essay on bad language

September 11, 2024

published by phi beta kappa

Print or web publication, on the psychology of swearing.

Could cursing be good for us?

Consider cuss words, also known as curse words, swear words, profanity, bad language, and what not to say on television. Most psychologists use taboo words, a term so nonjudgmental that it seems to pass judgment on those who would call them anything else. But however we reference them, the fact remains that they intrigue and disgust, insult and—rather surprisingly, in some circumstances—assuage us.

Why do psychologists bother studying the language of the gutter? Well, as Timothy Jay, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, puts it in a 2009 review (available on his website , and very worth your time), swearing is ubiquitous: “we say taboo words as soon as we speak and we continue to swear into old age even through dementia and senile decline.” And we do so at a rate of about one taboo word per 200 words. This rate, however, differs dramatically among age groups (swearing peaks in adolescence), between genders (men swear more often and more offensively), and most importantly and perhaps obviously of all, from one individual to the next.

All taboo words are not created equal. Nor are they equal-opportunity offenders. It remains unknown precisely how children acquire the nuanced contexts for a given expletive. In a sense, this is a problem children face for every word in their vocabulary. But with taboo words the stakes seems higher—and the studies undoubtedly harder to come by. What parents are going to sign up their toddler for a study with “cussing” in the title?

In any event, we know that by the time said toddler is old enough for college, his memory for taboo words in psychology experiments is excellent. Taboo words tend to be emotional words, and emotional things attract our attention and keep it. (That is why those “where were you when” moments follow tragic or inspiring events, never mildly disappointing or merely pleasant ones.) The distinctiveness of taboo words also helps us remember them. In many contexts—church, classrooms, and dare I say psychology experiments—we simply don’t expect to encounter swearing. So when we do, it stands out. Thus, changing the context in which swearing occurs can change how we experience it. Were we to read a list chock-full of taboo words (the experimental equivalent of, say, watching Goodfellas ), we’d be less likely to remember a given zinger than when reading a list full of neutral words (the experimental equivalent of watching Babe ).

Some researchers have even suggested—and here things get more controversial—that taboo words have a hold on us that goes beyond their emotional impact or distinctiveness, that we evolved to use and attend to taboo words as a survival strategy . What else, Jay observes, can “intensify” communication more efficiently than a well-placed Fuck you ?

Alternatively, though not incompatibly, we may swear simply because it makes us feel better. In a 2011 study led by Keele University’s Richard Stephens, researchers measured how long participants would keep a hand in a container of freezing water. On one trial, participants repeated a swear word of their choice. On another trial, the same participants immersed their hand without cursing. (Sometimes the no-cursing trial occurred first, sometimes second). When cursing, participants’ heart rates increased, as did the amount of time they were capable of withstanding the freezing water—from about a minute to a minute and a half. But the swearing-as-painkiller method, though intriguing, becomes less effective with repeated use: this “swearing benefit” is largest for those who swear least .

Jessica Love holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology and edits Kellogg Insight at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

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What Profanity Teaches Us About Ourselves

P rofane words have a direct line to our emotions. They are a spontaneous reflection of strong emotional states, like anger, fear or passion. They are also unequaled in their capacity to inflict emotional pain and incite violent disagreement. They’re the words that provoke the most repressive regulatory reactions from the state in the form of censorship and legislation. In short, bad words are powerful—emotionally, physiologically, psychologically and socially. And because profanity is powerful, it behaves differently from other types of language. It gets encoded differently in the brain. It’s learned differently. It’s articulated differently. It changes differently over time. And that lends it the unique potential to reveal facts about our language and ourselves that we’d otherwise never imagine.

Yet throughout its several-thousand-year history, the scientific study of language has, if anything, mostly tried to sidestep profanity. This is due in no small part to institutional apprehension that academics have about potential reprisal. And with good reason. Last year, LSU professor Teresa Buchanan was fired —despite having tenure—for swearing in lectures.

But things have started to change, in large part because of changes in public language norms. The highly regulated public airwaves don’t carry the bulk of mass communication as they once did. First cable television and then the Internet have created a Wild West for words, where the true will of the people has its way. And if social media are any indication, the people want to be able to swear. And to hear swearing. And to read swearing. As the public has become more accustomed to profanity, taboo words have started to make their way more prominently into mainstream science and brought with them a wealth of new insights.

One of the most important things we’ve learned from profanity pertains to how the brain generates language. The traditional view still taught in introductory psychology textbooks is that specific, dedicated neural circuitry performs specific language functions in humans but not in other animals. Here’s a little technical primer: Wernicke’s Area is thought to compute word meaning. Broca’s Area is thought to coordinate speech sounds. These regions are found in the left hemisphere of the brain in most people (this is the basis for the popular but mostly overblown notion that logical, rational and verbal people are “ left brained ”). This well-studied language system is part of the evolutionarily new (and in humans, enlarged) cerebral cortex—that most recent and most human embellishment of the primate brain that makes us so much smarter, in the ways we are, than other animals.

This is a nice, clean story. But it’s only partially right, as we now know from neuropsychiatric work on profanity—studies of people with damage to their brains or who developed atypically. This field began with a case study from a French physician named Jacques Lordat in 1843. He wrote about a parish priest, a man of God, who had suffered a serious stroke. And as a consequence of the stroke, the priest retained little ability to speak. He had what we now know as aphasia, which more than a million Americans currently suffer from. His vocabulary was reduced to just two words. The first was je , the French word for “I.” And as for the other word, Lordat wrote that it was “the most forceful oath of the tongue, which begins with an ‘f’ and which our Dictionaries have never dared to print.” That was the French word foutre , whose English translation, a familiar four-letter word, coincidentally also starts with “f.” And with two centuries of accumulated observations, we now know that many people with aphasia exhibit the very same syndrome that Lordat observed in his priest. They find it difficult or impossible to intentionally articulate words or string them together. But some spontaneous language is still preserved—including some of the most vulgar verbal ejaculations in the language.

What this discovery means is that different ways you use language—speaking rationally versus swearing spontaneously, for example—must be generated by different parts of the brain. The famous language circuits I described earlier are only one of two pathways in the brain that produce language. Spontaneous swears are generated somewhere else. But where?

We know that this somewhere else must be on the right side of the brain, not on the left like the traditional language centers. And the evidence comes from a pretty amazing source. There are people—like a patient pseudonymized as E.C—who have their entire left hemisphere removed, usually in order to disrupt otherwise fatal seizure conditions. E.C. had a brain tumor, and when his doctors removed the entire left hemisphere of his brain, he lost all capacity for intentional language. But he still spontaneously and articulately uttered expletives out of frustration.

So spontaneous swearing doesn’t need the language centers of the left hemisphere. Instead, it’s driven by evolutionarily old structures known as the limbic system, buried deep in the brain, that we share with primates and other mammals where they are responsible for emotional calls, shrieks, cries, and growls. Changes to these very same brain structures—the basal ganglia in particular—are observed in people with coprolalia, the uncontrollable use of taboo language often observed in Tourette Syndrome.

This means that when you swear out of frustration, fear, anger or passion, the words you utter offer privileged access to your emotions, laying bare your covert internal experiences, unmediated by rational and deliberate planning.

And this is just one of dozens of insights we’re now able to garner from taking profanity seriously. The time is right to capitalize on profanity to learn about language, not just as the rational product of deliberate reflection, but as part of the impulsive, emotional, hot cognition that is pervasively, if not uniquely, human.

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

The Power Of Words: Why You Shouldn’t Swear

According to surveys conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in 2017, about 60% of respondents said they ‘occasionally’ use profanity. As for children and young people, the situation is equally depressing: more than half of high school students said that they swear freely in front of their peers. [1] We all know that swearing is uncivilized and considered bad form. Nevertheless, the use of profanity doesn’t really bother anyone nowadays – after all, this is such an ordinary thing in our life! Indeed, what’s so bad about swearing? Let’s try to understand how profanity affects people, both physically and emotionally.

Swearing: the meaning

History of profanity, why profane language is bad for you: true stories, what scientists say about the power of swearing, does the use of bad language affect human health, why children shouldn’t curse.

Why ladies shouldn’t curse

How to get yourself or people around you stop swearing?

Swearing refers to words or phrases, mainly intended to affront interlocutors or to express opinion on your actions or actions of other people. Profanity is offensive to public morals, but still seems to be common everywhere.

Yu. Levin, Soviet linguist and literary critic, identified following typical functions of swearing:

· abusive, intended to express aggression to interlocutor;

· cathartic, intended to relieve stress;

· automatic, intended to fill gaps in the conversation;

· expressive, intended to make the speaking style more emotional. [2]

We will teach you the art of communication

It is difficult for scientists to trace the occurrence of swear words. However, it is reliably known that swear words were used in Russia in the 12th and13th centuries, since confirmations of this were found in ancient chronicles and annals. According to historians, in ancient times obscene words had rather a jocular function, rather than ‘aggressive’ one, as it is now. [3]

Swear words acquired the status of ‘words unacceptable for using in public’ in 18th century. After which the problem of profanity began to be seriously discussed. It started to be a kind of marker: if a person expressed his or her thoughts in a ‘bad’ way, it meant that he or she lived life of dubious virtue. Until the middle of the 19th century usage of ‘bad’ words was a good reason for punishment in the form of public whipping.

Despite all the prohibitions, in the 20th century profanity became an integral part of Russian language. Swear words started to be used by both poets and lumpers. Thus, profanity has ceased to be a sign of only the lower tier of society.

As in ancient times, nowadays the authorities are trying to fight against profanity. For example, the use of swear words in public places can be regarded as petty hooliganism, which may entail a fine or administrative punishment. However, it only applies to cases where swearing is used for the purpose of insulting interlocutor.

Why profane language is bad for you: true stories

“I’ve been swearing probably since I was a teenager. It just became a habit. Now I have no filter on my mouth. It doesn’t matter to whom I talk with – ‘bad’ words slip in from time to time.

Frankly, I’ve never had problems with that. But when I got a ‘good’ job, I saw that my colleagues were talking with each other politely, and this was normal for them. I realized that I didn’t fit in at work. I try to control myself, but it doesn’t always work. I think the problem is that I’m no longer able to express any idea, even a simple one, without cursing”.

– Ekaterina, 25

One of the negative consequences of misusing ‘bad’ language is the inability to communicate with people in normal way. This may turn into a huge problem, because in some areas such communication is considered unacceptable. That’s why self-control is an important skill.

“My husband always curses at me. He can easily say to me to fuck of without even apologizing afterwards. I always argue with him, I ask him not to swear at home. But it seems he doesn’t really care about my feelings. He says he has a ‘stressful’ job. He swears there all the time, and automatically continues using swearing at home.

This frustrates me so badly. I never swear, since I consider swear words offensive”.

– Elena, 32

On the surface, it seems that swearing is harmless to humans. But if overused it can become a bad habit. Getting rid of it, according to psychologists, is just as difficult as fighting, for example, smoking and alcoholism. [2]

The first step in fighting profanity is to find out the cause of such an unhealthy behavior pattern. When misusing obscene words, a person often tries to hide his or her own vulnerability, self-doubt, fears or other problems.

What scientists say about the power of swearing

There have been some cases in medical practice, when people paralyzed after a stroke were unable to say a single word, but could swear easily. For this reason, experts suggest that swearing has a different psychophysiological origin than ‘ordinary’ words.

