change the big obstacles that we Face we need stru change it so I want you all to about to use some words that have been profane in this town for about the last 10 years we're going to need to makeindustrial policy it's going to require regulation just the way it is you know
What words do we mean by profanity? Why are those words profane ? And if you were to ask regulatory agencies like the FCC, for example, they wouldn't give you a list.
But fortunately, we do have some evidence from large-scale psycholinguistics studies that tell us broadly what the types of words are that people find profane . And more specifically, exactly which ones a particular group of people find offensive at a particular time and place.
sounded like that. And then, over the course of history, people-- as they invented new words-- tended to invent words that sounded like the ones that they already knew that were profane . They sort of snowballed.
Refer to animals or to people. That they gain profane meanings. That those profane meanings squeeze out the old meanings, create an externality of having to invent new words to cover
That they gain profane meanings. That those profane meanings squeeze out the old meanings, create an externality of having to invent new words to cover the semantic ground that is now no longer covered by the word that's not being used in its original way.
there's a little bit of wiggle room here-- you would find that in English, it is indeed the slurs that, on average and in specific cases, are judged to be the most profane words of the language, the most offensive words of the language. Copulation is also a near second best.
Copulation is also a near second best. And religion doesn't really provide much profane vocabulary to contemporary American English at all. Across the world, different languages will sample differently from each of these columns.
So to Jew someone, or to Jew someone down that is judged to be offensive. So there's not a lot of profane vocabulary in English that ends with no consonants. Almost all of it ends with consonants.
That's in the language in general. But if you look just at profane English monosyllabic words, there are far more stops than nonstop consonants. So that's a thing.
And then, eventually, these words die out. So many of the most profane words from English are no longer used. So if I were to tell you that in Shakespeare's time the equivalent of the F word was "swive," you would only know that if you were a Shakespearean scholar.
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, The longest or most complicated profane word is surely one in German.
Sort of satirical. Then I wrote biographies of Winston Churchill and JFK, because these are such exaggerated-- they're so huge, you could see human nature more clearly. I wrote this weird book called "Profane Waste," because for a long time I was obsessed with the question of why owners would destroy their own possessions.
And then finally, slurs. And those are kind of the big four categories that contribute profane vocabulary. And if you were to categorize the list of most offensive words in English by which of these four categories they most properly belong to-- of course,
That over the course of the history of a language, a particular word may enter into being profane . And then decades or centuries later may no longer be profane . So it just so happens that if you know someone named Dick, he's probably 65 years old or older.
It was kind of the same thing. So what we see across words when we look at profane vocabulary is that they follow this pattern. That at first, they're not profane at all.
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, And it does it specifically when you're avoiding producing profane language.
president she would be a bra burning thing sacred in literature is the permission to be profane I think that if
in general, you do find that there are far more profane four-letter words than you would expect by chance. And that's true even if you normalize for the frequency of profane words. But you find something else, as well.
And that makes a big difference for lots of stuff that linguists care about. The thing that you should care about with respect to this distinction is that English profane words are far more likely to end with consonants at the end-- they fall into this category over here-- than they are to have no spoken consonants at the end.
fall into this category over here-- than they are to have no spoken consonants at the end. And you could come up with maybe five words in English that are arguably profane that show up on these lists across languages that people find to be offensive. And they're really mostly not that bad, right?
without exception, English speakers make up words that follow this heavy consonant at the end pattern. Moreover, when people invent new profane words-- and this is happening all the time-- those words overwhelmingly follow this same pattern. So I have the privilege of teaching at UC San Diego, where I'm able to consult on a near daily basis with undergraduate students who are aged 18 to 22.
language in your community. And what you find is that there is a whole host of new profane words with every new crop of students. So you might not have heard the word "sperg" before.
So what we see across words when we look at profane vocabulary is that they follow this pattern. That at first, they're not profane at all. Refer to animals or to people.
And Durkheim argued that what we do, really, in creating religion is that we want to celebrate society, i.e., the social connection between each other. But it's difficult to do that in the everyday profane , sort of lived life. So what people did was to create a kind of godlike figure and to sort of transfer onto the god figure that sense of identity, of connectedness.
Or when labeling these columns. Copulation, for example, is not a profane word. So there must be something else about the words that makes them offensive to people.
