Swear words in different languages may tend to lack certain sounds such as L , r yes was suggested by research published this Tuesday andin the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. This common pattern in profanity indicates that these sounds, called approximationsmay seem less offensive to listeners.
Profanity is thought to have sounds that help facilitate the expression of emotions and attitudes, but no studies to date have investigated whether there is a universal pattern for the sound of profanity across different languages.
researchers Shiri Lev-Ari yes Ryan McCay of Royal Holloway, University of London, conducted a pilot study with speakers of five unrelated languages (20 people per language) and they were asked to list the most offensive words they knew in their language, excluding racial slurs. The initial study revealed that profanity was less likely to be included approximationswhich include sounds like L , r , w And yes . The authors suggest that the approximations they may be less suitable than other sounds for offending, and they investigated this in two additional studies.
The authors asked 215 participants (from six different languages) evaluates pairs of pseudowords (imaginary words created by the authors), one of which included a approach. For example, in Albanian, the authors took the word “force“, this means “bird“, and changed it to” Yes ” to include a approach And”left“, without a approach. The authors found that participants were significantly less likely to judge words with approximations were profanities and words selected without approximations as swear words 63% of the time.
Words with the sounds ‘l’, ‘r’ and ‘w’ are less associated with swearing and insults.
Smooth out profanity and insults
In a later study, the authors also analyzed the pseudopalabrotaswhich are variations of profanity that are considered less offensive, for example “damn! ” instead of “damn“, in English. The authors found that the approximations were significantly more frequent in these expressions than in profanity. The authors propose that this introduction of approximations it’s part of what makes pseudo-swearing less offensive than profanity.
The authors believe that this is an underlying trend that may have evolved in different languages.
The usage of approximations It doesn’t necessarily render a word harmless, but the authors suggest that their findings point to an underlying trend in how profanity may have evolved in different languages. The authors also point out that some languages have profanities that include approximations like French, but the francophones included in the study still rated pseudo-words lacking approximations as profanity, suggesting that there may be universal bias.
The authors conclude that their work suggests a potential universal model for profanity across different languages, with a lack of approximations as a common feature when perceiving profanity.
Reference: The sound of swearing: are there universal patterns in swearing? (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review) DOI 10.3758/s13423-022-02202-0
