Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

One day, upon striking out in a baseball game, the F-word leaped from my mouth. I immediately looked around to see who was in earshot. I knew my teammates wouldn’t take offense, but my curse was shouted, and I feared it might have reached the ears of my coach, or some in the stands who might be wounded by the disrespectful blow.

Later, I wondered why I cry out with this word despite knowing some might feel it disrespectful, and even sinful. Upon reflection, it occurred to me that I grew up in Brooklyn, and the F-word, along with quite a few other unseemly expressions, were so common, that I just picked up the habit rather innocently.

But then I asked myself, why does anyone use this type of language? After thinking on this for a while, and discussing the topic with some friends, I came upon some answers. At one point, I happened to be writing a novel titled, Love, Sex and Respect, and I decided, to stick some of my ideas on the subject into a brief section of one of its chapters.

I’m pretty pleased with how it came out, and so I thought I would share it with you, and then provide a summary of what the scientists who have studied this topic have to say.

To follow along with what is happening in this brief section of the chapter, a little background will be helpful.

The story takes place in Brooklyn. The narrator is 17-year-old Jeff Star, who dreams of one day becoming a famous writer, and has recently begun to date his classmate, Andrea. The three other characters in the story are Jeff’s high school friends, George, Cliff, and Steve.

Oh, I guess I should warn you, there is cursing in the story, including the F-word, so if you find such language unsuitable to your ears, you might want to skip the story and go directly to the “Reflections By Scientists On Cursing” section.

The Story

“What do you say tomorrow night we go to The Village?” asks George to Cliff, Steve and me as we eat a late Friday night snack at the Avenue U Diner.”

“Fine with me,” says Cliff.  “I don’t have anything going on.”

“I’m seeing Andrea tomorrow night,” I reply.

“Andrea, again,” says Cliff.  “You two going steady or something?”

“We haven’t declared we’re going steady, or anything stupid like that, Cliff.  But, I am pretty crazy about her.”

“Hey, that Andrea’s pretty hot,” says George.  “You getting laid yet?”

I belt George in his upper arm.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” George hollers.

Steve glances at a couple of girls around fourteen years old who are sitting at a table next to ours.  “I’ll meet you guys outside,” he says, and he throws his part of the bill on the table and leaves.

“Now you pissed Steve off,” I say to George.

“Me!” George hollers.  “It was you!  You pissed him off by hitting me!”

Though not quite finished eating, we quickly pay the bill and hurry outside where Steve is waiting for us.

“What’s eating you?” George asks him.

“There were some girls in there and with the cursing going on…”

“Jesus fucking Christ, what are you, the speech police?” George hollers. 

“The speech police, hmmm,” says Steve.

“I don’t know if police fits,” says Cliff.  “Steve’s not giving you a ticket or arresting you, George.”

“No,” George replies, “but he’s carrying on like I committed a fucking crime or something… and like he never curses.”

“It’s where you curse, and who you do it in front of that gets to me,” says Steve.  “First you curse in the restaurant with those girls sitting right next to us, and now you say Jesus fucking Christ in front of me when you know I’m Catholic.”

We begin to walk toward Ocean Parkway, along Avenue U.  It’s mild out, with a very black sky; street lights cast a soft yellowy brightness along our path.

“You know,” says Cliff after a few minutes have passed in tense silence, “if we could calm down about this it’s really a fascinating issue to discuss, this cursing business.  I do it so automatically I’ve never really given it much thought.”

As we reach the parkway, George and Cliff sit on a bench, while Steve and I rest our butts on the three feet high black wrought iron railing that separates the pedestrian path from the bike path.  A young woman, maybe in her mid twenties, with a fantastic body, is pedaling by on an English Racer.

After appreciating her female form as she glides off into the distance, Cliff says, “Let me see, when do I curse? Hmmm, mostly when I get angry about something.  I say damn when I’m a little upset; ‘Shit’ when I’m more upset; ‘Fuck’ when I’m really, really upset; and ‘Cock Sucker’ when I’m beyond furious.  An exclamation point just says you’re upset.  Cursing lets me express a wide range of upsets.”

“Yeah,” says George, “Me too. What’s wrong with that?”

“Well,” says Steve, “a lot of guys find it useful, but women find it disrespectful.”

“I’ve heard women curse,” says George.

“Not my mom,” says I.  “I’ve never heard her curse, ever.  When she gets frustrated, she cries out, ‘Oh, sugar!'”

“My mom,” says Steve, “never curses either.  She cries out, when she gets mad, ‘Mother of Mary!’ She adequately expresses the full range of exclamation points by altering the tone of her voice.”

“It’s interesting,” says Cliff, “that people, when they curse, use sexual terms–like fuck and cock sucker; terms about excrement–like ‘crap’ and ‘shit’, or ‘what a pisser’; and blasphemous religious expressions like holy Moses, or… well, I won’t say what else because I don’t want to piss Steve off.”

