The curse is passing through society. It has become increasingly common to openly be too blue at one point. “Language is just part of the overall shift towards a more casual lifestyle,” said Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at Massachusetts Liberal Arts College in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Dr. Jay spent his career studying the use of blasphemy, meaning and offending, motivated, how to motivate it, and how to satisfy it. Although he officially retired, he continues to compile his research on blasphemy, and recently announced “Let's Go Brandon” (former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.) in an ongoing legal dispute in Michigan. We provided expert opinions on the e-song expressions used to defame them. It should be interpreted reasonably as “profan.” (That shouldn't be the case, Dr. Jay gave his opinion.)
Dr. Jay assumes that the increasingly casual nature of spoken language stems in part from the way people communicate on social media. In one study published by other researchers in the field in 2014, the cursed word on Twitter, now known as X, appeared in 7.7% of posts, and profanity is about every 10 words on the platform. It turns out to represent one. This was found by the study compared to a sworn rate of 0.5-0.7% in spoken language.
If that data bothers you, Dr. Jay has some ideas about how to dial blasphemy. f*@% – February free, someone?
The interview is condensed and edited for clarity, and scrubs some of the slang words that Dr. Jay admits to regularly use on golf courses.
Why does social media contribute to a more casual use of the language?
People are far away and can become aggressive without physical retaliation. Overall, you are anonymous, so there are no personal consequences. It is also part of a larger shift towards a more casual lifestyle. What kids wear to school these days has been a disgrace to my time.
That's the question – is it a swearing, not a clothes?
Our culture is constantly evolving and continues to evolve. One place that's the problem is how women are increasingly attacked and harassed online.
So, do you really consider this development positive or negative?
Slang is created to create code that confronts authority and identifies groups as members within the group. Misuse of slang means you are an outsider. Slang must change over time.
Language coincidences coexist with coincidences such as clothing style, workplace behavior, musical lyrics, television content, and table manners.
You say you are saying cursed words that people once avoided.
For years, I asked people to swear their words. On a scale of 1 to 10, the words of those were the worst. Five is “shit” or “hell.” That was the middle range. 100 years ago you couldn't use them on the radio. Now they're on a newspaper comic strip.
What is ranked as 1?
“sugar.”
What about other alternatives to the cursed words of many years? Can I run some by you?
please.
“Fudge” – Satisfied?
It's not me.
You can hear many people say “turn it upside down” or “funny.” Which do you prefer?
I like “flicking” – I used “Close the flicking door!”
What do you like about it?
It is similar to… (expletive).
So, if something is phonetically similar, does it satisfy it?
It's how you feel throughout your body – the autonomic nervous system's response to someone saying or listening to what you say. It increases your pulse, heart rate and breathing speed than using non-aggressive words such as “calendar.” We recorded skin conduction tests that demonstrated that taboo words produce more emotional responses than nontaboo words. This word causes us to know that we are going to say it, and continues to cause us even after we speak.
Do these words cause physical attacks?
My research group records the public vows of over 10,000 people. I have never seen these uses turn into aggression or violence. Most oaths are casual, conversational and quite harmless. At the same time, we are sensitive to language issues surrounding sexual harassment, racial ethnic gender discrimination, verbal abuse, and threatening language.
What draws us to certain words?
That's personal. The psychological history of hearing and listening to words, saying, and the results of using words again as children bring about previously word-related emotions.
It is social, and emotionally important words depend not only on the psychological relationship with the speaker's words, but also on the value and valence of the words within the speaker's community.
And it's physical.
Does it suggest that up-song representations may not be satisfied, so it cannot be suppressed?
The key to breaking habits is to recognize that you do it and try to avoid it.
So can you change the pattern you should want?
yes. When you think about how memory works, what you did is activate new words in your brain. And by activating “Freakin'” or “Sugar” you make it more prominent.
In other words, practice can reduce the effectiveness of cursed words and enhance the temptation of up-song expressions.
Yes, but you need to be careful with both works, one of which has a natural salience.
Recently, when he took a break from the course, I was watching my grandson, the big skier. And I just said “Dan.” He's 18 years old and I try not to swear around him. But I have to think about it, especially when playing golf.
Do you feel that research into oaths is a good opportunity from where you retired?
Two years before I retired in 2015, I gave a keynote speech to a group of International Scholars' Conference on Oaths and Curses in Cologne, Germany. I was 65 at the time and most of my speakers were in my 30s and 40s. I realized that there is a new generation that continues to study taboo language in the ways that they pioneered in the 1970s. It was time to get aside and give them glory.