We have this idea in English that there's something special about four-letter words, right? And in fact, if you look empirically at the distribution of four-letter words among profane words compared to what you'd expect on the basis of the distribution in the language in general, you do find that there are far more profane four-letter words than you would expect by chance.
And in fact, if you look empirically at the distribution of four-letter words among profane words compared to what you'd expect on the basis of the distribution in the language in general, you do find that there are far more profane four-letter words than you would expect by chance. And that's true even if you normalize for the frequency of profane words.
And that's true. Those two effects are independent of one another. So it appears to be that people have this template in their minds, this expectation that profane words are going to sound a particular way. And when exposed to a brand-new word, they bring that to bear.
There are some called stop consonants, like puh, and tuh, and kuh, that really do just stop the sound coming out of your mouth. And if those are the ones that are most likely to occur at the ends of profane words, then this is consistent with that explanation. And in fact, if you count all English monosyllabic words, and you look at the ending consonants, there are about as many stop consonants, like puh, tuh, kuh,
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, So people are suppressing, they're trying to inhibit producing profane words in tasks like this.
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, I was curious, what is the most long or complicated profane word?
Some were diligent, and some were slackers. Some were pious, sure, but more were profane . There was gossip, and brown nosing, and backstabbing.
I was surprised by so much. And so the book somehow goes on this long journey from him being a symbol of the profane to some sort of
Is that-- This is being edited. Yeah, yeah. I like to take advantage when I'm not on air, scream the profane inclinations. And I had this thought as I was in Ferguson of just the degree to which law enforcement there felt like an occupying force from another entity,
Well, in English, not so much. And so in fact, what's going on with these three- and four- and five-letter words is that English profane words tend to follow a particular sound pattern. And that sound pattern is this.
How much does it sound like a word? And also, by the way, how likely do you think this word is to be profane ? And this is what they said.
And so you see two statistically significant effects here, two main effects. The first is that if you have two consonants at the beginning, you're going to be judged more profane . That is, higher bars than if you have only one consonant at the beginning.
And then, the second effect is that the dark bars are higher than the gray bars. And that's showing that if you have a consonant at the end, you're judged to be more profane than if you have no consonant, spoken consonant, at the end.
So consider the case of fiction. So when you have a fictitious language, say Klingon or Dothraki, and you have to come up with what is the profane inventory going to be like, without exception, English speakers make up words that follow this heavy consonant at the end pattern.
Well, there are a couple of possible explanations. It could be that at some point in the previous history of the language, it just happened to be the case that a bunch of profane words sounded like that. And then, over the course of history, people-- as they invented new words-- tended to invent words that sounded like the ones that they already
And what we find when we look within a culture across time is that you get the exact same effect. That over the course of the history of a language, a particular word may enter into being profane . And then decades or centuries later may no longer be profane .
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, And we actually know now, by comparing cases where people are induced to make errors that would be profane , like "hit shed."
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, And again, we wouldn't know about this binary system of pathways, these two pathways, if it weren't for profane language.
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, And in fact, if you look at the words that are produced during coprolalia, they're actually more properly described as taboo than profane .
If we are to project forward, we can reasonably assume that the very set of words that are now judged to be the most offensive ones in the English language, And the reason that I say that is when you look at coprolalia in Japan, where they just don't have that set of profane words,
And in that, with Jezebel, she created, a site which was unapologetic in its politics and its sensibilities, provocative, funny, insightful, sometimes profane . Anna, I know, hoped that it would be, and I believe, to an extent, it has, but I'll have you address that at some point, an antidote
certain to get trounced. And then there's my personal favorite, General Hugh Johnson, a big, blustery, often drunk, profane ex-West pointer who brought the NRA into being, the the National Recovery Administration. He created its symbol of the Blue Eagle,
there. But the other thing was, and this happened early on. So like I said, the entertainment value for me at the very beginning was how do I these really weird profane word combinations. But that's not a lot of sustainability in terms of mental enjoyment, thankfully I guess right , for my own psyche. And so then it became,
burning, so I was wondering if you had any suggestions there. And, "You guys keep repeating the same shit over and over again." I mean -- not to be too profane and antagonistic. I'm half-Sicilian, I can't help it, but -- yesterday,