“Sometimes they throw in something about a mother,” says George, “like mother fucker. If you believe in free speech, why can’t I curse whenever I feel like, for Christ sake!?”

“George,” says Steve, “you know damn well that there’re places where you’re just being disrespectful when you curse.  I never hear you curse at school when a teacher is in earshot.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with me wanting to be respectful to the teachers or anyone else.  It’s just that I want to go to Columbia University.  If I piss off the school, it’ll get in my record that I’m a fucking trouble maker.”

“How about during the Social Studies study group when my mom’s around,” says Steve.  “I never hear you curse then.”

George’s neck turns all blotchy.

We watch a few bicyclists roll by for a few minutes in silence, and then George turns to Steve, and says, “I, um, well I never really thought about it, but now that you ah, well, now that you mention it I guess I do, kinda, know that sometimes cursing can be disrespectful around some people.  You know, I don’t have a mom around to make all of this as clear to me like you and Jeff have.  I screwed up, Steve, and, well I’m sorry.”

Reflections By Scientists On Cursing

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, cursing was just something I picked up from listening to the other kids in the neighborhood, kinda like how I picked up my Brooklyn accent. I heard some adults use cursing as well.

As I got older, it seemed it was a way to bond with the guys–kinda like it made you one of the boys. You did it to rebel from the authorities who objected to such language. Sex and toiletry matters were not something people were to talk about openly, so if you did, you were somehow respected for rebelling against social norms. Shooting the shit, was an act thought of as being gutsy, a respected attribute for many a teenager.  My wife tells me that similar language was used as well among her female friends when she was growing up in Rochester, New York, and apparently for the same reasons.

It is interesting that some researchers have begun to look at how cursing affects certain social situations. In one study researchers found that using the word “damn” was helpful. Here’s the study’s abstract:

This experiment examined the effects of judicious swearing on persuasion in a pro‐attitudinal speech. Participants listened to one of three versions of a speech about lowering tuition that manipulated where the word “damn” appeared (beginning, end, or nowhere). The results showed that obscenity at the beginning or end of the speech significantly increased the persuasiveness of the speech and the perceived intensity of the speaker. Obscenity had no effect on speaker credibility.

Note that in the study, the obscene word that was used was “damn,” which to my Brooklyn ears is a kinda middle-of-the-road obscenity. I wonder if the results of the study would have been quite different if words that are viewed as more obscene were to have been used.

An excellent review of the research on the cursing topic is titled “Swearing: A Biopsychosocial Perspective.” If you put the title into Google Scholar, you can find a free PDF of the entire article. Below I provide its abstract:

Swearing, also known as cursing, can be best described as a form of linguistic activity utilizing taboo words to convey the expression of strong emotions. Although swearing and cursing are frequently occurring behaviors, the actual functions of swearing remain largely unknown. Since swearing typically includes taboo words, these words can be more powerful than non-swear words. Therefore, people who swear are often judged negatively, because the uttered swearwords can shock and disturb others, though the comments of others are strongly dependent on contextual factors. In this review, we provide an insight into the current state of the literature with respect to the interpersonal functions of swearing. In addition, we briefly discuss neurological, psychosocial and contextual factors that may contribute to a person’s swearing behavior. Swearing is hypothesized to produce a catharsis-effect, which results in a relief of stress or pain. Swearing also influences the perceived credibility, intensity, and persuasiveness of the swearer. Additionally, swearing can have a variety of interpersonal consequences, including promoting group bonding and solidarity, inhibiting aggression, eliciting humor, and causing emotional pain to others. This paper further presents a hypothetical model of swearing that draws from basic emotion research in an attempt to provide a scaffolding for future research.

I happened to notice that the review mentions eliciting humor as an interpersonal consequence of cursing. I find that interesting because of my own personal reaction to humor that uses cursing. A couple of times I’ve gone to comedy clubs and found that the comedians used so much cursing in their routines that it began to rub me the wrong way. It just seemed obnoxious to me, and yet others found their shtick hysterical.

Certainly cursing is not required to make people laugh. Millions find shows like, I Love Lucy and Seinfeld wonderfully funny despite there being no cursing. So, it is a puzzle to me why I, who grew up regularly hearing cursing, find that there is a point at which it begins to grate on my nerves, while others are willing to spend a pretty high ticket price to hear such shows. This phenomenon has taught me that individuals react so incredibly different to different styles of humor and how much cursing they can hear before it becomes annoying.

So, anyway, that’s my little schtick on why people use words like the F word. I hope it provided some useful insights.

Have a wonderful week, and I hope you’ll soon join us once again right here at From insults to Respect,

My Best
Jeff

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

cursingDisrespectful languageF-wordswear words