R. Stevens, a senior professor of psychology at Keele University in the UK, has a hypothesis that many doctors agreed to. He states that swear words have pain- or stress-relieving effects. A swear word, pronounced in the hit of the moment, causes the release of a dose of adrenaline. R. Stevens conducted an interesting experiment: undergraduate volunteers were asked to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating swear words. After this experiment, he found that volunteers tolerated pain better when swearing. He says that swearing “does increase heart rate: It seems to cause the fight-or-flight response”. [4]

However, one should not hope that swear words save the world and relieve humanity from stress and pain! In 2011, R. Stevens continued his research and found that the ‘veteran cussers’, who used swear words at least 60 times a day, no longer felt any ‘analgesic effect’ from this. Thus, the emotional response to swear words in brain cells is weakened by their frequent usage. [4]

However, although swear words could help a person cope with pain and stress, they affect the people around in a negative way. The University of Arizona researchers conducted an experiment that proved that swearing repels other people. During the experiment, women diagnosed with breast cancer or rheumatoid arthritis wore registrars, and experts noted the frequency of their use of profanity with family and friends. As a result, it was found that women who cursed received less support from their loved ones. [4]

In evidence-based medicine, there is no evidence that swearing affects human health in a negative way. Despite this, there are many different theories and hypotheses.

Soviet biologist I. Belyavsky showed with mathematical accuracy that both the person and the words spoken have an energetic charge. Thus, he states that profanity is a negative factor that destroys human from within. Based on his research, I. Belyavsky suggested that people who used swear words daily, very quickly developed age-related changes at the cellular level, and, following it, various diseases. According to the scientist, this is the main reason why people should stop using swear words. [5]

Dr. E. Odintsova believes in her turn that swearing can cause genetic mutations. In this regard, an experiment was conducted: scientists were invited to curse at plants. After the seeds of Arabidopsis were subjected to obscene verbal exposure, they were planted into the ground. As a result, most of them did not sprout, and minority of surviving plants had genetic deformities. [5]

Doctors are very skeptical of all statements about mutations and ‘energetically charged’ words. But we cannot deny the effect of positive and negative emotions on human health! If a person swears, because he or she always feels stressed, then sooner or later, this will have a consequence on the physical level. So, it is not the swear words themselves, which are to blame, but the person’s psycho-emotional state. His or her personality problems, which become the reason for the constant use of obscene language, can really affect human health negatively. [2]

A child’s first swear could be said as early as at the age of 3. But when kids swear at this age, it’s likely because they’re repeating what they’ve heard from someone else. To change your child’s behavior, you should control the way you react. Firstly, don’t overreact if you child does swear, otherwise your kid may repeat swear words in an effort to get your attention. Secondly, there is no need to try to find out where your kid learned these words or scold him/her. Just quickly turn his or her attention to something else.

Children 8 years or older use swear words intentionally. So, it is important to explain to the child that it is a bad way of talking, as early as possible. But the problem of profanity usually becomes serious a little later, in early adolescence. A teenager swears in order to ‘fit in’ with a company of peers, to ‘prove’ his or her freedom and independence to adults.

According to psychologists, abusive language has a negative effect on a child’s general development, such as:

· Difficulties in communicating with others start to appear;

· Feeling of impunity prompts reckless behavior, which is reflected in the behavioral pattern;

· Vocabulary becomes poor, which further interferes with communication with people;

· Mental processes are inhibited. [2]

So, if you child uses unacceptable language, such behavior requires accurate correction. Avoid categorical prohibitions or punishments: it is much more important to find out the reasons why your child began to swear. Psychologists believe that the reason for using swearing is self-doubt and phobias. A child is unable to express his or her opinion, or prove his or her opinion in a different, censored way. For this reason, swear words become for children the only way to be understood by others.

Why ladies shouldn’t swear

For a long time, women have been striving for gender equality. As a result, now they can even swear. But is it really necessary?

Mostly, the negative attitude towards the use of obscene words by women is caused by gender stereotypes. It is believed that a main role of woman is mother and the guardian of the hearth, and she should never use any obscene words, especially if she has children. Consciously or unconsciously, children copy the behavior of their parents, and they probably will swear, if their relatives do so. So, it’s not good when a mother becomes a bad example for her children.

A swearing woman, in the eyes of those around her, looks like a ‘dysfunctional’ person, a bad character. Will she be able to succeed in a career or find a worthy life partner? It depends on many factors, not only on her lexicon, but ‘bad’ language will certainly not contribute to women’s personal happiness.

How to get yourself or people around you stop swearing?

If you don’t have verbal filter, sooner or later it may become a problem. There is a risk that the use of swear words will develop into a bad habit, which will be difficult to get rid of.

The most important thing is to understand that the regular use of swear words refers to unhealthy behavior model. Behavioral psychology helps fighting against problem speech habits. One of its new methods is the 7Spsy technique-based behavior modification course , based on theories of I. P. Pavlova, B.F. Skinner A. A. Ukhtomsky, and others.

Participation in the training will help you get rid of the habit of ‘automatic’ cursing. Your loved one or you will have a chance to take more seriously what you say and under what circumstances. The positive attitudes acquired during the training will help you to understand how destructive profanity is in communicating with others. This is the first step towards the understanding that our thoughts and feelings, including negative ones, can be expressed through the abundance of other words in our rich language.

Participants receive all the necessary recommendations and daily consultations from the psychologist by phone and e-mail, as well as in online chat rooms. Training is strictly confidential, so you don’t have to tell anyone about this problem.

Beautiful, pure speaking style without profanity means healthy lifestyle, calm temper and lack of bad habits. Make your speech clear, and your life will change for the better!

References:

1. «Netsenzurnaia leksika. Nuzhno li nakazyvat za netsenzurnuiu leksiku doma?» (https://fom.ru/Obraz-zhizni/13626)

2. «Ob obstsennykh vyrazheniiakh russkogo iazyka», 1998 g., Iu. I. Levin.

3. «Russkaia brannaia leksika: tsenzurnoe i netsenzurnoe» (zhurnal «Rusistika», 1994 g., № 1, 2), V. M. Mokienko.

4. «The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature», 2007 г, S. Pinker.

5. «O vliianii nenormativnoi leksiki na psikhofiziologicheskoe sostoianie zhivykh organizmov», 2005 g., G. Cheugin.

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Writing Tips

Heck and Darn! How and When to Swear in Writing

5-minute read

6th August 2020

Authors use swear words in writing for various reasons, including to express strong emotions, add emphasis, shock readers or break taboos, or just to reflect how people talk in the real world (e.g., in dialogue).

But swearing can also offend people, especially if it is gratuitous. When, then, is it okay to swear in your writing ? Key factors include:

Who you are writing for and how sensitive they are to profanity.
How formal or professional the document needs to be.
The intensity of the swearwords you use in your writing.

In this post, then, we’ll look at when (and when not) to swear in your writing, plus what you can do instead of swearing when it isn’t appropriate.

Who Is Your Audience?

The biggest factor when deciding whether to use profanity in your writing is the target audience. For example, swearing is obviously inappropriate if you are writing for children. Likewise, if you’re writing for adults who have very traditional views , they may be easily offended by bad language.

In cases like these, it’s best to avoid any swearing or to keep it very mild.

Swearing in Formal Writing

Swear words are rarely, if ever, appropriate in formal business or academic writing . At best, it would seem unprofessional. At worst, you could lose marks on an essay or lose a client at work.

There are some exceptions to this: if you’re studying the history of offensive language, for example, you will need to include the terms you’re discussing. But even in cases like this, you would restrict profanity to examples or quotes, not use it as part of your general writing style.

Swearing in Informal and Creative Writing

In less formal writing, there is much more room for profanity! If you’re simply emailing a friend, for instance, you are welcome to be as obscene as you like (as long as the recipient is comfortable with bad language).

In creative writing, meanwhile, swearing can be a key part of your writing style. In gritty war or crime novels, for example, a little profanity can help to create a realistic atmosphere. But you should only do this when it fits the context: constant cursing may feel out of place in a period drama about the upper classes, for instance, since we would not expect the well-mannered characters in such a book to swear all the time.

If you’re unsure about whether to use swear words in your creative writing, look at some books in your genre for pointers. Do the narrators or characters use swear words? Do they fit the tone of the novel as a whole?

Intensity of Swear Words

You may also need to consider the intensity of the swear words you use in your writing. Some swear words, for example, are considered very offensive (e.g., the f-word or the c-word). And while stronger profanities are more likely to have an impact, they are also more likely to cause offence.

Other swear words are much milder, though. And a character saying “drat” or “darn” is unlikely to shock anyone these days. So if you want to swear without causing offence, it is best to pick a mild swear word.

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The intensity of swear words can also vary across cultures. The word “w*nker,” for instance, is much less offensive in the USA than the UK. As such, American TV shows have used it for comic effect, but then caused much outrage when they were broadcast before the watershed in the UK. And Australia is famous for its relaxed attitude to swearing.

Even swear words like “damn” or “hell,” which may seem mild by modern standards, can offend people who are very religious. As such, if you are going to swear in writing, it pays to choose your profanities carefully!

Alternatives to Swearing

What, then, can you do instead of swearing in your writing? If all you’re looking for is a way to add emphasis to something, the simplest approach is to use another intensifier . For example, compare the following:

The show was bloody amazing!

The show was really amazing!

This might lack the impact of a swear word in some cases, but it expresses the same thing without any risk of causing offence.

There are also many creative ways to tone down swear-worthy moments, which can even add a touch of humor! These include:

Child-friendly alternatives to curse words: e.g., Flipping heck!
Using symbols in place of swears: e.g., What the f*@% are they thinking?
Completely made-up words that have a similar sound or feel to existing swear words: e.g., “frak” in Battlestar Galactica or “smeg” in Red Dwarf .

These will give you all the fun of swearing without any of the offence!

Summary: When to Swear in Writing

Whether to use swear words in your writing is ultimately a matter of personal preference. But we can offer some helpful guidelines on the topic:

Do not use swear words in formal business or academic writing.
Think about whether your audience would be offended by bad language.
Only use swear words in creative writing when it fits the context.

In general, moreover, it is wise to hold back on profanity in writing. The odd swear word can be expressive, adding emotion and emphasis to what you’re saying. But excessive cursing will blunt this effect, so the best approach to swearing is usually to save it for when it will have the greatest impact.

To make sure your writing strikes the right tone every time, moreover, why not try out our professional proofreading services ?

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Member Article

The science of swearing.

Communication
Language Development
Personality/Social

Why would a psychological scientist study swearing? Expertise in such an area has different practical significance inside and outside the community of psychological science. Outside the scientific community, expertise on taboo language is justification for frequent consultation about contemporary issues that are perennial: Is swearing harmful? Should children be allowed to swear? Is our swearing getting worse? One of us has been interviewed over 3,000 times by various media with respect to the questions above, as well as those about the use of taboo words in television, advertising, professional sports, radio, music, and film. In addition to consultation with mass media, expert testimony has been needed in cases involving sexual harassment, fighting words, picket-line speech, disturbing the peace, and contempt of court cases.

Considering the persistent need for an expert to consult for the above issues, it is odd that swearing expertise is weighted so differently when swearing is viewed from the perspective of psychological science. While hundreds of papers have been written about swearing since the early 1900s, they tend to originate from fields outside of psychology such as sociology, linguistics, and anthropology. When swearing is a part of psychological research, it is rarely an end in itself.

