Few things are more paradoxical than the way American television deals with the possible utterance of a swear word on air: with a beep. Watching a public figure’s speech punctuated by beeps eventually underscores those swear words and, in addition, the beep itself becomes a source of comedy. In a 2012 episode of Modern familyMitchell Pritchett and Cameron Tucker’s two-year-old daughter, Lily, says “heaven” in church, causing the audience to fall silent for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. “I have two weaknesses: kids who swear and old people who beat them,” Cameron says, looking into the camera.
The little girl didn’t know why the word had such an impact (the No Cursing Club organization asked ABC to remove the episode, considering it a bad example for a two-year-old to curse on TV). But it’s a good example of how swear words always generate a response by acting as emotional switches in the brain. In Spain – more liberated in this practice – we had Guille Farmacía de Guardiaa child who kept saying “joder (sky)” and, every time he did, gave him the first laughs. A kid saying a swear word! This was comedy and it worked. For better or worse, a forbidden word changes a speech.
But why? “When we hear a swear word, our brain perceives it as a threat or an emotionally charged stimulus,” Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, director of the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the Faculty of Languages and Education at Nebrija University, explains to EL PAÍS. “This is because swear words activate different networks and structures of the brain, including the amygdala, which is essential for processing emotions, especially those related to the detection of fear and threat.” Duñabeitia notes that when someone says “Damn!” in the middle of a conversation, the amygdala interprets it as something unusual, as if it were practically a warning of danger, which provokes an immediate emotional and physiological reaction, like a state of alertness. “This is why swear words immediately grab our attention and cause such strong reactions. Somehow, our brains are programmed to react to them as if it were a call to ‘beware!’, which explains why they are so effective at expressing strong emotions,” he says.
A ***** to make people laugh
In reality, swear words are always offensive in nature, when in fact, in some cases, they can also express trust and intimacy. Andoni Duñabeitia points out that using swear words can be a way to challenge the status quo and break established norms. Sometimes, he says, saying one at the right time can be a form of subversion, a way of asking for space and expressing displeasure in a direct, unfiltered way. But one of the areas where his strength is greatest is humor.
“It can be very entertaining at times and plays an important role in comedy. It can be amusing and offensive,” writes British journalist Michael Adams In praise of swearing (2016). Spanish comedian Santiago Alverú considers that in comedy insults work as well as costumes or chosen themes. “A comedian starts developing his personality from the beginning. As he grows as an artist, he discards some elements and picks up others,” he explains. “If a comedian has been doing dark humor for 20 years and says ‘for hell’, nothing comes of it. If Ramón García does this [game show] The Grand Prizehe will get into trouble. Swear words work because they are liberating, they are cathartic for the recipient. If the joke offends, just as the joke offends, it is usually because its audience has been involuntarily widened and the speech, reserved for a specific audience, reaches mainstream or social networks that lack the context and codes necessary to interpret it. . “
Therefore, as in other debates, context is everything. “If a comedian lets out an expletive during their act, most people will laugh and not be bothered by it. But if a politician does this in an official speech, the reaction can be very different.” In politics, insults have almost always occurred when a public representative has been caught by a microphone they assumed was off. The episode in 2004, when the then Spanish defense minister, José Bono, was caught on camera calling the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, an “idiot” was infamous. In recent years, the tone has grown in the political arena, and “buthi” is no longer reserved for when someone believes the microphones are off. In 2021, an MP from the far-right Spanish Vox party shouted at Finance Minister María Jesús Montero in Congress. Nobody laughed.
The context also affects gender unequally, creating a double standard. Studies have shown that women who use swear words are judged more harshly than men. According to various researches, women who use vulgar language are seen as less feminine and more aggressive, while men who do so do not suffer the same negative connotations. “It’s a matter of gender expectations that, although evolving, continue to mark our perceptions,” says Andoni Duñabeitia.
The positive effects of a “f**k!”
Good news for fans of swear words: a study titled Taboo word fluency and insult recognition: debunking the myth of vocabulary poverty shows that using swear words is a sign of intelligence. As one of the authors of the analysis, Timothy B. Jay, explains: “People who are good at language are good at creating a vocabulary of swear words.” In fact, as Miguel Ángel del Corral Domínguez, an expert in linguistics and communication, points out, swearing often has a clear venting component and can be very healthy. “Of course, we must pay attention to the communication situation and anticipate the possible effects or consequences that may result from this action”, he warns. “However, in everyday reality, in any situation that worries or irritates us, we will not devote ourselves to composing sonnets with sharp hyperbole, but it is normal to end up uttering the most frequent insults, which will also be those. mostly we are used to listening. Sometimes even those used by friends or family members rub off on us, as with all kinds of vocabulary. Del Corral emphasizes the importance of taking into account the gradation that exists in the field of insults. “The severity of the insult depends on the context: tramp or son of a whore can be very offensive or, depending on the tone, affectionately known.”
STUDIES How swear words may affect strength: disinhibition as a potential mediator claims that repeating a swear word can promote positive emotions and good mood. Swear words distract those who use them and give them a boost of self-confidence. In addition, they can reduce feelings of pain and increase physical strength. “By swearing you’re triggering an emotional response in yourself, which triggers a mild stress response, which carries with it a reduction in stress-induced pain,” psychologist Richard Stephens, one of the study’s authors, told CNN. . However, notes Del Corral Domínguez, caution is vital when cursing, as well as measuring context. “Excess is as bad as lack, and the use of vulgarisms or swear words and a colloquial tone in situations requiring formality is as abnormal and inappropriate as the use of an absurd and ridiculously pedantic formality that is inappropriate to the situation in an informal tone of trust and familiarity. where swear words slip spontaneously with the flow of the conversation,” he says.
Back to the noises: is this the right way to remove profanity from television? Sometimes, the censors create a Streisand effect in the text that only serves to glorify them. This is what the author believes For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing Is Shocking, Crude, and Fun (2023), Rebecca Roache, who in the book addresses the effects of swear words from a philosophical perspective. “When profanity is an offense, it’s because we’re signaling disrespect, and when we censor profanity with a star or a noise when it comes to spoken profanity, that disrespectful message is replaced by a competing message, which is something like, “I really need to get this word out, but I’m also worried about how you’re going to feel about it, so I’m blacking out some of it because I care about your feelings,” Roache said in an interview with US media outlet Vox.
Therefore, those attempts to censor swear words do not always make sense, as Alverú points out, when he talks about those moments when insults shock the audience in a comedy show, a debate that he considers to come from the United States. “There they are much more sensitive to the use of their shit, swags, retarders, etc., so much so that they even have funny euphemisms for them: ‘f bomb’ for shit, ‘word’ for pussy or ‘word’ for them. delayed. I say funny because they do not replace the use of the word, but on the contrary, they absolve the person who uses it, even if it continues to evoke the debatable term. They are not solutions, they are bandages”, says the comedian. And he may be right: in principle, it was not necessary to put any beeps or stars in this text, so as not to offend anyone.
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