Why are sex words our worst swearwords?

By Faye Flam

Several weeks ago Inquirer editors debated whether we should allow
more dirty words in the paper. There was talk of loosening the
restrictions on damn, which we've long placed in our category of
lesser offenders though it implies something horrendous - condemnation
to hell (a word we're also easing up on).

Topping our list of the worst possible words is the F-word, though in
its literal sense it conveys something very nice. Writers are not
specifically forbidden to use it but there are enough hoops to jump
through that nobody has broken the F- barrier yet.

It's listed in our highest security class of obscenity, along with
three synonyms for penis, two for vagina, two slang terms for oral
sex, two variants on animal waste products and one expression that
employs the F-word in an oedipal context.

What does this say about our society, and is there any scientific
explanation for why people yell out a word for sex when they stub
their toes?

Linguists tend to speak not of bad words but of linguistic taboos.
Most cultures have such taboos, but they vary wildly, says University
of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman, author of Far From the Madding
Gerund and Other Dispatches From Language Log, which refers to his
blog: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/

languagelog/.

Some cultures create elaborate rules about mixing sex and speech, he
says. In parts of New Guinea, you're not allowed to have sex with
anyone who shares your primary language. Luckily, people there know
lots of languages, so they generally manage.

Some aboriginal Australians have a sort of incest-related taboo
against speaking with the family of your spouse. All words in their
primary language are forbidden, so they create artificial
"mother-in-law languages" to talk to their mothers-in-law.

For general taboo words, religious expressions are huge, and there's
often a superstitious element involved, Liberman says. In some places,
people think that if you utter the names of certain deities, you might
attract their attention in a bad way.

Bodily function words, while popular, are not universally taboo. In
Finnish, Liberman says, all sexual acts and sex organs can be
expressed in language clean enough for Ann Landers. You can't employ
Finnish sexual words to swear, he says, since it would come out
something like "Oh, intercourse!"

Liberman knows all kinds of fascinating bad-word facts. For example,
the earliest record of typographical bleeping of the F-word is in an
English legal document from 1698 detailing the arrest of Capt. Edward
Rigby for attempting to "F-" another man.

Overall, the scientific evidence suggests swearing is good for you,
says psycholinguist Timothy Jay of Massachusetts College of the
Liberal Arts and author of Cursing in America.

We're the only animal that can curse, he says, which sometimes helps
us avoid physical violence. "It allows us to express our emotions
symbolically and at a distance." For example, Jay says, when a woman
was weaving in front of him on the road that morning he was able to
call her a "dumb ass" instead of getting out of his car and biting
her.

To further understand swearing, Jay studied people with Tourette's
syndrome because they sometimes involuntarily blurt out swear words.
He found the words tend toward the most unacceptable in their native
tongues.

For the rest of us, he said, as a general rule, the most stress-relief
mileage comes from the most taboo words in one's personal culture.

The British have a slightly different swearing vocabulary, favoring
bloody, bollocks and another b-word that ends like skulduggery. Last
year a copy editor expunged that word from one of my columns. We can't
say it because it means anal sex, which we can say.

Americans, in contrast, rely heavily on our F-word.

In addition to helping Dick Cheney refrain from biting all the
Democrats in Congress, it represents the most direct and concise
English term for sexual intercourse.

Some commentators have warned that we're wearing out the poor word
with gross overuse, draining it of its original cathartic power. But
Jay says we have nothing to worry about. It's an old word, possibly
stemming from German and not an acronym for For Unlawful Carnal
Knowledge, as urban legend has it. It's been part of the English
language for more than 1,000 years, he said, and it's still so taboo
you can't say it on TV or in school. Or in our newspaper.