Kristin Janschewitz

It is far more common to see strong offensive words used as emotionally arousing stimuli — tools to study the effect of emotion on mental processes such as attention and memory.

Why the public-versus-science disconnect? Is swearing, as a behavior, outside the scope of what a psychological scientist ought to study? Because swearing is influenced so strongly by variables that can be quantified at the individual level, psychological scientists (more than linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists) have the best training to answer questions about it. Another explanation for the relative lack of emphasis on this topic is the orientation of psychological science to processes (e.g., memory) rather than life domains (e.g., leisure activities), a problem described by Paul Rozin. Arguably, a more domain-centered approach to psychological study would better accommodate topics such as swearing and other taboo behaviors.

Regardless of the reason for the relative lack of emphasis on swearing research per se inside psychological science, there is still a strong demand from outside the scientific community for explanations of swearing and associated phenomena. To give the reader a sense of the work that we do as psychological scientists who study swearing, let’s consider some of the common questions we’re asked about swearing.

Is swearing problematic or harmful?

Courts presume harm from speech in cases involving discrimination or sexual harassment. The original justification for our obscenity laws was predicated on an unfounded assumption that speech can deprave or corrupt children, but there is little (if any) social-science data demonstrating that a word in and of itself causes harm. A closely related problem is the manner in which harm has been defined — harm is most commonly framed in terms of standards and sensibilities such as religious values or sexual mores. Rarely are there attempts to quantify harm in terms of objectively measurable symptoms (e.g., sleep disorder, anxiety). Psychological scientists could certainly make a systematic effort to establish behavioral outcomes of swearing.

Swearing can occur with any emotion and yield positive or negative outcomes. Our work so far suggests that most uses of swear words are not problematic. We know this because we have recorded over 10,000 episodes of public swearing by children and adults, and rarely have we witnessed negative consequences. We have never seen public swearing lead to physical violence. Most public uses of taboo words are not in anger; they are innocuous or produce positive consequences (e.g., humor elicitation). No descriptive data are available about swearing in private settings, however, so more work needs to be done in that area.

Therefore, instead of thinking of swearing as uniformly harmful or morally wrong, more meaningful information about swearing can be obtained by asking what communication goals swearing achieves. Swear words can achieve a number of outcomes, as when used positively for joking or storytelling, stress management, fitting in with the crowd, or as a substitute for physical aggression. Recent work by Stephens et al. even shows that swearing is associated with enhanced pain tolerance. This finding suggests swearing has a cathartic effect, which many of us may have personally experienced in frustration or in response to pain. Despite this empirical evidence, the positive consequences of swearing are commonly disregarded in the media. Here is an opportunity for psychological scientists to help inform the media and policymakers by clearly describing the range of outcomes of swearing, including the benefits.

Is it bad for children to hear or say swear words?

The harm question for adult swearing applies to issues such as verbal abuse, sexual harassment, and discrimination. When children enter the picture, offensive language becomes a problem for parents and a basis for censorship in media and educational settings. Considering the ubiquity of this problem, it is interesting that psychology textbooks do not address the emergence of this behavior in the context of development or language learning.

Parents often wonder if this behavior is normal and how they should respond to it. Our data show that swearing emerges by age two and becomes adult-like by ages 11 or 12. By the time children enter school, they have a working vocabulary of 30-40 offensive words. We have yet to determine what children know about the meanings of the words they use. We do know that younger children are likely to use milder offensive words than older children and adults, whose lexica may include more strongly offensive terms and words with more nuanced social and cultural meanings. We are currently collecting data to better understand the development of the child’s swearing lexicon.

We do not know exactly how children learn swear words, although this learning is an inevitable part of language learning, and it begins early in life. Whether or not children (and adults) swear, we know that they do acquire a contextually-bound swearing etiquette — the appropriate ‘who, what, where, and when’ of swearing. This etiquette determines the difference between amusing and insulting and needs to be studied further. Through interview data, we know that young adults report to have learned these words from parents, peers, and siblings, not from mass media.

Considering that the consequences of children’s exposure to swear words are frequently cited as the basis for censorship, psychological scientists should make an effort to describe the normal course of the development of a child’s swearing lexicon and etiquette. Is it important to attempt to censor children from language they already know? While psychological scientists themselves do not establish language standards, they can provide scientific data about what is normal to inform this debate.

Has swearing become more frequent in recent years?

This is a very common question, and it’s a tough one to answer because we have no comprehensive, reliable baseline frequency data prior to the 1970s for comparison purposes. It is true that we are exposed to more forms of swearing since the inception of satellite radio, cable television, and the Internet, but that does not mean the average person is swearing more frequently. In our recent frequency count, a greater proportion of our data comes from women (the reduction of a once large gender difference). We interpret this finding as reflecting a greater proportion of women in public (e.g., many more women on college campuses) rather than a coarsening of women. Our forthcoming research also indicates that the most frequently recorded taboo words have remained fairly stable over the past 30 years. The Anglo-Saxon words we say are hundreds of years old, and most of the historically offensive sexual references are still at the top of the offensiveness list; they have not been dislodged by modern slang. Frequency data must be periodically collected to answer questions about trends in swearing over time.

Thus, our data do not indicate that our culture is getting “worse” with respect to swearing. When this question arises, we also frequently fail to acknowledge the impact of recently-enacted laws that penalize offensive language, such as sexual harassment and discrimination laws. Workplace surveillance of telephone and email conversations also curbs our use of taboo language.

Do all people swear?

We can answer this question by saying that all competent English speakers learn how to swear in English. Swearing generally draws from a pool of 10 expressions and occurs at a rate of about 0.5 percent of one’s daily word output. However, it is not informative to think of how an average person swears: Contextual, personality, and even physiological variables are critical for predicting how swearing will occur. While swearing crosses socioeconomic statuses and age ranges and persists across the lifespan, it is more common among adolescents and more frequent among men. Inappropriate swearing can be observed in frontal lobe damage, Tourette’s disorder, and aphasia.

Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and is a defining feature of a Type A personality. It is negatively correlated with conscientiousness, agreeableness, sexual anxiety, and religiosity. These relationships are complicated by the range of meanings within the diverse group of taboo words. Some religious people might eschew profanities (religious terms), but they may have fewer reservations about offensive sexual terms that the sexually anxious would avoid. We have yet to systematically study swearing with respect to variables such as impulsivity or psychiatric conditions, (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). These may be fruitful avenues along which to investigate the neural basis of emotion and self-control.

Taboo words occupy a unique place in language because once learned, their use is heavily context driven. While we have descriptive data about frequency and self reports about offensiveness and other linguistic variables, these data tend to come from samples that overrepresent young, White, middle-class Americans. A much wider and more diverse sample is needed to better characterize the use of taboo language to more accurately answer all of the questions here.

Amazingly interesting.

There are some new swear words in the younger generation. Probably they define a loose, age-specific, “cloud grouping.” What do you think about “new” swear words?

My father, a tee-totling christian could swear louder and longer than anyone I knew… without using a swear-word. I.e. “carn-sarn-nit,” “yellow-bellied-wood-pecker,” “son-of-a-biscuit-eater,” “crim-a-nelly,” on and on. Hmm. We knew he was swearing, he knew he was swearing.

As a long-time teacher and professor I have noted a few things on both sides: The swear words addiction reminds me of youngsters in locker rooms when they first begin boasting with smutty words and innuendos to show off their “sophisticated masculinity.” It then rubs off as they get older onto others who look upon them as more sophisticated than the younger students. Later, even some professors use these words to show they are “with it.” My judgment? If you were really that learned and sophisticated, you would not need to use those words in public (sometimes with a tongue-in-cheek attitude). Many today would like less pollution of dirty language and anger–because there is always an element of anger in these words, even if it is hidden. And people using the word conservative as a slander should realize that many of these “conservatives” are so innovative that they have succeeded not only in doing good for the public with their successful modern ideas and products but steer clear of anger and hate and harm to others with their “labels.” Pandering to the lowest level is not productive. It only gives fuel to more smut.

“like less pollution of dirty language and anger–because there is always an element of anger in these words, even if it is hidden.”

That is not objective at all. Where is this hidden element of anger you assert is always there? The article shows that it substitutes aggression among other positive effects. How can you conclude that it hides anger if the evidence shows it substitutes violence and reduces stress? I think you are steering a little bit away from measurable evidence here on this.

I do agree though with many people not needing to swear, but that could be from so many other reasons. Perhaps they have other methods and habits of stress management? Maybe the group of friends they are with also happen to swear less? Maybe the geographical area swears less? Who knows. But I still don’t see any evidence supporting your assertion of ever-present hidden anger in certain choices of vocabularity disregarding so many other variables. I’ll defend my friends any day of the week if people levy accusations against them for their choices of vocabularity. There are so many other clearly measurable bad things than to waste time with that.

Profanity is the diction of the indolent, unburdening the perpetrator of lexical exertion. The syntactic versatility of the curse is boundless, conveniently obeying regular rules of inflection. Like a furtive vandal, the obscenity nestles effortlessly anywhere into any sentence, destroying its nuance. Hardly a brain cell need be inducted to create an offending phrase. Rather than expend energy selecting the precise noun, verb, or adjective that accurately embodies intent, the debauchee resorts to the makeshift swear. A profane Marc Antony hovering over the bloodied corpse of Caesar, rather than expressing Shakespeare’s poetic portent “Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood” might otherwise say, “Screw the bastard who did this crap.” The image conveyed by the profane Marc Antony, one of illegitimate men being raped for defecation, is a less accurate, less poignant depiction than the original, which inspires desire for revenge against the murderer whose callous hand spilled the blood of the mighty Caesar. Swearing ruins language and stains those engaging in it with the mark of sloth and doltishness.

For this research, I think it is important to understand, not only the meaning of the word, but also the sound of it. The shape and movement words bring into our minds can affect the way we feel about it. Many people can easily become desensitized to the words, whereas others might cringe to them the same way they cringe to certain undesirable sounds.

It would be an interesting study to see the effects of different sounds on the brain and its relation to language.

Nice point about the sounds…tone, texture, rhythm, etc. I been thinking bout this for a long-a## time…

It would be interesting to study whether people who are more sensitive to sound are also more negatively effected by swear words.

Has there ever been a study of honesty versus swearing? I was recently told by an acquaintance that people who swear are more honest. I don’t see how there could be a correlation, but she insists it was studied and its true.

Based on personal experience, I’d have to say yes. People I know that curse like a Scottish Sailor on a drunken holiday are really stand up people that you can put your trust in. I cuss like a loon, but I’d give you the shirt off my back, open my home to you for shelter, put food in your mouth if you were hungry, and never put up a false pretense. I’ve never heard of such a study myself and I’m about to go look into it after typing this because it sounds intriguing. However, I can say, that based off myself, and experiences with other avid samplers of the verbally profane (lol), that we’re pretty damn honest. 😀 Maybe it’s because we don’t shy away from profanity that we don’t shy away from much else, including being straight with people. 🙂

I think a lot of what you have said is true. I too think that a lot of people who have strong beliefs or ideas just say it as it is. They don’t seem as vulnerable and are maybe more literal in their thinking therefore speaking from the heart so to speak. People that swear often do not even realize that they swear as much as they do because they are true to themselves and just speaking the truth with no inhibitions. I am not saying that everyone should talk like this, but maybe they are just expressing their true self. We are all different and are unique in our own skin. We all need to be true to ourselves. I agree with your point of view.

