{"id":21828,"date":"2025-02-08T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T10:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21828"},"modified":"2025-02-08T10:26:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T10:26:33","slug":"a-swearing-expert-discusses-the-state-of-profanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21828","title":{"rendered":"A Swearing Expert Discusses the State of Profanity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cursing is coursing through society. Words once too blue to publicly utter have become increasingly commonplace. \u201cLanguage is just part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle,\u201d said Timothy Jay, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Mass.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jay has spent a career studying the use of profanity, from what motivates it to the ways in which it satisfies, signals meaning and offends. Although officially retired, he has continued to edit studies on profanity and he recently offered an expert opinion in an ongoing legal dispute in Michigan<\/a> over whether the phrase \u201cLet\u2019s go Brandon\u201d (a euphemism used to denigrate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.) should be reasonably interpreted as \u201cprofane.\u201d (It should not, Dr. Jay opined.)<\/p>\n

Dr. Jay posits that the increasingly casual nature of the spoken word derives in part from the way people communicate on social media. One study<\/a>, published in 2014 by other researchers in the field, found that curse words on Twitter, now known as X, appeared in 7.7 percent of posts, with profanity representing about 1 in every 10 words on the platform. That compared to a swearing rate of 0.5 to 0.7 percent in spoken language, the study found.<\/p>\n

If that data troubles you, Dr. Jay has some thoughts on how to dial back the profanity. F*@%-free February, anyone?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tis interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, and scrubbed of some of the vernacular that Dr. Jay conceded he regularly uses on the golf course.<\/p>\n

Why does social media contribute to more casual use of language?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People are remote, so they can be aggressive without any physical retaliation. By and large, you\u2019re anonymous, so there\u2019s no personal consequence. It\u2019s also part of a larger shift to a more casual lifestyle. What kids are wearing to school these days would have been disgraceful in my day.<\/p>\n

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Cursing is coursing through society. Words once too blue to publicly utter have become increasingly commonplace. \u201cLanguage is just part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle,\u201d said Timothy Jay, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Mass.Dr. Jay has spent a career studying the use of profanity, from what motivates it to the ways in which it satisfies, signals meaning and offends. Although officially retired, he has continued to edit studies on profanity and he recently offered an expert opinion in an ongoing legal dispute in Michigan over whether the phrase \u201cLet\u2019s go Brandon\u201d (a euphemism used to denigrate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.) should be reasonably interpreted as \u201cprofane.\u201d (It should not, Dr. Jay opined.)Dr. Jay posits that the increasingly casual nature of the spoken word derives in part from the way people communicate on social media. One study, published in 2014 by other researchers in the field, found that curse words on Twitter, now known as X, appeared in 7.7 percent of posts, with profanity representing about 1 in every 10 words on the platform. That compared to a swearing rate of 0.5 to 0.7 percent in spoken language, the study found.If that data troubles you, Dr. Jay has some thoughts on how to dial back the profanity. F*@%-free February, anyone?Tis interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, and scrubbed of some of the vernacular that Dr. Jay conceded he regularly uses on the golf course.Why does social media contribute to more casual use of language?People are remote, so they can be aggressive without any physical retaliation. By and large, you\u2019re anonymous, so there\u2019s no personal consequence. It\u2019s also part of a larger shift to a more casual lifestyle. What kids are wearing to school these days would have been disgraceful in my day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21830,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21831,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21828\/revisions\/21831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}