
What the F? What swearing reveals about language and ourselves - zhenjl
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/what-the-f-what-swearing-reveals-about-language-and-ourselves/
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peter303
Harvard psychology prof Steven Pinker has an interesting demo of this in one
of his stump lectures on language an emotion. He recites fifty English swear
words in raid succession. By the end of that minute the audience is cringing.
Who could think a distinguished Harvard professor could go potty mouth like
that? Pinkers point is that swearing is processed by an alternative language
system deeply tied to emotion and can override normal language emotion.

P.S. Pinker has several video lectures on his website and one of them might
have this demonstration.

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pm90
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BcdY_wSklo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BcdY_wSklo)

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sir_kin
Weirdly enough, when he was demonstrating the Stroop test, I had absolutely no
slowdown for cuss words; maybe 3x faster than when the text named a different
color.

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Tiksi
Agreed, I could name the colors for the swears as fast as the initial one
where the word was the same as the color it was printed in.

Also there's a trick to doing the Stroop test where the colors don't match.
Look just above the word and slightly out of focus, that way you're just
naming the color of the blob instead of fighting yourself to read it.

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Mz
This is actually a really awesome article, though poorly titled for the HN
crowd. It is about brain research in brain injured individuals and how that
impacts use of language:

 _Studies from people with different types of aphasia have delineated
different brain regions that regulate different aspects of communication.
Wernicke’s area is like a dictionary: it helps us to understand the meanings
of the words we hear and to choose the words we want to use in a particular
context. People with damage to this area can’t understand language, yet they
can pronounce words and assemble sentences—it’s just that the sentences they
come up with don’t make any sense. Broca’s area is in charge of producing
sounds; people with damage to this area have trouble articulating words and
sentences.

But both Wernicke’s aphasics and Broca’s aphasics, and even global aphasics,
can swear. These swear words are coming from somewhere else in the brain, not
the parts known to be responsible for generating the rest of language._

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hyperpallium
So, if coming from a more primitive part of the brain, possibly pre-linguistic
animal sounds are cussing.

~~~
Mz
My ex husband didn't cuss -- at least, not until I stupidly corrupted him (I
have a terrible potty mouth and it's a long story). We knew this was
completely sincere and not some sort of affectation because when our oldest
son accidentally stepped on his dad's junk once when his dad was in a dead
sleep on the living room floor, he woke up making cartoon sweary noise (a la
"rassum frassum mrrrfff").

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crocal
Matlab had a f##k command. On the prompt, it returned "your place or mine"...
Then, in V4, it returned "this command is obsolete". Then it was gone in V5.

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gumby
Speaking of "fuck" I read a paper in the 80s (unfortunstally I've lost it --
it was back when papers were, well, printed on paper) that analyzed why you
can say "fan-fucking-tastic: but not "fantas-fucking-tick".

I wish I could find it again -- I'd surely understand it better now.

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Slickarango
Expletives are the only infixes in english!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation)

~~~
contingencies
Three days ago I was scanning Unicode (looking for useful characters for a
roguelike, as one does), came across the _metrical triseme_ (⏗), _tetraseme_
(⏘) and _pentraseme_ (⏙) in the _Miscellaneous Symbols_ section, and added
them to wikipedia. As far as I could ascertain, these are used to indicate
_scansion_ \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion#Other_symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion#Other_symbols)
\- which is apparently primarily a term used to describe rhythm and meter in a
poetic context. However, the _Expletive infixation_ page uses the alternate
term _prosody_ in perhaps more of a formal linguistic sense. PS: prosody &
scansion. Certainly on the cryptic crossword one of these decades...

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laaph
Can I ask what library you use for your roguelikes? Last time I was working
with ncurses, I found it doesn't support unicode, and wncurses isn't well
support on the Mac.

~~~
contingencies
I use a few libraries. The roguelike one I use is rotLove[0] for LÖVE[1] for
Lua[2], which is a port of rot.js[3], which is itself a libtcod[4] port.
However, fonts are handled by LÖVE. I have a bug filed with them right now
where Chinese text crashes though, so I wouldn't call it ultra stable. Then
again, it's just a fun project to learn Lua, so I'm not in a hurry.

[0]
[https://github.com/paulofmandown/rotLove](https://github.com/paulofmandown/rotLove)
[1] [http://love2d.org/](http://love2d.org/) [2]
[http://lua.org](http://lua.org) [3]
[http://ondras.github.io/rot.js/](http://ondras.github.io/rot.js/) [4]
[https://bitbucket.org/libtcod/libtcod](https://bitbucket.org/libtcod/libtcod)

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timdeneau
Perhaps this is partly why it’s so hard to stop cursing.

I curse like a sailor, even though I'm consciously aware that it’s an
unhelpful, unprofessional, unarticulated form of communication.

~~~
fernandotakai
one interesting thing: i don't swear that much in my native language. i
find... cringy.

now, whenever i speak/write english, i swear like a sailor. feels more natural
to curse in english.

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rando444
I can't help but wonder if this is because of how english swear words get
adapted into other languages.

It's not uncommon to hear variations of english swear words in my language..
even printed in the newspaper or children's books.. nobody thinks twice about
it.. but our native swear words take on a different tone and meaning
altogether.

Maybe this could contribute to why it's easier to swear in english? (the words
not holding the same type of gravity/meaning)

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posterboy
It's not just the adaption, but also the isolation from the context.

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ryanlm
I'm kind of surprised HN doesn't implement censorship of swear words. Also I
worked at a company where Fuck was dropped all the time. I'm not sure why
people think it's unprofessional.

~~~
Tempest1981
Heavy profanity can make you sound like you are constantly angry, or it at
least imparts some shock value, by design.

It _seemed_ to also be a turnoff when dating (and interviewing?), limiting the
field. Not 100% sure.

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Tempest1981
What is the appropriate age to begin using profanity? If I'm out at a
restaurant with my "brogrammer" friends, and a mom with kids is at the next
table, is swearing inconsiderate, or OK?

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gerbilly
>What is the appropriate age to begin using profanity?

Any age, just don't let your parents hear you. It was a hilarious and harmless
way to blow off steam when we were in kidergarten to swear like truckers.

> If I'm out at a restaurant with my "brogrammer" friends, and a mom with kids
> is at the next table, is swearing inconsiderate, or OK?

It's inconsiderate.

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dghughes
dang must be having a stroke.

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intrasight
What the F#

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JetSpiegel
Obligatory Brainfuck mention

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labster
This comment is licensed under the WTFPL.

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greglindahl
When blekko was purchased by IBM Watson, I was amused that IBM's list of
allowed licenses for the "blue wash" of our code included WTFPL.

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psyc
All swearing reveals to me is that you're inarticulate, vulgar, don't respect
others, and are probably of low birth. Hahaha, JK. I love swearing and most of
my favorite people swear a lot.