You said: “They’re not vulnerable. They’re literal. They swear more than they think they do. Therefore, they are speaking from their heart” That makes completely no sense. If they were speaking from their heart, then they would not “be literal”, instead, they would be loving and kind and compassionate instead; and likewise, if they were speaking from their heart, they would be vulnerable, and they would also speak important things, instead of repetitive trash.

It’s an assumption that those words are “trash”, which seems to be based on a prejudice you have against the words and I am wondering where your idea that they are “trash” has come from? I make no such judgement either way myself, being (probably inappropriately) objective on the matter. If they are “repetitive”, this rather misses their point that they will be the ‘same old words’ and that underlines why they are used. You speak of “speaking about important things” but what are you giving importance to and why? Where has your judgement that swear words are thereby not “important” come from? In fact they form a vital part of the language. It’s also possible to use swear words in a kind and compassionate way, and even a loving way, because they are words used between friends (and the closer they are, the more ‘severe’); however this may not be true for yourself because they are not used in this way in some generations that misuse the words by using them in anger and therefore carry a different association. It’s also possible to be very nasty as well as to talk complete trash without using swearing. Therefore, the presence of swearing neither shows “trash” and nor does the lack of swearing show kindness or compassion. It is possible to talk trash with or without swearing, and possible to be kind or compassionate or to be angry and disrespectful with or without swearing. You say swear words are designated in the dictionary as swear words – the use of the word “the” suggests that there is one dictionary; however there are different dictionaries and they designate different words as swearing because some words that continue to be listed as swearing in some dictionaries, in another dictionary are now merely slang. This suggests a change in the language whereby some words have ceased to be swear words, although I don’t know whether you still think they are swearing because you speak of them being designated by “the dictionary”. When people speak “from the heart”, that does not necessarily mean they are vulnerable. Some vulnerable people are indeed in a worse position because of their vulnerability and thus not able to voice their feelings therefore would not be using swearing and might also avoid much else as well perhaps with certain people. Their lack of swearing, indeed lack of conversation, might mean they are vulnerable rather than their ability to speak from the heart demonstrating a lack of vulnerability.

So you mentioned you do not know where children learn swear words?? Are you serious? At home for most of them. The others learn from kids when they get to school. Did you not have kids and learn this? lol

Research may show that the person swearing is more trustworthy, but I would like to see the study on intelligence in those who swear a blue streak. Speaking for myself, I lose a great deal of respect for a person that uses that type of language when there are so many other words that would work much better. Personally, I find it less trustworthy, also.

If there is a study were can we view it or read there findings? I find this hard to believe.

I found this article in a Google search. I was trying to find the supposed study showing how people who swear tend to be more trust worthy. Haven’t found it yet but I will continue to look. I do see where some truth would come from it. Not so much as oh this person cusses like a sailor there for he/she won’t steal my purse, but more from a standpoint of I can trust them to tell me if these pants make my butt look big. Simply because people who tend to swear also tend not to care about what others think about them so therefore they have less of reason to tell white lies.

This is an interesting article, though I started to question the research design after reading, “…we have recorded over 10,000 episodes of public swearing by children and adults, and rarely have we witnessed negative consequences. We have never seen public swearing lead to physical violence.”

Having incited such violence personally, using utterances primarily constructed with swear words, and having witnessed the same in close proximity on more occasions than I am proud to admit, it strikes me as though the research may have had biases that tainted the results.

Swearing at Disney world be expected to result in fewer negative outcomes than f-bombs tossed strategically at a bar, a ballgame, or family reunion.

For as long as I remember, I have considered that folks who use swearwords had not developed sufficient vocabulary to say what they had in mind.

Is there ANYWHERE conservative trolls will NOT go? This was an article clearly describing explorations into the social mechanics of the use of profanity and it consequences, with what was obviously an exhortation for more investigation into the phenomenon, not liberal propaganda(note how this word is spelled correctly). Tomorrow’s child is without a doubt attempting to make readers feel they are somehow remiss to even have read this, in a most puerile, opinionated way that, given even the misspelling of the words “venereal” and “propaganda” achieve little but generate disdain for a squandered intellect. All that, without a single profanity. And I haven’t even begun to describe his family tree. Terrific article. Needs expansion. Try to ignore the trolls. Leave those clodhoppers to me.

Thanks, James. Have just read the article today and the comments. Keep fighting the good fight against the trolls. For the Trolls out there – We’re just trying to understand the mechanics of how humans work rather than lay on guilt, etc.

You are guilty of the same logical fallacy. Ad hominems are common known in politics as “mudslinging.” Also evident by pointing out spelling errors

“appeal to hypocrisy” because it distracts from the argument by pointing out hypocrisy in the opponent.

well about the swearing vs honesty thing if swearing has a direct correlation to a type A personality one of the defining traits of a type A personality is honesty

I totally disagree with this finding, if it really is a finding. Half the time the person swearing is swearing because they are covering up a lie, or trying to prove a point that is unrealistic. I notice that people tend to swear just to relieve anxiety and stress. Believe me, my daughter swears like a sailor and so did one of my sisters. I doesn’t matter if you swear or not, honesty is in the person’s upbringing and natural character in my opinion. To heck with Behavioral Studies.

I spent 45 years in engineering on the shop floor where swearing was the norm, I never got used to it. I compared it to picking your nose in public, i.e. your not doing anybody any harm, but it is bad manners and repulsive. I havn’t observed any relationship between IQ, honesty, temper or manners in the frequency of swearing. I don’t get that it helps someone to stand pain as some of the biggest babies (adults) would come out with a string of cursing at the slightest twinge. It will probably become socially unacceptable though time. As well as the example above, if the words were substituted with a loud hand clap, I think that would have a similar effect. i.e. a nuisance and unnecessary. Sorry to be a prig, but I’m right!

Given that, of the 2 words seen as the most obscene in English – 1 dates back to at least 1290 and the other to around 1470, I don’t see swearing being replaced by hand clapping anytime soon. As these two words are between 3 and 4 times older than the US they clearly fulfil some type of linguistic need, which must be worthy of a level of attention above the tut-tuttery and value judgements of some of the posters here. The earliest recorded use of the c-word was a street name in Oxford, Gropec@&£ Lane. This was apparently a commonly used street name in medieval England. Apparently, so named because of the prostitution which was rife. This name was actively used until Victorian times when use of what they saw as obscene language came to be frowned upon in polite society – the source of much of our current attitudes towards swearing, not to mention their legacy of sexual hypocrisy which was partially responsible for this stance on linguistic mores . There were at least 3 streets of this name in London, one of which was euphemistically renamed as Threadneedle Street – now the location of the Bank of England. More research on this rich and interesting linguistic heritage and the role that it seems to have played in human history would seem to be more than justified.

Matt Van Wagner, love your comment.

As far as exploiting my limited vocabulary, that’s taurine fecal matter! According to HBO dramas, ancient Rome and the American frontier West were scenes of far more potty-mouth than contemporary society. In France, higher class women fart at the dinner table, giggle, and say, “Je m’excuse!”, say ‘merde’ without batting an eye; near as i can tell, the filthiest expletive one can utter is ‘punaise’ meaning ‘gnats’ or bedbug… although ‘putard’ [prostitute] and its slang derivative ‘petang’ [whore] may be a close second. [this information is several decades dated] I suspect the use of Anglo-Saxon rooted vocabulary is directly related to the social mores of particular times and places, more than any intrinsic meaning or sound of the words themselves… Cheese and crackers, got all muddy! Squeamish people probably can’t help themselves – that’s just the way they were raised!

My sister-in-law is a devout christian and considered the “f”g-word, or effg….vile and disgusting and refused to come to our home after one such incident. I was frustrated with the thoughtless of the people above us (rented apartment (flat)stomping up and down, the young 20-someting daughter who should have been living on her own,) and turned to hubby and bottom line mentioned those f*g tenants, a woman, her daughter and the woman’ grandmother. SIL strode upstairs and read the three women, the riot act. She barely tolerates s*t, damn, hell from my hubby.

I don’t see anything wrong cursing once in a while to show my frustration and the pain I suffer from. She LOATHES it. Having read a Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, article from Reuters by Star Reporter, Katelyn Verstaten, I thought, ‘Ah, someone who feels the way I do. If my SIL has a rather irrational approach to a famly member getting easily and emotionally reactive by swearing, then pehaps it is SHE who needs he counseling.

@Dr. Sharlene Peters: What I find interesting is you say “My father, a tee-totling christian could swear louder and longer than anyone I knew… without using a swear-word. I.e. “carn-sarn-nit,” “yellow-bellied-wood-pecker,” “son-of-a-biscuit-eater,” “crim-a-nelly,” on and on. Hmm. We knew he was swearing, he knew he was swearing”.

What I proffer is that a child of any age wouldn’t say “carn-sarn-it” (or any of those other words you said your father used) to a friend for shock value, or to a parent to show rebellion, but WOULD use the “F” word for the same purpose. So if a word doesn’t bring forth shock, is not profane or obscene, then it’s not swearing. At least IMHO.

Re: some of the comments, I can swear up a storm when I’m angry but I also swear in everyday speech. I do have bipolar disorder so there might be some impulse control issues. And on a question of intelligence, I don’t believe that has anything to do with it. I am working towards finishing my M.S. and then my PhD and I can make a sailor blush if I were so inclined. I promise you there are plenty of intelligent people who swear on a regular basis.

So science doesn’t really have a lot to do with what lay people believe. It is systematic. Orderly. Not impulsive. It is not speculation. It is just like you learned in school–do some research on the topic you are targeting, forming a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test that hypothesis, then doing it and finally analyzing the data, drawing a conclusion and writing up your findings. So FairBairn– you say people who swear when they are hurt are babies. The swearing helps bear the pain. Remember the part where the author mentioned that children start this fairly young? They don’t use words that are as strong as older people, but I’m sure you’ve seen a kid say “Shoot!” when she’s stubbed her toe. It’s cathartic. Applying “common sense”… well, yeah, no, that’s problematic for a number of reasons.

Dear right wing people who do not like swearing:

1. Not liking something does not make it go away.

2. Not liking swearing does not make it untrue that there is a correlation between wearing and honesty.

3. Today’s world, apparently, has less swearing than the world in the past, not more. Read the article: the authors say “…our data do not indicate that our culture is getting “worse” with respect to swearing”.

4. “To heck with Behavioral Studies”? Really? Have you no understanding at all of the concept of science, or of its methodology?

I never used to swear. I have always leaned way to far on the soft heart scale, far to passive when i believe you need to balance between a harder heart, and softer one, somewhere in the middle. I never have to worry about the balancing act because my tendencies for compassion, and a soft heart i dont think i can lose , so i just try to be as hard as i can , and the balance takes care of itself. I know exactly why I swear. I swear because it is the only way I can find, and feel the aggression I need to meet the aggression that life throws at me. I not talking about people Im talking about the thing that you wake up to every morning trying to bring you down. Swearin has really made a difference in my aggression of spirit. You have to be harder then life or life will break you.

A certain person spying on me told me that she herself has been studying my own behavior in what she herself has called a “Bad Mouth” study. She told me that she has noticed me starting to cuss recently and asked me why. I told her that the reason is because I am not being cushioned by the presence of my own fiancé. She told me that that same answer of mine to her same question has tempted her to bring my own fiancé to me to determine whether or not I really would stop cussing at that point. She also told me, however, that she, in order to determine the continued results of her own study, would have to keep spying, on not only me but also my own husband.

I’m curious on how & why ppl use words such as Jesus Christ & the F*** words in negative, stressful situations? Isn’t the F-bomb related to sex which is something adults find pleasurable yet it’s used in negative situations? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say something like evil, crap or sh*t that have more negative connotations behind the definition? I guess there must be more rationale behind the use of profanity in language….so much more than I thought of. It would be interesting to see more studies about the use of profanity.

Interesting article, but in my opinion it is not always a good approach to omit certain findings from similar scientific studies done from a different area of specialization, as they can lend credence to the psychological study done here. Neurolinguistics, for example, could give some useful background on just why it is that aphasics swear more prolifically than other psychosociological groups. When I was in college working towards my BA in linguistics I had a work study job with a professor of neurolinguistics, whose team was developing the first ‘talking computer’, for use by stroke victims, aphasics and victims of other language disorders. While I was there, it was discovered by accident, that we actually use a completely different part of our brain to swear than we do for ‘normal’ speech. A nurse was bringing hot coffee to a patient in the hospital where we worked; he had had a severe stroke and was unable to speak at all. The nurse accidentally spilled the hot coffee all over him… and he let out a blue streak like none you’ve ever heard! That incident opened up an area of study in neurolinguistics that has helped many patients, mute for whatever medical reasons, to relearn how to produce speech by repurposing the pathways the brain normally reserves for swearing. The original patient was taught to speak again after a prolonged period of no doubt frustrated silence, using those neuropathways… His family was beyond grateful and he himself was thrilled to no end. To get back to my original point, what I believe is that overspecialization in a given area of science can sometimes put the blinders on, even to the extent of reinventing the wheel sometimes. Better to cull from several areas of study, to round out your psychological findings and to give them a broader context. Oh! And by the way, the F word came to us from the Latin form, probably through the Norman rule of England for over 200 years. The slang term may be from the agricultural tool used to cultivate hard soil, the farmer’s fuck. Popular use arrived in America via the British pop rock bands of the ‘sixties… Not sure about the C word; have to look that one up in my dusty linguistics textbooks! But the description provided by 2manyprojex definitely has a ring of truth to it (see the March, 2014 comment above). I love this stuff!

“Why the public-versus-science disconnect?”

Was this a rhetorical question raised for effect to draw attention to the fact the disconnect certainly seems to exist? This is an interesting question that exceedingly relevant in politics. Why such a large disconnect between the folk psychologies of average American communities and the formal communities of the softer sciences known as psychology and sociology? I think a Chomskian (or Freireian, if you prefer) response might simply point out that it’s not politically expedient for the masses to possess genuine critical thinking skills, and rather to encourage simple worldviews such as Judeo-Christian or jingoistic mythologies.

The subject of this article is interesting, as are some of the questions. However, I’ll admit the reason I’m here is because I expected to find more of the unrealistic information that Matt Van Wagner and Cora referenced in posts above. The second and third paragraphs under “Is Swearing Problematic of Harmful?” were cited (although heavily paraphrased) in an article I was reading, and it had a link to this page. If you want to seriously pursue the topic scientifically, you’re going to have incorporate some real-life experiences (ie. life domains, leisure activities, social activities). For anyone to say, “We have never seen public swearing lead to physical violence. Most public uses of taboo words are not in anger; they are innocuous or produce positive consequences (e.g., humor elicitation).” I’m not being facetious when I say that makes me wonder if you’ve been home-schooled your entire life and led a dramatically sheltered life (ie. no life domains). After obscene gestures and racial epithets, swearing is likely the biggest precursor (no pun intended) to violence. In addition, to the examples given in the above post, there’s road rage. I went to a public school in a middle=class, suburban area, but I’ve seen swearing escalate to violence many times. Do all people swear? In my experience yes, although frequency varies greatly from person to person. I don’t swear much, but I definitely have. For myself, and for most of what I’ve seen in life, swearing is a barometer of someone’s anger. There are exceptions of course – like Tourette Syndrome. I’ve also heard an occasional “Oh, H— Yeah!”, but for every one of the positive swears, I’ve heard 100 negative ones. Cursing ‘seems’ one of very universal themes – as it seems whenever people learn a new language – the first words they want to learn are the swear words. I’ve got so much more to say, but besides the fact that nobody may want to hear what I have to say, I noticed this article is 3 years old.

Kudos to the people whose entitled moral ground makes them think they know more and better than a Behavioral Science PhD. Do they really think the world revolves around their own moral values? If it doesn’t fit with how we want and what we want, it’s hokey. Well, it’s not.

As for the article. Well written and informative, as much as should be. I don’t see a bias, unless uncertainty and reluctance to make unfounded correlations is now called bias. I would be interested to know how the research progresses.

Reference anger to infantile expression shows a lack of connection to our language. I do not choose to revert to anal attachment to feces, when I am frustrated. To pout and holler ‘feces’ shows a lack of higher cognizance to what is obviously frustrating me. Likewise, I do not choose to use a word for intercourse, inviting people who I do not even like to intercourse. That sex and hatred are so intertwined speaks volumes of our inability to differentiate between the two. To reference a woman as a female breeding dog and then teach her to be proud to insult herself, defies all logic. I could get more into profanities, if they made more sense, raising themselves out of poop, piss, sex, into words that make logical sense.

Exactly, Mac

Well, Mac your remarks were hilariously forthright and candidly serious. Your colorful discourse was quite amusing to me, although you appear to be quite sincere with no intention of being comical. I like. Thank you for sharing. 🙂

Here is a great explanation on how context makes all the difference. And how in the wrong context, swear words will increase stress levels/negative emotions:

http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/23/the-science-of-swearing/

Of course saying words with negative associations, are going to give rise to negative feelings (and stress). This does not apply to light-hearted situations in which the swear words are being used for dramatic effect. A cleverly placed swear word in a funny situation can be very amusing. However, a mother calling her child a ‘piece of s****’- does not make that child feel trusting (and I hope they don’t believe their mother is being honest).

I’m mildly offended that one would even insinuate that because an individual swears they are less honest, less intelligent or capable, or viewed as irresponsible, irrational, etc. I “swear a blue streak” all day, but I know that it should be restricted in certain venues or circumstances. Just because an individual curses, they shouldn’t be judged. There is no credible evidence to back up your preconceived notions. We don’t hide who or what we are. Perhaps those who are more reserved with their use of language are fraudulent, and limit themselves as to who or what they can be due to fear of judgement. Cry babies. Get over it. I grew up in a home with parents who swear. What happened? My repertoire is just more extensive and colorful than some. I’m not a drug addict, alcoholic, convict, neglectful or abusive in my parenting, nor do I believe that my integrity has at all in any manifestation been compromised. That said… i’m pretty sure we all learned that language is subjective. It’s not the word itself that bothers an individual but rather their interpretation of it. Cry me a river….seriously, people.

Hi Kristin and Timothy, Enjoyed your piece about the benefits of swearing on Mind Body Green site. When I was going to school I had a woeful stammer in my speech and had great difficulty conversing socially and answering questions at school. Found that when I swore before starting to recite a poem especially in class it got the first word out easier especially if the poem began with a broad consenant. If the poem began with a vowel it made it that bit easier to start the recitation. I had to swear under my breath of course as swearing might not go down well if expressed loudly. Stammer is hardly noticeable nowadays. Thanks for your inspirational findings. Regards. Pat.

I guess I like a more ‘civilized society”,where people use language in respect to others. It seems that the ME generation prefers to use the F”’k word because they like to shock, saying “look at me”, rather than showing respect for you. It’s become a normal word in some groups without regard for others. I cringe at the sound of it, or any of the other curse words that people use. It is offensive in mixed company . I know there are similar words in other languages and as long as those of us don’t appose them it will always be so’

I just don’t have to like it, please show some respect.

I was wondering what y’all feel like a bad word is and what your own definition on a bad word.

I am a student at medina valley isd writing a paper for my dual credit

I personally feel that when someone swears, they are displaying the fact that they do not have a good vocabulary. Most of the people in my school swear just for fun. For example, one of the sentences I overheard in the lunch-line contained at least 10 swears, in like a 20 or so word sentence. This problem has to stop. I’m pretty sure that my school has a “no swearing” rule, but almost no one follows it.

Swearing isn’t a matter of what is being said, but what people intend when they say them. Excuse the profanity, but “Sh*t” and “Crap” are used on the same level, for the same purposes. It is in a manner similar to using the word “angry” in place of “mad.” There is very little difference, besides the syllable being uttered. Thus, it isn’t the word that is the problem: only the people who place a stigma toward it.

Swear words are designated in the dictionary as swear words. When they are used, you, by definition, are swearing. If used in a different context, of course, they are not swearing, but that does not excuse the offensive nature of swear words.

This is supposed to be a psychology oriented site, yet the authors of the article seem to be focusing with predilection on the linguistic aspect of the issue. By the time I read the passage where the authors claim we do not know how our children learn to swear, though, I was looking for a disclaimer announcing this is only for entertainment and that it is a fake news site.

Not only do they offer very little data in support of their claims, their claims defy rational logic, which is probably the reason we find no significant data in the article, other than the claim that the authors were interviewed 3,000 times regarding this issue, which is obviously not true.

This kind of articles explain why according to recent studies, a vast majority of the population of America does not trust scientists and science journalists. What is even more depressing is the fact that the authors teach in our colleges and universities, which seems to account for the state of profound ignorance of our society.

On that note, as a personal observation, I noticed that most of the swearing is done by individuals that are poorly educated on the subjects they discussed, and that swearing it is used as a cover for their lack of knowledge, as a form of defense mechanism against those who expose them for making false claims.

Through my Sophomore year of High school, I never cussed. My friends did, and I didn’t find it offensive, but I simply abstained, assuming that this way when I cussed, it would get their attention. A higher shock value, you know? Yeah, that didn’t happen. I found it to be a burden, as it lessened some humor, so I took it up my senior year. No one noticed.

They all assumed that I wasn’t cussing. Even when I dropped a swear word or two, they didn’t notice. It was the strangest thing, as their assumptions that I didn’t cuss simply censored my speech automatically.

Just an amusing anecdote.

It would be really nice if any of the studies the authors consulted were cited in this article. It is really difficult to trust the veracity of the information here if none of it is backed up.

Why do people think that cursing is “speaking from the heart?” If they were speaking from their heart, the they would be ***loving and kind and compassionate; ***vulnerable, ****speak important things, instead of repetitive trash.

I realize that this is now a few years old but it has given me a laugh. My SO says I insult her when I swear at her, I don’t understand her, I AM INTENDING to insult her because she has frustrated me by doing something that I have asked at least a dozen times for her not to do! So, swearing can be a safety valve to let off steam when you experience stressful events most significantly from those close to you. Before people think I am a brain challenged moron, I am an Oxford qualified pathologist and to be frank, I like swearing. Some of the people responding here are straight from Victoiana and I shoukd know as I am living with one!

