Psychology of Swearing

Reading list

If you would like more information about anything presented in this talk, I recommend the following sources:

Books

• Benjamin Bergen – What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. Amazon link.
• Steven Pinker - The Stuff of Thought. Amazon link.
• Emma Byrne - Swearing is Good For You. Amazon link.

Websites

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/
https://twitter.com/stronglang

Journal papers

Feldman, G., Lian, H., Kosinski, M., & Stillwell, D. (2017) Frankly, we do give a damn: The relationship between profanity and honesty. Social Psychological and Personality Science

Harris, C. L., Aycicegi, A., & Gleason, J. B. (2003). Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24(04), 561-579.

Jay, T. (2009). The utility and ubiquity of taboo words. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 153-161.

Jay, T., & Janschewitz, K. (2008). The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267-288.

Jay, K. L., & Jay, T. B. (2013). A child’s garden of curses: A gender, historical, and age-related evaluation of the taboo lexicon. The American Journal of Psychology, 126(4), 459-475.

Jay, K. L., & Jay, T. B. (2015). Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: deconstructing the poverty-of-vocabulary myth. Language Sciences, 52, 251-259.

Mackay, D. G., Shafto, M., Taylor, J. K., Marian, D. E., Abrams, L., & Dyer, J. R. (2004). Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: Evidence from taboo Stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks. Memory & Cognition, 32(3), 474-488.

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

Van Lancker, D., & Cummings, J. L. (1999). Expletives: Neurolinguistic and neurobehavioral perspectives on swearing. Brain research reviews, 31(1), 83-104.

Relationship between age and vocabulary

The correlation between age and animals is r = -0.14, p = 0.43.

The correlation between age and swears is r = -0.13, p = 0.43.

The correlation between swears and animals is r = 0.47, p = 0.

Vocabulary scores by gender

Most frequent swear words

Word cloud

Most frequent words by gender

Word cloud - men

Word cloud - women

Word cloud - non-binary