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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.
I wonder how Wimpy Curses work vs. Real Curses. I myself don't have a tendency of cursing I tend to use the old curse or wimpy curse words like "Dag Nabbit!", "D'Oh", "Arg!", and "Crappy", and "Cruncy". I tend to shoot them out just as often and with little though like other people shoot off Real Curses.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What about the perpetual fuck as a comma crowd though? How do they fit into this? Are they de-sensitized?
If we want to really clean up government and speed up processing in the criminal justice system, we should put $100 million into fMIR as lie detectors.
We could have an electoral truth telling challenge between candidates to see who's telling the truth and who isn't.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
Which brings me to the question - why does WoW let me say 'crap' - but not 'LSD' ?
I personally think that WoW should have a 'receive' foul language option to increase entertainment.
So if two people both have the flag on - they can spit what ever they want at each other.
Sort of like VpV.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I have no idea where they got that (and many others of their facts) from, but wiktionary says otherwise. It seems to be pseudo-researched with a couple of reputable quotes here and there... Oh well.
To the point, in reference to their Stroop test (on page 2), where people were startled by obscene words moreso than neutral words, I find it to be the reverse in "comfortable" environments (as they vaguely mentioned). That is to say, so many people swear habitually that it's not even a big deal in casual situations. To find someone that says "poop" instead of "shit" or something unique and unsensical like "fatty arbuckle!" instead of "fuck!" tends to startle people in surprize. At first, at least.
The novelty of profanity has been worn out to the point where it doesn't have the desired effect anymore. Therefore, I subscribe to the alternative: Using unique and creative utterings to describe my feelings.
This way, after people get to know me, and get used to me being profanity-free, and then one day I get REALLY pissed off and say FUCK, they know I MEAN IT!
Works wonderfully. Plus, makes swearing that/i much more fun.
- shazow
Another interesting observation was made by George Carlin. He was essentially guessing that teaching somebody not to use certain "bad" words is the first step in teaching them to be complacent. If you can teach them not to make certain sounds, you can teach them not to yell at authorities. Often, people who play the "word police" are very controlling. Of course, cursing is not a sign of an educated person, but when you hit your shin on a corner of a desk, "fuck!" is a more appropriate response than "I think I experienced pain" ...
A religious war is an adult version of a fight over who has the best imaginary friend
Why is it that words come to be 'forbidden' after normal usage before. At one time, none of the swear words used today existed. Remember, someone had to invent all of these words. On the flip side, why is it that swear words, after repeated use, lose their 'evilness'?
Nowadays, the phrase, "Oh, golly!" may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. "Golly" is a compaction of "God's body" and, thus, was once a profanity.
Is it that profanity is in the eye of the beholder? If I were talking to somebody in a room can call the person a 'fucktard', chances are the person I'm talking to would take offense. But in a different scenario I'm talking with a French man that doesn't know a word of english. Now I can call him whatever-the-hell I want to. And just as long as I'm using the inflections in my voice as if I were telling a joke, he wouldn't know any better than if I were telling a joke.
What makes a word a word? It's not the arrangement of the english characters on the post card that offend me - the association between the arranged letters on the notecard and my past experience with that word that makes it vulgar. Ever since we have been children we have known which words not to say - not by the letters F U C and K, but by the face on my pissed off mother. That surely would explain why a child, illiterate or foreigner wouldn't find our swear words offensive.
So, after reading the article, I question the reactions that the tested subjects had to the swear word on the card. We aren't born with these conections in our head, they are learned.
Lastly, another question for the readers: Can swear words be taught out of existence? You would think that if people stopped taking offense to swear words that people would stop using them. It would make sense that if we were taught that 'shit' was a synonym for Cotton Candy, then it wouldn't really be offensive.
Feasible? bs? i dunno...
Slash-for-Thought
The emotional level, such as what a lie detector is supposed to monitor, is then probably the best route for determining guilt. If you think about all of the complications of creating an fMRI-based lie detector, it seems less and less possible.
Yobanaya v jopu pizda, suka bliad', xuinia zadrochennaya molofeinaya, zalupa zloyebuchaya, pizdenishy pizdostradatel'nye prihujarennye, huila bl'adskij suchenysh' gnoinyj bliadopereyobannyi :)
Da? Putzalut moi shzopa, balshoi durak. Ti javnó sviñá.
There is a large and ancient subculture in Mexico known as the "albur", a play of words, used mostly by men, that contains a hidden message, particularly about sexually dominating the person you are speaking to. It comes from the natives being subyugated by the spaniards, and shooting a hidden meanings at your dominator was a way to achieve minor victories every day.
Nowadays, the "albur" is deeply rooted in many sectors of Mexico's working class, has become a game and secret society of sorts, and there are hundreds if not thousands of possible retorts (new ones are invented virtually every day). The point is to shoot back and forth until one of the two "players" is at a loss. There is always the danger of messing up and causing a self-inflicted goal, to use a soccer reference. Think a much subtler and faster version of "8 Mile's" rap face-offs, and you get the general idea.
A few people speak like this all the time, you're trying to have a normal conversation, then suddenly whoever's around is smiling and you have absolutely no idea what the hell just happened. An extremely small percentage of foreigners are aware that the "albur" exists, much fewer still understand it, virtually none are any good at it, and this includes people from other spanish-speaking nations.
Now, Spaniards are particularly blunt and nasty in their usage of profanity, the undisputed kings of Tourette's: "Bola de jilipollas, ostia joder, que me cago en la leche de su madre".
That last expression translates into "I shit in your mother's milk".
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty