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Cursing as Peephole Into Brain Architecture
tabdelgawad writes "The New York Times offers this excellent and entertaining writeup on cursing and its role in recent studies of the brain. The article discusses the universality of cursing across time, space, and culture, its varied roles, from linguistic evolution to anger management, and its uses in recent brain research. You can also read all about the sexual effects of uttering obscenities and the swearing habits of sorority women." From the article: "Researchers point out that cursing is often an amalgam of raw, spontaneous feeling and targeted, gimlet-eyed cunning. When one person curses at another, they say, the curser rarely spews obscenities and insults at random, but rather will assess the object of his wrath, and adjust the content of the 'uncontrollable' outburst accordingly." As someone who plays a lot of MMOGs, in my experience this is only mostly true.
hey say, the curser rarely spews obscenities and insults at random, but rather will assess the object of his wrath, and adjust the content of the 'uncontrollable' outburst accordingly."
And that expectation (which we all have) is why it's so damn funny in Office Space when Samir, the non-native English speaker, is cursing completely inappropriately. SON OF A F$*(!
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
I think that researchers who study the evolution of linguistics really don't care much about the "experiences" of "someone who plays a lot of MMOGs".
I know that I tend to react "guiltily" to being challenged, regardless of whether I'm actually in the wrong. I suspect this is a consequence of the fact that, when one's parents are enraged at, for example, the paint on the walls, one's guilt or innocence (no really, my sister did it) ceases to be an issue. Then if, as I suspect, the detectable physiological reaction to guilt is fear-based, it could be that the so-called "liars" just had parents who were a bit hasty with the shouting and the smacking and the grounding. Hardly a basis on which to lock them up.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Last time I checked, Wiktionary is written by random people from the web, whereas the New York Times is written by people who actually know something. Look -- yours truly, yet another random person from the web, just modified the Wiktionary definition to make you a liar:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/golly#Etymology_1
Wiktionary and Wikipedia are cool concepts, but they must not be used as sources for any research beyond common harmless curiosity.
Quoting a reference from the 1940's (ok, it was Doc Smith, but he was a product of his time and highly idiomatic in his choice of language) a pre-modern perception was that men swore and women didn't. "Men swear to keep from crying, women cry to keep from swearing" quoth Kinneson. Both functions were considered equivalent mechanisms for blowing off steam.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
What's more interesting are the people who can't stand the idea of a person who doesn't swear, and who reflexively curse and deride such a person. I wonder why that is? There's nothing wrong with holding yourself to a high standard of conduct, the world would be a better place if more people made a conscious effort to control their behavior.
Usually the problem is that morally "superior" people regard others with contempt. But regarding people with contempt is a moral flaw.
There are, I believe, people who really ARE superior, but they do not naively regard themselves as "superior" and they do not necessarily avoid cursing and other "bad" behaviors either.
It's a matter of being very sensitive to the situation and responding to it appropriately that makes one morally well developed, I feel.