Few things are more paradoxical than the way American television handles the potential appearance of a swear word on television: with a bleep. Watching a public figure’s speech filled with bleeps ultimately causes those swear words to be underlined and the bleep itself to become a comic device. In a 2012 episode of Modern Family, Lily, the two-year-old daughter of Mitchell Pritchett and Cameron Tucker, releases fuck (I mean, fuck!) in the middle of the church, causing those present to remain silent in stupefaction for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. “I have two weaknesses: children swearing and older people rapping,” Tucker confessed later, looking at the camera.
Although the girl did not know why that word had such force and impact (the organization No Cursing Club asked the ABC network to remove that episode, considering that it was a bad example for a two-year-old girl to say a bad word on television). But it is a good example of how bad words always generate a reaction by acting as emotional switches in the brain. In Spain, more liberated in that practice, we had Guille in Pharmacy on calla child who kept saying “damn,” and every time he did, canned laughter rang out. A child saying a bad word! That was comedy, and it worked. For better or worse, a forbidden word alters 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 Cognitive Science Center at the Faculty of Languages and Education at Nebrija University, explains to ICON. “This happens because swear words activate different networks and brain structures, including the amygdala, which is essential for processing emotions, especially those related to fear and threat detection.” Duñabeitia points out that when someone says “fuck!” in the middle of a conversation, the amygdala interprets it as something out of the ordinary, as if it were practically a warning of danger, which causes an immediate emotional and physiological response, such as a state of alert. “That is why swear words instantly capture our attention and provoke such strong reactions. In a way, our brain is programmed to react to them as if they were a cry of ‘be careful!’, which explains why they are so effective in expressing intense emotions,” he says.
A ***** to make laugh
In reality, swear words are always associated with an offensive character when in fact, in some cases, they can also express trust and intimacy. Andoni Duñabeitia indicates that using swear words can be a way of challenging the status quo and breaking with established norms. He assures that, sometimes, saying one at the right moment can be a form of subversion, a way of claiming space and expressing discontent in a direct and unfiltered way. But one of the areas where their power is greatest is in that of humor.
“It can sometimes be very entertaining and plays an important role in comedy. It can even be funny and offensive at the same time,” he writes. In Praise of Profanity (In praise of blasphemy) (Oxford University Press, 2016) British journalist Michael Adams. Comedian Santiago Alverú, author of Too famous. Find out how fame works and laugh at it (Aguilar, 2024), believes that in comedy, insults work as much as costumes or chosen topics. “A comedian begins to develop, from the beginning, his personality. As he grows as an artist, he gives up certain elements and chooses others,” he explains. “If a comedian has been doing black humor for 20 years and says ‘I shit on the whore!’, nothing happens. If Ramón García does it in the Grand Prixyou will get into trouble. The swear word works because it liberates, it is cathartic for the receiver. If the swear word offends, just as if the joke offends, it is usually because its audience has been involuntarily expanded and the speech, reserved for certain listeners, reaches the mainstream or to social networks, which lack the context and codes necessary to interpret it.”
Therefore, and as in other debates, context is absolutely everything. “If a comedian swears in a monologue, most people will laugh and not be bothered. But if a politician does it in an official speech, the reaction could be very different.” In politics, insults have almost always occurred when a public representative believed that the microphone was off. The episode of José Bono in 2004 was notorious when he was caught on camera calling the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, an “idiot.” In recent years, the tone has been rising in the political arena and “idiot” is no longer said when one believes that the microphone is off: in 2021, a Vox deputy shouted it at María Jesús Montero in the Congress of Deputies. Nobody laughed.
The context also affects men and women unequally, creating a double standard. Studies have shown that women who swear are judged more harshly than men. According to different studies, women who use vulgar language are seen as less feminine and more aggressive, while men who do so do not suffer the same negative consequences. “It is a question of gender expectations that, although they evolve, continue to shape our perceptions,” explains Jon Andoni Duñabeitia.
The positive effects of a “f***!”
Good news for swear word lovers: a study called Taboo word fluency and insult knowledge: deconstructing the myth of vocabulary poverty indicates that the use of swear words is a sign of intelligence. As one of those responsible for the analysis, Timothy B. Jay, says, “those who use language well are good at generating a vocabulary rich in swear words.” In fact, as Miguel Ángel del Corral Domínguez, an expert in Linguistics and Communication, states, insults often have a clear component of relief and can be very healthy. “Of course, we must pay attention to the communicative situation and foresee the possible effects or consequences that may arise from that action,” he warns. “However, in the reality of day to day life, faced with any situation that bothers or irritates us, we are not going to dedicate ourselves to composing sonnets with clever hyperbole, but rather the normal thing is to end up uttering the most frequent insults, which will also be the ones we are most used to hearing. Sometimes we even pick up those of our friends or people close to us, as happens with all types of vocabulary,” he adds. Del Corral points out the importance of talking about the gradation that exists in the field of insults. “The severity of the insult depends on the context: bastard or son of a bitch They can be very offensive or, depending on the tone, affectionately familiar.”
The study How swearing can affect strength: Disinhibition as a potential mediator The study states that repeating a swear word can promote positive emotions and good mood. Swear words distract the person repeating them and give them greater self-confidence. As if that were not enough, they can reduce the sensation of pain and increase physical strength. “When swearing, an emotional response is triggered inside that triggers a mild stress response, which leads to a stress-induced reduction in pain,” psychologist Richard Stephens, one of those responsible for the study, told CNN. However, Miguel Ángel del Corral Domínguez clarifies that caution is vital when swearing, as well as measuring the context. “Excess is as bad as deficiency, and it is as abnormal and inappropriate to use vulgarisms or swear words and a colloquial register in situations that require formality as it is to err on the side of absurd and ridiculous pedantic formality that is inappropriate for the situation in an informal register of trust and familiarity where swear words slip spontaneously with the flow of the conversation,” he says.
Back to the bleeps: is that the right way to get rid of swear words on TV? Sometimes censorship creates a textbook Streisand effect that only glorifies them. This is what the author of For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun (Oxford University Press, 2023), Rebecca Roache, who in the book addresses the effects of swearing from a philosophical perspective. “When they offend, it is because they are disrespectful, and when we censor them with asterisks or beeps, that negative message is replaced by a message that could well be something like: ‘I really need to say this swear word, but I’m worried about how you’ll feel about it, so I’m hiding part of it because I really care about your feelings,’” she explains in an interview with the American media Vox. Therefore, these attempts to censor swear words do not always make sense, as Alverú says, when talking about the moments in which insults shock the audience of a monologue, a debate that she considers comes from the United States. “There they are much more susceptible to the use of their fucks, cunts, delays and so on, so much so that they even have ridiculous euphemisms for them: f bomb for fuck, c word for cunt either r word for retard. I say ridiculous because they do not replace the use of the word, but rather they free the person who uses them from guilt, even if this continues to evoke the controversial term. They are not solutions, they are patches,” says the comedian. And he may be right: in principle, there was no need to put any bleeps or asterisks in this text so as not to offend anyone.
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