Swearing: Language for Feeling
We hypothesize that swearing is an emotional action that hardly says anything other than expressing and evoking emotions and that studying swearing might shed light on the evolutionary path from motor behavior to language. Our lens is the involuntary swearing—coprolalia—associated with Tourette syndrome (ts). In a qualitative analysis of videotaped interviews with 16 ts sufferers and their families, we arrive at the following findings, of which the first one replicates previous findings, and the following are novel: (i) coprolalia, once believed psychogenic, is embodied; (ii) the pragmatics of swearing obeys the cultural rules of communication while violating the culture’s values; (iii) coprolalia is unique as a speech act as it relies mainly on cultural context rather than semantics; (iv) coprolalia’s sensitivity to culture affords its performative effectiveness in hurting its hearer. Therefore, reducing the automaticity of the hearer’s interpretation of the coprolaliac’s intention can reduce the hurtful effect.