Dropping the f-bomb: Steven Pinker on swearing
The common denominator of taboo language across the world's cultures is negative emotion, according to psychologist Steven Pinker. (Photo: Tara Hunt Some rights reserved.)
What do swear words reveal about the human psyche?
Steven Pinker: If you look at the common denominator of taboo language across the world’s cultures I would say it’s negative emotion.
That’s Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist and author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. He said although swear words change over time, they consistently appeal to a sense of dread and disgust.
Steven Pinker: It’s a dread of disease and death, it’s revulsion at sexual depravity, disgust at bodily excretions, awe, and fear of deities.
Pinker told Earth & Sky that taboo words evoke emotions not due to their meaning. People don’t normally respond with revulsion to a polite word such as copulate. But the word’s obscene alternative has a powerful effect.
Steven Pinker: You’re basically saying, “I’m bringing this up in order to get a negative emotional rise out of you.” So the study of swearing reveals what emotions we find unpleasant and the social circumstances in which we would want to commit a verbal act of aggression and cause someone to entertain an unpleasant thought.
People with damage to parts of the brain connected to expressing complex thought often still can swear. So many scientists think that swearing is tied to more ancient brain areas, especially those that respond to danger and fear.
Steven Pinker calls language the stuff of thought
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