Group items tagged

This article addresses the controversy behind swearing around kids. There was a linguist who used to be a massive swearer, but he noticed that his linguistic tendencies and language style changed once he had kids. He decided to do a study with college students regarding their responses to swearing in lectures (since swearing around kids would be considered unethical). He addressed two types of profanity in this study; swearing and slurs. He found that slurs generated a negative reaction to the people at whom the slurs were about (Black people, gay people, etc.), but cussing didn't have an impact.

This article explains the controversy behind swearing around kids. A professor from UC San Diego explored this topic due to his own self interest. As a lover of profanity, he seems to have seen himself change his language while being around his own kids. In a experiment conducted on college students, he came across profanity as slurs and cussing. Slurs created a negative reaction to those that the slurs were about that consisted of gender preferences and skin color, but swearing didn't seem to show.

Article examines the changing public attitudes towards words: is Redskins a pejorative racial slur? Is acceptability dependent on the user?

Words in the English language are structured to help children learn, according to research. Words like "woof" accurately represent the sound of a dog while sounds with similar meanings may have a similar structure, such as the "sl" sound at the beginning of a word often has negative properties as in "slime, slur, slum, slug."

Words in the English language are structured to help children learn, according to research. Words like "woof" accurately represent the sound of a dog while sounds with similar meanings may have a similar structure, such as the "sl" sound at the beginning of a word often has negative properties as in "slime, slur, slum, slug."

A USC professor of Communications unexpectedly found himself at the center of controversy when he used the Chinese phrase "那个" (neige= literally "that"= the Chinese equivalent of the English "um") to illustrate the concept of "filler words." A letter to the USC administration, signed "Black MBA candidates class of 2022" decried the use of the word, because it sounded too close to the n-word for comfort.

This article talks about how society right now is living in "The Age of Profanity," meaning that swearing has become so much a part of our lives, that it isn't really viewed as "inappropriate" anymore. In the article, Benjamin K. Bergen and Michael Adams, who both wrote two different books about profanity, agree that the court system, English teachers, and parents who teach children that swearing is unacceptable, are the only reasons why profane words still exist today. Benjamin K. Bergen, author of, "What the F," talks about how there are very blurred lines between words classified as profane and words that are perfectly okay to say. He also points out that there is no evidence to say that exposure to profanity harms children, but slurs that are directed at people because of their racial, ethnic or sexual identities are. Michael Adams, author of, "In praise of Profanity," talks about how even though we are in "The Age of Profanity" now, it won't last for long because the future of swearing belongs to slurs. On the other hand, he talks about fearing a future where "nothing will be obscene, nothing profane and nothing taboo," because of how socially acceptable and common profanity has become.

Scientist discuss why humans enjoy swearing so much and what actually happens in our brains when we do use curse words.

This article talks about the misconception of swearing in front of your kids. Kids do not seem to be affected by swearing unless it is a racial slur.

Robert Bowers, the alleged Pittsburgh synagogue killer, had an online life like many thousands of anti-Semitic Americans. He had Twitter and Facebook accounts and was an active user of Gab, a right-wing Twitter knockoff with a hands-off approach to policing speech. The Times of Israel reported that among anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and slurs, Bowers had recently posted a picture of "a fiery oven like those used in Nazi concentration camps used to cremate Jews, writing the caption 'Make Ovens 1488F Again,'" a white-supremacist reference. Then he made one last post, saying, "I'm going in," and allegedly went to kill 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Only then did his accounts come down, just like Cesar Sayoc's, the mail-bomb suspect. This is how it goes now. Both of these guys made nasty, violent, prejudiced posts. Yet, as reporter after reporter has noted, their online lives were-to the human eye at least-indistinguishable from the legions of other trolls who say despicable things. There is just no telling who will stay in the comments section and who will try to kill people in the real world. It was not long ago that free-speech absolutism was the order of the day in Silicon Valley. But that was before anti-Semitic attacks spiked; before the Charlottesville, Virginia, killing; before the kind of open racism that had lost purchase in American culture made its ugly resurgence. Each new incident ratchets up the pressure on technology companies to rid themselves of their trolls. But the culture they've created will not prove easy to stamp out.

Excellent, though long essay on swearing: taboo language that has a special role in expressing and communicating emotion. (Be forewarned, sensitive readers: whole lotta profanity in this essay!)

What more can be said about Donald Trump's reported remark about "shithole countries"? Media outlets have by and large decided it was newsworthy enough to report without censoring, so we've been seeing and hearing the word shithole everywhere. More important than the word itself, of course, is the hateful sentiment behind it, as many commentators have pointed out. Trump's use of the word was in the service of a disparaging slur on countries, including Haiti and African nations, from which he thinks the U.S. should be limiting immigration. (Despite his vague protestations on Twitter, the White House pointedly did not deny that he dropped the S-bomb in front of a room full of lawmakers.) But shithole doesn't have to be used in such a vile way. In fact, despite its scatological origins, the word has something of a literary pedigree, which is worth appreciating as an antidote to the enervating news cycle.

The article examines some commonly-used colloquial terms that could be construed as racist, and the reasons behind why those terms are not innocent. Author Michael Coard asserts, "Racism is not just lynching, cross-burning, redlining, employment discrimination, educational barriers, or even malicious slurs, and those who manifest the unconscious and passive form of racism are not so easily identifiable."