From Bad To Curse

Swearing has its own home in our brains, separate from where we generate polite conversation

- Sandy Ong

WHEN BENJAMIN BERGEN was working on his book about profanity, the reaction he most often got was bafflement. Why would he want to write about vulgarity and cussin’? His answer, as a cognitive scientist, is that expletives are more than just offensive expressions we let slip when we stub a toe or a ?#@%*! driver cuts into our lane. They offer a unique window into the brain, largely because of an intriguing finding: Swearing comes from a different part of the brain than the rest of our language.

Researchers are now exploring the impact swearing has on listeners in greater detail. In particular, they’re interested in studying how slurs and other abusive terms can affect their intended targets. For example, researchers would like to know whether middle schoolers experience higher levels of social anxiety when other kids batter them with profanity.

Bergen explores these questions in his new book, What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. Studying how and why we swear has taught researchers much about where language originates in the brain and the impact profanity has on our psyches.

It wasn’t long ago that the subject was as taboo as the words themselves. In the 1950s, academic inquiry into profanity was like sex research— controversial and strongly discouraged. Yet attitudes shifted with time, and swearing studies became less stigmatized. One of the most interesting and important findings to emerge over the years is that words come from more than one part of the brain. “We have two assembly lines that produce words,” says Bergen.