Is There a Taboo Word?

Kids get grounded for swearing, and bad words are banned from television... but why is that the case if most adults swear anyway? Linguist and cognitive scientist Benjamin K. Bergen says that swearing can be funny, cathartic, and even useful! In this rated-PG episode, he explains how the science of swearing can help us understand how our brains process language, and what the worst words tell us about our culture. And the episode is squeaky clean: no swearing included!

Additional resources from Dr. Benjamin Bergen:

• Benjamin K. Bergen, UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science
• "What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves"
• "Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning"

Other studies and resources discussed:

• Swearing, Euphemisms, and Linguistic Relativity | PLOS
• Effect of Manipulated State Aggression on Pain Tolerance | SAGE Journals
• Cursing and gender in a corpus of MySpace pages | Semantic Scholar
• Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from 1586 to the Present | Google Books
• Gender, expletive use, and context: Male and female expletive use in structured and unstructured conversation among New Zealand university students | ProQuest

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Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-science-of-swearing-and-what-it-says-about-our-values

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