, making them different from all other speech.