I am doing a research on “curse/wishing ill/imprecation” in a religious context and came across this site. In other cultures, people, especially older folks, will utter ill wishes upon someone else when he/she gets upset, like “may you die of hunger!, may you never see happiness in your life!, may your hands get cut!, etc”. Most of these have no religious connotations but the underlying emotional outburst by the speaker seems to stem from the root words of “curse” in major world religions. I have specific questions. While the word “curse” has been replaced by “profanities, swearing, etc”, do people in American still curse/wish ill upon others, the old way? Thank you.

Sexual anxiety is positive. Ask any father of three daughters.

After seeing so much profanity on the Social sites. I got curious and wound up here. After reading the article and comments, I was struck that Communication Theory wasn’t mentioned.

To put it simply, there are 3 things that are basic. You need a sender, a receiver and a medium to communicate a subject matter. In my case, the medium is the internet.

When the communication is sent there is a context. The receiver evaluates the message and responds. The use of the internet as the medium is important to the context by veiling the sender and receiver. With face to face there is the advantage of seeing facial expressions as tone of speech.

As already stated the message can be good or bad. Since the message is written, you know the sender had time to think of the words they will use.

All of this causes me to conclude the profanity used in the internet social media is mostly pejorative.

Thank you for this input. I have been working on some research on swearing which was participated by college students. One area that I want to find out is whether those who swear try not to swear and why/why not. This might answer our question if swearing should be avoided or not as perceived by those who swear. However, this could be not enough, so it is also a good thing to consider why some people do not swear which might also answer the same queation.

This article is helpful to understand the teen psychology. Though, swearing words sound bad but their effects are very positive in anger management at least, and what I observed. Those teens are less illusive and avoid fanaticism.

Here in this neck of the woods (do woods have necks?) we generally swear for one of two reasons: firstly, in casual speech, to indicate that we are capable of looking after ourselves, so don’t mess with us; like the wearing of tattoos by people wanting to look tough, same sort of idea. Second type of swearing is more emotionally driven (eg by anger or frustration) and expresses how close we are to losing self-control (or we’ve already lost it), so again, tells people: don’t mess with us or it will turn out badly. I started swearing after about ten years as a senior research scientist, as a way of releasing the build-up of stress from the demands of the job and from having to deal with belligerent members of the public who thought they knew better than someone who had studied their particular area of expertise more carefully than those members of the public could ever do. So my advice to people who are criticising the original authors here is to go do a PhD on the subject area and call back when you’ve finished. That’s not elitism, it’s just that unless you’ve spent the best part of your life studying a particular subject, why do you think you know better than someone who has? Sheesh!

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About the Authors

Timothy Jay is a professor of psychology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. When he’s not studying taboo words, he serves as a psycholinguistics consultant for school systems and legal cases. He can be contacted at [email protected] ;

Kristin Janschewitz is an assistant professor at Marist College. Her research interests include taboo language, emotion regulation, and cognitive control. She can be contacted at [email protected] .

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A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) is one of the best-known essays by George Orwell (1903-50). As its title suggests, Orwell identifies a link between the (degraded) English language of his time and the degraded political situation: Orwell sees modern discourse (especially political discourse) as being less a matter of words chosen for their clear meanings than a series of stock phrases slung together.

You can read ‘Politics and the English Language’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Orwell’s essay below.

‘Politics and the English Language’: summary

Orwell begins by drawing attention to the strong link between the language writers use and the quality of political thought in the current age (i.e. the 1940s). He argues that if we use language that is slovenly and decadent, it makes it easier for us to fall into bad habits of thought, because language and thought are so closely linked.

Orwell then gives five examples of what he considers bad political writing. He draws attention to two faults which all five passages share: staleness of imagery and lack of precision . Either the writers of these passages had a clear meaning to convey but couldn’t express it clearly, or they didn’t care whether they communicated any particular meaning at all, and were simply saying things for the sake of it.

Orwell writes that this is a common problem in current political writing: ‘prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.’

Next, Orwell elaborates on the key faults of modern English prose, namely:

Dying Metaphors : these are figures of speech which writers lazily reach for, even though such phrases are worn-out and can no longer convey a vivid image. Orwell cites a number of examples, including toe the line , no axe to grind , Achilles’ heel , and swansong . Orwell’s objection to such dying metaphors is that writers use them without even thinking about what the phrases actually mean, such as when people misuse toe the line by writing it as tow the line , or when they mix their metaphors, again, because they’re not interested in what those images evoke.

Operators or Verbal False Limbs : this is when a longer and rather vague phrase is used in place of a single-word (and more direct) verb, e.g. make contact with someone, which essentially means ‘contact’ someone. The passive voice is also common, and writing phrases like by examination of instead of the more direct by examining . Sentences are saved from fizzling out (because the thought or idea being conveyed is not particularly striking) by largely meaningless closing platitudes such as greatly to be desired or brought to a satisfactory conclusion .

Pretentious Diction : Orwell draws attention to several areas here. He states that words like objective , basis , and eliminate are used by writers to dress up simple statements, making subjective opinion sound like scientific fact. Adjectives like epic , historic , and inevitable are used about international politics, while writing that glorifies war is full of old-fashioned words like realm , throne , and sword .

Foreign words and phrases like deus ex machina and mutatis mutandis are used to convey an air of culture and elegance. Indeed, many modern English writers are guilty of using Latin or Greek words in the belief that they are ‘grander’ than home-grown Anglo-Saxon ones: Orwell mentions Latinate words like expedite and ameliorate here. All of these examples are further proof of the ‘slovenliness and vagueness’ which Orwell detects in modern political prose.

Meaningless Words : Orwell argues that much art criticism and literary criticism in particular is full of words which don’t really mean anything at all, e.g. human , living , or romantic . ‘Fascism’, too, has lost all meaning in current political writing, effectively meaning ‘something not desirable’ (one wonders what Orwell would make of the word’s misuse in our current time!).

To prove his point, Orwell ‘translates’ a well-known passage from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes into modern English, with all its vagueness of language. ‘The whole tendency of modern prose’, he argues, ‘is away from concreteness.’ He draws attention to the concrete and everyday images (e.g. references to bread and riches) in the Bible passage, and the lack of any such images in his own fabricated rewriting of this passage.

The problem, Orwell says, is that it is too easy (and too tempting) to reach for these off-the-peg phrases than to be more direct or more original and precise in one’s speech or writing.

Orwell advises every writer to ask themselves four questions (at least): 1) what am I trying to say? 2) what words will express it? 3) what image or idiom will make it clearer? and 4) is this image fresh enough to have an effect? He proposes two further optional questions: could I put it more shortly? and have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Orthodoxy, Orwell goes on to observe, tends to encourage this ‘lifeless, imitative style’, whereas rebels who are not parroting the ‘party line’ will normally write in a more clear and direct style.

But Orwell also argues that such obfuscating language serves a purpose: much political writing is an attempt to defend the indefensible, such as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan (just one year before Orwell wrote ‘Politics and the English Language’), in such a euphemistic way that the ordinary reader will find it more palatable.

When your aim is to make such atrocities excusable, language which doesn’t evoke any clear mental image (e.g. of burning bodies in Hiroshima) is actually desirable.

Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. He believes that we should get rid of any word which has outworn its usefulness and should aim to use ‘the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning’.

Writers should let the meaning choose the word, rather than vice versa. We should think carefully about what we want to say until we have the right mental pictures to convey that thought in the clearest language.

Orwell concludes ‘Politics and the English Language’ with six rules for the writer to follow:

i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

‘Politics and the English Language’: analysis

In some respects, ‘Politics and the English Language’ advances an argument about good prose language which is close to what the modernist poet and thinker T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) argued for poetry in his ‘ A Lecture on Modern Poetry ’ and ‘Notes on Language and Style’ almost forty years earlier.

Although Hulme and Orwell came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, their objections to lazy and worn-out language stem are in many ways the same.

Hulme argued that poetry should be a forge where fresh metaphors are made: images which make us see the world in a slightly new way. But poetic language decays into common prose language before dying a lingering death in journalists’ English. The first time a poet described a hill as being ‘clad [i.e. clothed] with trees’, the reader would probably have mentally pictured such an image, but in time it loses its power to make us see anything.

Hulme calls these worn-out expressions ‘counters’, because they are like discs being moved around on a chessboard: an image which is itself not unlike Orwell’s prefabricated hen-house in ‘Politics and the English Language’.

Of course, Orwell’s focus is English prose rather than poetry, and his objections to sloppy writing are not principally literary (although that is undoubtedly a factor) but, above all, political. And he is keen to emphasise that his criticism of bad language, and suggestions for how to improve political writing, are both, to an extent, hopelessly idealistic: as he observes towards the end of ‘Politics and the English Language’, ‘Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.’

But what Orwell advises is that the writer be on their guard against such phrases, the better to avoid them where possible. This is why he encourages writers to be more self-questioning (‘What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?’) when writing political prose.

Nevertheless, the link between the standard of language and the kind of politics a particular country, regime, or historical era has is an important one. As Orwell writes: ‘I should expect to find – this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.’

Those writing under a dictatorship cannot write or speak freely, of course, but more importantly, those defending totalitarian rule must bend and abuse language in order to make ugly truths sound more attractive to the general populace, and perhaps to other nations.

In more recent times, the phrase ‘collateral damage’ is one of the more objectionable phrases used about war, hiding the often ugly reality (innocent civilians who are unfortunate victims of violence, but who are somehow viewed as a justifiable price to pay for the greater good).

Although Orwell’s essay has been criticised for being too idealistic, in many ways ‘Politics and the English Language’ remains as relevant now as it was in 1946 when it was first published.

Indeed, to return to Orwell’s opening point about decadence, it is unavoidable that the standard of political discourse has further declined since Orwell’s day. Perhaps it’s time a few more influential writers started heeding his argument?

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9 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’”

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YES! Thank you!

A great and useful post. As a writer, I have been seriously offended by the politicization of the language in the past 50 years. Much of this is supposedly to sanitize, de-genderize, or diversity-fie language – exactly as it’s done in Orwell’s “1984.” How did a wonderfully useful word like gay – cheerful or lively – come to mean homosexual? And is optics not a branch of physics? Ironically, when the liberal but sensible JK Rowling criticized the replacement of “woman” with “person who menstruates” SHE was the one attacked. Now, God help us, we hope “crude” spaceships will get humans to Mars – which, if you research the poor quality control in Tesla cars, might in fact be a proper term.

And less anyone out there misread, this or me – I was a civil rights marcher, taught in a girls’ high school (where I got in minor trouble for suggesting to the students that they should aim higher than the traditional jobs of nurse or teacher), and – while somewhat of a mugwump – consider myself a liberal.

But I will fight to keep the language and the history from being 1984ed.

My desert island book would be the Everyman Essays of Orwell which is around 1200 pages. I’ve read it all the way through twice without fatigue and read individual essays endlessly. His warmth and affability help, Even better than Montaigne in this heretic’s view.

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I’ll go against the flow here and say Orwell was – at least in part – quite wrong here. If I recall correctly, he was wrong about a few things including, I think, the right way to make a cup of tea! In all seriousness, what he fails to acknowledge in this essay is that language is a living thing and belongs to the people, not the theorists, at all time. If a metaphor changes because of homophone mix up or whatever, then so be it. Many of our expressions we have little idea of now – I think of ‘baited breath’ which almost no one, even those who know how it should be spelt, realise should be ‘abated breath’.

