WillBrink
06-03-16, 07:43
The findings of this study come as no surprise to me. :sarcastic:
People who curse a lot have better vocabularies than those who don't, study finds
If someone’s ever accused you of sounding less intelligent because you swear too much, don't worry - science has got your back. A new study has found that those who have a healthy repertoire of curse words at their disposal are more likely to have a richer vocabulary than those who don’t.
This challenges the long-held stereotype that people swear because they can’t find more intelligent words with which to express themselves. As Stephen Fry once said, "The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just f*cking lunatic."
Psychologists Kristin Jay and Timothy Jay of Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (not clear if related) came up with the hypothesis that people who are well-versed in curse words are more likely to have greater overall language fluency too.
For the first experiment, they gathered 43 participants (30 women) aged between 18 and 22 years, and first asked them to rattle off as many swear or taboo words as they could in 60 seconds. Next, they had to recite as many animal names as they could in 60 seconds. The researchers used animal names as an indication of a person's overall vocabulary and interest in language.
As any intelligible American English taboo word or phrase was considered fair game, the participants ended up generating a total of 533 taboo words, including the rather obscure "cum dumpster" and "ass pirate". The participants also submitted to so-called FAS tasks, which are standardised verbal fluency tests.
In a second experiment, another 49 participants (34 women) aged between 18 and 22 were asked to perform a similar task - this time they were asked to write down as many curse words and animal names starting with the letter "a" as they could. They also completed FAS tasks to assess their overall language fluency.
Cont:
http://www.sciencealert.com/people-who-curse-a-lot-have-better-vocabularies-than-those-who-don-t-study-finds
Source:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S038800011400151X
People who curse a lot have better vocabularies than those who don't, study finds
If someone’s ever accused you of sounding less intelligent because you swear too much, don't worry - science has got your back. A new study has found that those who have a healthy repertoire of curse words at their disposal are more likely to have a richer vocabulary than those who don’t.
This challenges the long-held stereotype that people swear because they can’t find more intelligent words with which to express themselves. As Stephen Fry once said, "The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just f*cking lunatic."
Psychologists Kristin Jay and Timothy Jay of Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (not clear if related) came up with the hypothesis that people who are well-versed in curse words are more likely to have greater overall language fluency too.
For the first experiment, they gathered 43 participants (30 women) aged between 18 and 22 years, and first asked them to rattle off as many swear or taboo words as they could in 60 seconds. Next, they had to recite as many animal names as they could in 60 seconds. The researchers used animal names as an indication of a person's overall vocabulary and interest in language.
As any intelligible American English taboo word or phrase was considered fair game, the participants ended up generating a total of 533 taboo words, including the rather obscure "cum dumpster" and "ass pirate". The participants also submitted to so-called FAS tasks, which are standardised verbal fluency tests.
In a second experiment, another 49 participants (34 women) aged between 18 and 22 were asked to perform a similar task - this time they were asked to write down as many curse words and animal names starting with the letter "a" as they could. They also completed FAS tasks to assess their overall language fluency.
Cont:
http://www.sciencealert.com/people-who-curse-a-lot-have-better-vocabularies-than-those-who-don-t-study-finds
Source:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S038800011400151X