Why We Curse

By Randy David

Languages all over the world contain expressions that are implicitly avoided in polite conversation, says Harvard
psychologist Steven Pinker. But people use them anyway, sometimes in the most unexpected situations. There they
do their work, intensifying emotion and eliciting unwanted reactions beyond their listeners’ control. In his exemplary
book, “The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature,” Pinker offers five different contexts in which
people use taboo language.

The first is the descriptive use. “Sometimes for the sake of narrative vividness, sometimes out of anger, we use taboo
words to convey how vile something is.” The sentence “He was pissed” communicates a displeasure that is not quite
captured by the alternative “He was angry.” One reason for this, says Pinker, is that the use of such language,
“which forces a listener to think about disagreeable things, is mildly aggressive, so it fits with the other trappings that
men in rough-and-tumble settings brandish to advertise that they can inflict and endure pain…”

The second is the idiomatic. This function is related to the first—we sometimes use vulgar speech to communicate
informality, familiarity, or coolness. This is particularly so where the available alternatives may sound euphemistic,
prim, or affected. “I wanna pee” is certainly a more direct statement of a need among friends than the decorous “I
want to go to the washroom.” Perhaps the Filipino expression “Nagkaleche-leche” for something that went very
wrong might illustrate this point more clearly, though it’s not easy to see how milk can have any relation to a fouled-
up situation.

The third is the emphatic use. As in the first two functions, there are expletives and taboo words that are sometimes
inserted in sentences, lending color and power to the rest of the statement, to intensify feelings. If something can be
described as “awesomely” or “achingly” beautiful, one can imagine how a person with a more colorful vocabulary can
express the same effusiveness with words like “fuckingly brilliant.” According to Pinker, the Irish celebrity Bono
promptly got into trouble after he uttered this phrase on national television at a Golden Globe Awards presentation.

The fourth is the abusive function. This is where expletives and taboo words do much of the work for which they
were crafted. Says Pinker: “There are moments in everyone’s life when one feels the urge to intimidate, punish or
downgrade the reputational stock of some other person.” It seems so long ago when the most common English
expletive deployed to express disgust at a person was “Damn you” or its variation, “Go to hell.” Over the years, such
expressions have lost their sting. Today, they cannot possibly convey the same powerful charge that is ignited by the
more contemptuous expressions “Fuck you” or “Screw you.”

Taking his cue from the work of neuroscientists, Pinker muses that verbal outbursts could be ‘the evolutionary
missing link between primate calls and human languages’

The last function of profane language, says Pinker, is cathartic. Something about the way our brains are wired
induces us to let out salty expressions like “Dammit” or “Oh, shit” as reflex cries of distress. One might miss an
important turn in the road, and blurt out “Shit!” Or let out a loud “Yuck!” after stepping on fresh dog poo. But these
days, a younger generation might use just one word to express any form of disgust or distress: “Fuck!”

Writes Pinker: “Faced with a sudden challenge to our goals or wellbeing, we inform the world that the setback
matters to us, indeed, that it matters at an emotional level that calls up our worst thoughts and is at the boundaries of
voluntary control.” Taking his cue from the work of neuroscientists, Pinker muses that verbal outbursts could be “the
evolutionary missing link between primate calls and human languages.”

According to neurologists, dirty words that may have been rendered dormant by the culture of correctness reside in
an older and deeper part of the brain, the right hemisphere. Pinker cites research done on patients who have been

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reduced to inarticulateness by a condition known as “aphasia.” Even as they have lost the ability to name pictures,
produce coherent statements, or understand sentences, they retain the power to curse, or to use taboo words and
epithets.

Some people may have noticed this among their loved ones who are going through the terror of dementia. There are
moments when they fall into a mood when nothing but foul speech comes out of their mouths—almost as if the devil
has taken over. “It’s not that the right hemisphere contains a profanity module,” writes Pinker, “but that its linguistic
abilities are confined to memorized formulas rather than rule-governed combinations.” The scientific explanation is
indeed more complex than this. “The right hemisphere may be implicated in swearing for another reason: it is more
heavily involved in emotion, especially negative emotion.” Like distress or pain.

In courteous society, the resort to expletives and profane language instantly stigmatizes the user. “They are
annoying to the listener,” notes Pinker, but even more, they are “a confession by the speaker that he can think of no
other way to make his words worth attending to.” Unfortunately, “it’s a fact of life that people swear.”

In the last election, we saw how swearing, when used to full effect, could establish instant rapport between a
speaker and his audiences. But, there are good reasons, other than moral, why dirty language needs to be avoided
in public discourse. Some words are easily recognizable to a given speech community even when they may have no
concrete meaning. They summon the deepest emotions and the most divisive resentments. They hurt.

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