Worse than this though, his ‘rules’ have indeed been taken up by many would-be writers to horrifying effect. I recall learning to make up new metaphors and similes rather than use clichés when I first began training ten years ago or more. I saw some ghastly new metaphors over time which swiftly made me realise that there’s a reason we use the same expressions a great deal and that is they are familiar and do the job well. To look at how to use them badly, just try reading Gregory David Roberts ‘Shantaram’. Similarly, the use of active voice has led to unpalatable writing which lacks character. The passive voice may well become longwinded when badly used, but it brings character when used well.

That said, Orwell is rarely completely wrong. Some of his points – essentially, use words you actually understand and don’t be pretentious – are valid. But the idea of the degradation of politics is really quite a bit of nonsense!

Always good to get some critique of Orwell, Ken! And I do wonder how tongue-in-cheek he was when proposing his guidelines – after all, even he admits he’s probably broken several of his own rules in the course of his essay! I think I’m more in the T. E. Hulme camp than the Orwell – poetry can afford to bend language in new ways (indeed, it often should do just this), and create daring new metaphors and ways of viewing the world. But prose, especially political non-fiction, is there to communicate an argument or position, and I agree that ghastly new metaphors would just get in the way. One of the things that is refreshing reading Orwell is how many of the problems he identified are still being discussed today, often as if they are new problems that didn’t exist a few decades ago. Orwell shows that at least one person was already discussing them over half a century ago!

Absolutely true! When you have someone of Orwell’s intelligence and clear thinking, even when you believe him wrong or misguided, he is still relevant and remains so decades later.

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Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?, Edited by Edwin L. Battistella

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Athenea Digital, 14(1), 303-331

carles roca-cuberes

The objective of this study is to show how conversation analysis, a sociological discipline, approaches the study of social institutions. Social institutions are conceived as the crystallization of members’ communicative, interactional practices. Two institutional domains—psychiatric interviews and broadcast news interviews —and a specific interactional practice—‘formulations’—are examined in this study. The results show that (1) in psychiatric interviews the psychiatrist uses formulations to transform the patients’ avowals and establish a psychiatric problem. (2) In broadcast news interviews, formulations might help the interviewer to clarify or transform the statements of the interviewee, or challenge his assertions. The comparison of formulations in two different institutional settings serves the purpose of (1) demonstrating how communicative conduct is adapted in particular settings in ways that invoke and configure distinct social institutions and (2) inspect the knowledge, practices, logic, etc., mobilized by members of the epistemic communities of psychiatry and journalism.

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Politics and the English Language

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Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad – I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen – but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien ( sic ) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski ( Essay in Freedom of Expression ). 2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate , or put at a loss for bewilder . Professor Lancelot Hogben ( Interglossia ). 3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York). 4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet. 5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion’s roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune .

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

Dying metaphors . A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on , take up the cudgels for , toe the line , ride roughshod over , stand shoulder to shoulder with , play into the hands of , no axe to grind , grist to the mill , fishing in troubled waters , on the order of the day , Achilles’ heel , swan song , hotbed . Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line . Another example is the hammer and the anvil , now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators, or verbal false limbs . These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative , militate against , prove unacceptable , make contact with , be subject to , give rise to , give grounds for , have the effect of , play a leading part ( role ) in , make itself felt , take effect , exhibit a tendency to , serve the purpose of , etc. etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break , stop , spoil , mend , kill , a verb becomes a phrase , made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove , serve , form , play , render . In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds ( by examination of instead of by examining ). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to , having regard to , the fact that , by dint of , in view of , in the interests of , on the hypothesis that ; and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired , cannot be left out of account , a development to be expected in the near future , deserving of serious consideration , brought to a satisfactory conclusion , and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction . Words like phenomenon , element , individual (as noun), objective , categorical , effective , virtual , basic , primary , promote , constitute , exhibit , exploit , utilize , eliminate , liquidate , are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biassed judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making , epic , historic , unforgettable , triumphant , age-old , inevitable , inexorable , veritable , are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm , throne , chariot , mailed fist , trident , sword , shield , buckler , banner , jackboot , clarion . Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac , ancien régime , deus ex machina , mutatis mutandis , status quo , Gleichschaltung , Weltanschauung , are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e ., e.g. , and etc. , there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite , ameliorate , predict , extraneous , deracinated , clandestine , sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers[1]. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing ( hyena , hangman , cannibal , petty bourgeois , these gentry , lackey , flunkey , mad dog , White Guard , etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind ( deregionalize , impermissible , extramarital , non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words . In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning[2]. Words like romantic , plastic , values , human , dead , sentimental , natural , vitality , as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living , he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy , socialism , freedom , patriotic , realistic , justice , have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy , not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot , The Soviet press is the freest in the world , The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution , are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class , totalitarian , science , progressive , reactionary , bourgeois , equality .

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes :

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit 3 above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations – race, battle, bread – dissolve into the vague phrase ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing – no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective’ consideration of contemporary phenomena’ – would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes .

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think . If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry – when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech – it is natural to fall into a pretentious, latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash – as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song , the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot – it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in 53 words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with , is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means. (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4) the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a sink. In (5) words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning – they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another – but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent – and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Under-Secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities , iron heel , blood-stained tyranny , free peoples of the world , stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification . Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers . People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements . Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find – this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption , leaves much to be desired , would serve no good purpose , a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind , are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see: ‘(The Allies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write – feels, presumably, that he has something new to say – and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases ( lay the foundations , achieve a radical transformation ) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned , which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence[3], to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose style’. On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do. iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active. v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot , Achilles’ heel , hotbed , melting pot , acid test , veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.

Horizon, April 1946

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Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?

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Four. Bad Words

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Published: September 2005
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This chapter explores the relativity of vocabulary choice. Its main goals are both to examine how some words are bad, and to reinforce the view that effective usage is less a matter of permanent fixed traditions than it is a matter of flexible and contextual conventions. Topics discussed include cursing in the media and the arts, offensive language, bad words as social construction, slang as bad language, and political correctness.

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Academic writing
Taboo words in academic writing

Words and Phrases to Avoid in Academic Writing

Published on February 6, 2016 by Sarah Vinz . Revised on September 11, 2023.

When you are writing a dissertation , thesis, or research paper, many words and phrases that are acceptable in conversations or informal writing are considered inappropriate in academic writing .

You should try to avoid expressions that are too informal, unsophisticated, vague, exaggerated, or subjective, as well as those that are generally unnecessary or incorrect.

Bear in mind, however, that these guidelines do not apply to text you are directly quoting from your sources (including interviews ).

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Too informal, too exaggerated, too subjective, generally incorrect, other interesting articles.

Academic writing is generally more formal than the writing we see in non-academic materials (including on websites). It is also more formal than the ways in which we normally speak. The following words and phrases are considered too informal for a dissertation or academic paper.


A bit	The interviews were difficult to schedule	The interviews were to schedule
A lot of, a couple of	studies	studies
Isn’t, can’t, doesn’t, would’ve (or any other )	The sample	The sample
Kind of, sort of	The findings were significant	The findings were
Til, till	From 2008 2012	From 2008 2012
You, your (i.e., the )	can clearly see the results	can clearly see the results

Informal sentence starts

Some words are acceptable in certain contexts, but become too informal when used at the beginning of a sentence. You can replace these with appropriate transition words or simply remove them from the sentence.


Plus	the participants were in agreement on the third question	, the participants were in agreement on the third question
So	it can be concluded that the model needs further refinement	it can be concluded that the model needs further refinement
And	the participants were all over the age of 30	The participants were all over the age of 30
	we asked all the participants to sign an agreement	, we asked all the participants to sign an agreement

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Using vague terms makes your writing imprecise and may cause people to interpret it in different ways. Always try to be as specific as possible.


Stuff	People are concerned about their	People are concerned about their
Thing	The report presents many	The report presents many
	This topic has interested researchers for	This topic has interested researchers for

Academic writing is usually unadorned and direct. Some adverbs of frequency (such as always and never ) and intensifiers (words that create emphasis, such as really ) are often too dramatic. They may also not be accurate – you’re making a significant claim when you say something is perfect or never happens.

These terms do sometimes add value, but try to use them sparingly.


Always, never	Researchers argue that	Researchers argue that
Perfect	The solution to the problem	to the problem
Really, so, super	This theory is important	This theory is

Some words and phrases reveal your own bias. For instance, if you state that something will obviously happen, you are indicating that you think the occurrence is obvious – not stating a fact.

Expressing your opinion is appropriate in certain sections of a dissertation and in particular types of academic texts (such as personal statements and reflective or argumentative essays ). In most cases, though, take care when using words and phrases such as those below – try to let the facts speak for themselves, or emphasize your point with less biased language.


Beautiful, ugly, wonderful, horrible, great, boring	A review of the literature yielded many articles	A review of the literature yielded many articles
Obviously, naturally, of course	The results indicate	The results indicate

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Certain words and phrases are often used incorrectly, even by native speakers of a language. If you’re exposed to such mistakes often enough, you may start to assume they are correct – but it’s important that you don’t let them creep into your writing.

You should also bear in mind that some of these mistakes relate to things we all frequently mishear (for instance, we often think the speaker is saying would of instead of would have ).


Literally	The students did not understand	The students did not understand
Would of, had of	The study considered	The study considered

In general, you should also try to avoid using words and phrases that fall into the following categories:

Jargon (i.e., “insider” terminology that may be difficult for readers from other fields to understand)
Clichés (i.e., expressions that are heavily overused, such as think outside of the box and at the end of the day )
Everyday abbreviations (e.g., approx. , ASAP, corona, stats, info )
Slang (e.g., cops , cool )
Gender-biased language (e.g., firemen , mankind )
Generally unnecessary (e.g., redundant expressions that do not add meaning, such as compete with each other instead of simply compete)

Reflective reports and personal statements sometimes have a less formal tone. In these types of writing, you may not have to follow these guidelines as strictly. The preface or acknowledgements of a dissertation also often have a less formal and more personal voice than the rest of the document.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Ad hominem fallacy
Post hoc fallacy
Appeal to authority fallacy
False cause fallacy
Sunk cost fallacy
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Bad Language in the Classroom

I remember it clearly--the time I got chewed out (by my principal) for using ‘inappropriate’ language in the classroom. I had been working with my students on a wonderful piece of music by Robert Sheldon called ‘A Lantern in the Window’ which musically depicts the terrifying journeys of enslaved people who ‘ran away’ via the Underground Railroad. The composition (which I highly recommend) includes a musical quote from the old spiritual ‘Steal Away’ --which I pointed out to my students, as both compositional technique and a way to engage listeners emotionally.

This led to a great, nuanced discussion--these were 7 th and 8 th graders, remember-- about why enslaved people espoused any religion, creating their own music and hopeful beliefs in an afterlife. Perhaps, I said (being careful not to critique Christianity), it was the only way to survive, trusting in an afterlife after (quote) experiencing hell on earth.

The next morning, I got one of those ‘see me’ directives in my mailbox. A child had been offended (according to his mother) by my use of the word ‘hell’ in class. I explained. The principal sighed and told me to be more careful--I should know better. The child in question, years later, was picked up by police for spray-painting expletives on a garage door, but no matter.

Teachers do have to be judicious in the use of strong language in the classroom. Not so much because of children’s tender ears, but because teachers (despite multi-pronged and sustained attacks on their competency and professionalism) still hold positions of authority. We want people in positions of authority to use clear language and express clear convictions about right and wrong. Don’t we?

