Ok, so "cinnamon sticks" isn't a really a swear word, but said with enough emphasis and emotion, it can still get a point across!
While flipping through my stack of motivational cards, this one jumped out to me. As an often accused and self aware potty-mouth, I smirked and though to myself "swearing always effing helps"... except not effing ;)
Which brings up an interesting point. The power of a swear word is not intrinsic to the words itself. But there are times when nothing else suits the situation. So then, I got to thinking.... What if swearing really DOES help? I remembered reading a study many moons ago in school about cursing, so to Google Scholar I went to find credible sources and up-to-date information on the wonder world of curse words.
I am here to tell you, I was AGHAST at the amount of research that has been done on the topic of all things cursing/swearing/cussing/profanity. Studies, even whole books, spanning topics from intelligence, to pain, to emotional awareness to social standing are available at the click of a button!
And even more impressive, the dozen or so articles I randomly selected to peruse were speaking positively about swearing! One study by Stephens and Robertson was able to document a 32% increase in pain threshold with a 33% increase in pain tolerance.
Another study by Stephens and Zile concluded that "...findings support the notion that, in certain instances, swearing represents a form of emotional expression."
A comprehensive review paper by Stapleton et al summarized it perfectly, stating "We have shown that swearing produces outcomes that are not observed with other forms of language use. These include cognitive, autonomic, interactional, rhetorical, emotional, cathartic, stamina/strength, and hypoalgesic effects. Our core question in relation to this set of findings has been: How does swearing get its power?"
From what I can tell? No one really knows how or why curse words have so much power in our language - but they do. So the next time you're overwhelmed and find yourself unsure what to do next, drop an F-bomb. It might not fix all your problems, but you'll sure as hell feel a little better :)
Works Cited:
Stephens R and Robertson O (2020) Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Hypoalgesic Effects of Novel “Swear” Words. Front. Psychol. 11:723. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00723
Stephens, R., Zile, A. Does Emotional Arousal Influence Swearing Fluency?. J Psycholinguist Res46, 983–995 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9473-8
Stapelton, K., Beers Fagersten, K., Stephens, R., Loveday, C. The power of swearing: What we know and what we don’t, Lingua, Volume 277,2022,103406,ISSN 0024-3841,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2022.103406.
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