Cursing has always been identified as something bad and as a rather low, aggressive and rude form of language. However, despite everything, it must be admitted that it is a very effective way to attract attention and make an impact on the listener.
Apparently, it is related to a very primitive part of the brain that regulates emotions and is shared with many other mammals: the cerebral amygdala. This structure motivates the brain, attacks and is responsible for rudeness and bad words. One explanation for this would be that verbal threats are processed in this part of the brain, unlike other language expressions. That is, the brain’s amygdala plays a role in interpreting the danger that comes from language (such as when someone threatens another, which often involves the use of obscenities). Also in the amygdaloid body is the ability to activate the fight or flight state and, among others, sending orders for the activation of neurotransmitters such as adrenaline.
According to Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker (2007), “cursing activates a defensive reflex similar to that of an animal that is suddenly injured or confined, and which erupts into a furious struggle, accompanied by violent vocalization to frighten and intimidate the attacker.” .
The result brings up an explanation that is as interesting as it is necessary for these investigations. It is not that the brain is biologically programmed to produce adrenaline when it hears a bad word, since this idea would be refuted from the outset by the difference between obscenities depending on the language, but that the reason would be in the mechanism that helps increase tolerance to the word. pain and that it would be that emotional response through the brain’s amygdala that causes obscenities.
Something very different are the states of coprolalia or cacolalia (a word that comes from Greek): those who suffer from them have the pathological tendency to say obscenities. Research in people who suffer from this syndrome suggests that its cause may be related to a deeper brain structure: the basal ganglia.
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Individuals with this compulsive disorder are unable to control themselves (disinhibition disorder) and, therefore, fall into multiple problems in both their personal and work lives. This habit of compulsive obscene language is the result of a malfunction of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, although the origin of this pathology is conclusively unknown.
On the other hand, there is work in non-pathological cases aimed at finding out the effect that swearing has because it is considered a very powerful tool in language and communication. It is worthy of growing curiosity how certain words being so short can cause so much impact and evoke such strong feelings.
Linguists have discovered that swearing comes from a completely different area of the brain than any other form of oral communication. Research shows that children begin to pronounce them when they turn 6 years old, or even earlier.
Using profanity may make someone appear rude and untrustworthy. However, it could have some surprising benefits: from encouraging persuasion to helping relieve pain. Likewise, swearing engages a completely different part of the brain than the rest of the vocabulary. It is also easy to deduce that saying them increases the effectiveness of a message or makes it much more conclusive.
The brain handles swear words differently than ordinary language, since while most language is located in the cortex and language-specific areas in the left hemisphere of the brain, swear words may be associated with an older area. and rudimentary as is the cerebral amygdala.
People with dysphasia (affected by a loss or disorder of speech) generally have damage to the left hemisphere and have difficulty speaking. However, there are many recorded cases that they can use stereotypical language more fluently, that is, they can do things like sing or swear without problems.
A series of studies have shown how swearing increases pain tolerance and, in some contexts, can be considered a form of politeness.
For example, a group of students who repeat a curse word are able to keep their hand in a bucket of ice water longer than those who say a neutral word. In the same experiment, an increase in the heart rate of the participants can also be recorded, which suggests an emotional response in itself to swearing.
Groups of researchers suggest that the size of the potential benefit that can be gained from swearing depends on how big a taboo is attached to the word, which probably depends on how often the person was admonished as a child for saying it. In this regard, a study published in 2013 found that people who had been punished more times in childhood had a higher skin conductance response (a category that measures physiological arousal) when they read aloud a list of swear words in the laboratory.
Very rude people have long been rated as less competent and less credible. However, through some recent research, the assumption that swearing is necessarily the result of belonging to a lower class or a lack of education or language fluency can be disproved.
Timothy Jay and his colleagues found that the tendency to swear was much more correlated with verbal fluency more generally, and was not the result of having poor vocabulary. Lancaster University (2004) confirmed that although swearing reduces with increasing social class, the upper middle classes swear significantly more frequently than the lower middle classes, suggesting that at a certain point on the social ladder people don’t care about the effects.
In any case, it seems that to the brain, swear words are not even words, but clumps of emotion. In fact, they are not stored where the rest of the language is, but are found in a completely different area.
We know that formal language is found in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Instead, swear words are apparently stored in the limbic system, a complex system of neurological networks that controls and directs emotions.
In the face of intense pain, people of any condition, age or culture generally let out words and screams that sometimes border on the profane. Researchers from Keele University (United Kingdom) confirmed that, by feeling pain and expressing the word they chose out loud, the pain threshold was significantly increased (greater resistance to it) in relation to foul language.
This, said genuinely, increases the body’s variables that act on stress, since as pain competes with maintaining the voice or scream over time, the brain is distracted and the painful sensation tends to decrease. Hence, it intervenes as a natural, instinctive reaction, sometimes impossible to block.
These developments in neurological behavior help explain why all efforts to eradicate insults throughout history have been unsuccessful.
Banning words that are actually connected to emotions is as impossible as trying to ban emotions themselves: knowing human nature, there’s no chance that will work.
These concepts are usually identified with those of ordinariness and coarseness, although they should not be confused with the entire vulgar, colloquial or familiar linguistic register, nor with the so-called vulgar languages.
Our beloved and unforgettable Roberto Fontanarrosa (an Argentine cartoonist and writer) said about it:
“Obviously I don’t know who defines words as bad words, maybe they are like those villains in old movies, who were good at first, but society made them bad.”
Maybe…
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References:
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