It is, however, far more important for teachers to behave morally, day in and day out, than to clean up occasional borderline language--or so I think. It’s also more important for public figures-- Roseanne Barr or Samantha Bee , for example--to behave ethically and act in solid, socially responsible ways than to flyspeck their language. There are differences in use of offensive language--centered around the content of the point the speaker is trying to make.

Still, I am appalled (as a teacher, especially) by the degradation of language in public discourse. Before we start selectively shaming folks, I think we should look at root causes.

What makes people think they can use rude, crude, violent and racist language? When other people use rude, crude, violent and racist language first. It’s the broken windows theory--if one person crosses a boundary, it opens a path for other people to cross the same boundary. ( Same theory that sends disaffected young men with guns into a school--hey, it’s been done, there’s a pathway... )

If everyone in the country hears the leader of the free world brag, on tape, about trying to sexually lure a woman even though ‘she was married,’ then grab her by her genitals--we’re in a whole new ballpark of broken windows. When those metaphoric windows are already smashed, and found acceptable by a wide range of people, including religious leaders, it makes life thorny for people working with children in positions of authority to be both role models and boundary-creators.

It’s no wonder Roseanne was surprised to be called out--it probably seemed like a social boundary that had been crossed so often and so long ago that calling Valerie Jarrett an ape was just part of the norm. What made it different was that the person in charge of doing something about it--the person with power, for a change--accurately saw it as racist. And fired her.

There is a self-determined hierarchy of what is loathsome and disgusting, and what is edgy-but-true--and that hierarchy varies from country to country and group to group w/in a country. There are folks in this country to whom authority is a primary motivator, who see the masculine father figure as the true arbitrator of all decisions. For them, calling a man’s daughter a ‘c*nt’ would be far more egregious than, say, describing an entire poor African nation as a ‘sh*thole.’

For others, caring for all humans equally might be a far more important goal than respecting traditions and authority --to them, calling a powerful woman who happens to have dark skin an ‘ape’ would be worse, because it degrades an entire class of people. The two examples are qualitatively different and interpreted differently by people whose righteousness meters are different.

This is a great example of how we can use Jonathon Haidt’s “Righteous Mind” moral foundations theory . In Haidt’s fascinating work, conservatives tend to have stronger approval of loyalty, purity and traditional authority--liberals are more concerned with fairness and caring for their fellow humans.

Teachers who take their moral obligations to students seriously probably need to consider all these strands of developing an ethical persona and practice. It’s not just about what you say. It’s about what you mean.

The opinions expressed in Teacher in a Strange Land are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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How to handle swear words in quote / transcription?

In my research, I interview practitioners/real users. One of them, a native english speaker, used a lot a swear words (basically the f-word).

Question: how to deal with curse words in content you need to quote?

Since I use transcripts for a content (and not formal) analysis, I sometime 'smooth' interviewee wordings (like removing " hum ", " well ", " you know ", and other recurring verbal tics). In some case, I could remove the f-word:

it's just super f*cking slow, and really f *cking annoying

However, in some cases it is less harmless, because it more deeply changes the perceived meaning:

if you don't want to do things, just don't f*cking do it oh f *ck, we'll just go back to do, as we were doing

and in some other, I simply cannot change interviewee's words:

[...] he really tried and wanted to build up, but he completely f*cked up every single part of every single thing.

Since I am not a native speaker, I don't know how "bad" would using the f-word be perceived (which is why I tried to be careful here.)

In some cases, I could do a cut quote, e.g. " it's just super [...] slow, and really [...] annoying ", but it looks like I'm not accurately depicting the wordings.

I've also seen on the internet people using 'f*ck' standing for the f-word. Could this be a solution? (I personally find this solution a bit prudish.)

Otherwise, could I simply quote them? Should I put a warning somewhere?

writing-style

9 In a formal paper, should I censor “brainf**k”, the name of a programming language? is related, but I think different. (Even if this answer suggest quoting swearwords is allowed.) – ebosi Commented Nov 10, 2016 at 17:28
3 What do other academics in your field do in this situation? (In the papers you read, how is this handled?) – ff524 Commented Nov 10, 2016 at 17:40
2 An example of a formal paper which contains the word "bullshit" almost 200 times : journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html – vsz Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 9:23

4 Answers 4

If you're quoting someone, quote them as they said it. We're all adults. In the literature world, we quote swear words and other potentially offensive things all the time and no one bats an eye. I've no doubt other fields are the same.

Personally, if I saw an asterisk or similar, I would presume you interviewed them via chat or email, and they actually self-censored. If it were a printed text, I'd think it a part of the edition you used.

5 @JDługosz it's possible in academia to be not yet be adults, but I think we can confidently say that 99.9% or more are. I would imagine the same could be said of the average person reading a research paper. If a non-adult were to be reading (or writing) such a paper, they're probably at the very least mature enough to handle it. – user0721090601 Commented Nov 13, 2016 at 22:35
10 @JDługosz Anyone mature enough to read a paper in a journal is mature enough to read the word fuck , regardless of age. – Chris Cirefice Commented Mar 12, 2017 at 13:19

In research, you should quote them verbatim. Editing, or censoring, swearing is wrongly representing your research subjects and is thus a form of scientific misconduct. If you need to edit the quote for specific audience you must make it clear that you have done so:

It's just so [obscenity] slow, it really [obscenities] me off.

With a note saying that you have edited the text to remove swear words. Partial censorship such as you used above (e.g. f*ck, c*nt) is both utterly pointless and misleading; either completely remove the word (indicating where you have done so) or quote properly:

It's just so fucking annoying; it really fucks me off.

10 And as it should already be absolutely clear what's a direct quote and what isn't, no-one should get the impression that your academic writing style involves liberal use of swearwords. – Chris H Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 9:24
6 I was always wondering why the word "fstarck" was abbreviated as "f*ck". With this answer so many texts I read came under a new light... (on the serious side +1 in the name of sanity) – WoJ Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 15:30
1 @WoJ: for those knowing a bit of German f*ck could stand for Frühstück (breakfast) :-) – LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike Commented Nov 13, 2016 at 14:22
1 @LorenzoDonati, I think the most similar abbreviation for Frühstück you could get to which still makes sense would be Frstk. ( Stk. is an acceptable abbreviation for the word Stück ) --- cf. a website for a bed and breakfast in Warnemünde : 2 P. Frstk. u. TG 325,00 € (lit. "two persons breakfast and meal du jour €325.00"); Sorry to rain on your parade. – errantlinguist Commented Nov 13, 2016 at 14:52
2 @errantlinguist I should have added a disclaimer to that comment: "Not necessarily a linguistically-correct German abbreviation" :-D – LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike Commented Nov 13, 2016 at 14:59

I'm a history student currently working with oral history. You should not smooth anything on a transcript — when quoting you should do exactly as said or written. There are certain ways to indicate that something is a grammar mistake or a phonetic(?) transcription to clarity that there's no mistake on your part; usually those things are put in foot notes.

I'll edit this later to give you some resources for that, but for now if you put any notes make sure to do it as a footnote. You can use the brackets too, they indicate some comment of the author outside the context of the quote.

10 One very strong argument for not censoring is that what we consider obscene is very much time and place dependent. – gerrit Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 10:56
1 Are the mentioned resources coming at some point, or should that part be edited away from the answer? – Tommi Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 10:05

If this is for publication, check with the editor.

If this is for a working (non-published) paper that you, and perhaps som collaborators, will be working with, then you get to decide, based on subjective considerations, such as, will it be irritating for you to read the f-word 200 times a day? If so, you are free to choose a euphemism.

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Language Myth #12

In the essay, “Bad Grammar is Slovenly” (Language Myths’ Myth 12, Bauer & Trudgill, eds.), Lesley Milroy argues that just because someone constructs sentences containing poor grammar does not mean that they are careless. For example, in English, many native speakers would consider the sentence, “Which door should I leave from?” to be grammatically correct. However, according to prescriptive grammar, this sentence should instead be written as, “From which door should I leave?” This would suggest that someone saying the sentence from the first example would be using improper English.

Milroy also discusses how languages and dialects differ based on location. People living in one geographical area may find a certain usage of grammar to be acceptable, whereas people living in another location may find that same phrase/construction to be poor grammar. I agree with this claim because as a person who has lived in three completely different geographic regions over the course of my life, I have noticed that some people in one area may not find a particular usage of English to be proper or acceptable, whereas people in another area use English in that manner all the time. This does not necessarily indicate that the people living in one area are much more educated or of a higher social class than people from the other area, and it certainly does not mean that one group of people is careless when it comes to how they use grammar.

What Is the Best Way to Stop Abusive Language Online?

Should social media companies be more accountable for punishing users who use discriminatory, abusive or threatening language?

By Shannon Doyne

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

How often do you encounter racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory language online in posts or comments? Do you think abusive language is a serious problem that social media companies, like Twitter and Facebook, should do a better job of addressing? What consequences should there be for users who post these kinds of comments?

If you were in charge of a social media company, what actions, if any, would you take to stop such abuse?

In “ English Soccer Will Boycott Social Media to Protest Online Abuse ,” Jesus Jiménez and Andrew Das write about English soccer officials’ announcement that they would conduct a social media blackout to pressure platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to do more to combat abuse among their users:

Cases of harassment have been well documented online. In February, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah posted a picture on Twitter with the caption “Working with a smile!” The tweet was met with racist abuse from a Twitter user who told Nketiah, who is Black, to leave the club. Twitter responded by permanently suspending the user’s account, Sky Sports reported . Such harassment has been instigated not only by fans, but also by club social media accounts. In December, the commentator and former soccer player Karen Carney deleted her Twitter account after she received a wave of online abuse. After a 5-0 win by Leeds United over West Brom, Carney on Amazon Prime Video Sport wondered whether Leeds would “blow up at the end of the season.” A clip of her commentary was shared by the Leeds team Twitter account , which invited a slew of hateful messages toward Carney. Many on Twitter defended her and criticized the team’s social media folks, including the former Leeds captain Rio Ferdinand, who called for the tweet to be deleted . Bethany England, a forward for Chelsea, called out Leeds’ social media team for “atrocious behaviour.” “Cyber bullying a female pundit and opening her up to mass online abuse for DOING HER JOB AND HAVING HER OPINION!” England said. In February, the top executives of the Football Association — English soccer’s governing body — the Premier League, and other organizations wrote an open letter to Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, and Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of Facebook, calling for the leaders to put an end to “the levels of vicious, offensive abuse” coming from users on their platforms. “The reality is your platforms remain havens for abuse,” the soccer executives wrote. “Your inaction has created the belief in the minds of the anonymous perpetrators that they are beyond reach.” In the past, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have taken steps, such as banning users temporarily or permanently, but the issues of online abuse have persisted. In a news release announcing the social media boycott, which will take place from Friday afternoon through Monday, English soccer called on the United Kingdom to “bring in strong legislation to make social media companies more accountable for what happens on their platforms.” In the statement, Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, said the league would continue to push social media companies to make changes to prevent online abuse. “Racist behaviour of any form is unacceptable and the appalling abuse we are seeing players receive on social media platforms cannot be allowed to continue,” Masters said. “Football is a diverse sport, which brings together communities and cultures from all backgrounds and this diversity makes the competition stronger.”

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