Swearing Actually a Sign of Intelligence, Suggests Brilliant F*cking Study

[JaredJones]

Swearing Actually a Sign of Intelligence, Suggests Brilliant F*cking Study

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Well, I'll be damned.

For most of our lives, our ass-hat parents and peers have tried to convince us that swearing was not only ill-mannered, but unintelligent. We've always known it to be bullshit -- George Carlin based entire bits around swear words [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsZwRirDOYQ] and he was one of the smartest f*cking people to ever walk this planet -- but we've never had the goddamn evidence to back up ours, our his, claims.

Well, thank f*ck, everything is about to change.

That's because Drs. Kristin and Timothy Jay, two psychology-teaching sonsabitches over at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, have published new research [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S038800011400151X] in Language Sciences which argues that a fluence in swearing actually points towards a healthy verbal ability, not the "poverty of vocabulary" that's been previously suggested by linguistic experts (and our grandmas).

Basically, we're not dumbasses because we call each other "dumbass."

The study conducted to prove the Jay's theory was a simple, if interesting one: A group of students were tasked with saying as many swear words as they could think of in the span of one minute. The results, as BPS Research passes along [http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/12/being-fluent-at-swearing-is-sign-of.html], were that "taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency." (Damn right it is.)

"The number of different swear words that could be thought of in one minute averaged 9; that the number of non-swear words averaged 14; while the number of animal words averaged 22," wrote BPG.

"But of more interest was the observation that these word production scores were positively correlated with one another. In other words, the volunteers who could produce the most swear words tended also to be able to produce the most animal words and non-swear words. Yet if swearing was a sign of an impoverished vocabulary, then the opposite should have been the case. The same pattern was seen when volunteers wrote down swear words rather than saying them out loud."

While not exactly what you would call "definitive proof" that swearing = intelligence -- the study failed to address the relationship between *frequency* of swear words used and a person's IQ, for instance -- the Jay's did more-or-less prove the "fluency-is-fluency" hypothesis that they set out to. In having a diverse vocabulary of swear words, it seems that dipshits like us are actually able to emotionally express ourselves more diversely than the average asshole.

So the next time you find yourself at a family party, gala event, or social gathering in general, show off your intelligence with a few finely crafted f-bombs. Got it, ya jackasses?

Source: BPS Research [http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/12/being-fluent-at-swearing-is-sign-of.html]


Permalink

 

[SKBPinkie]

Fuckity fucking friggin fucknuts.

Now.... where's my PhD?

 

[DarklordKyo]

Spoiler: Does this mean that The Scotsman has a Ph.D?

 

[The Enquirer]

I fucking love the fucking way this fucking article was fucking written.

I'm going to assume I need to use different swear words to get the PhD correct?

 

[Pyrian]

Alternate hypothesis: efforts to curb swearing are utterly ineffective.

 

[Remus]

This means Vinny Jones has to be the smartest person on the planet!

 

[crimson5pheonix]

So I wasn't wrong to call another kid a ************ in kindergarten

 

[Metadigital]

Taboo or profane language serves an important linguistic function. It would stand to reason that a more adapt use of them is something we could tie to intelligence.

I remember a study awhile back which linked swears to non-lingual sections of the brain in an attempt to show how they reveal a lack of intellect. Surely someone who rests on a singular word (like "fuck", which can be used for just about any grammatical purpose) doesn't have the mastery of language of someone who uses a larger assortment of terms. That certainly doesn't go against this study's findings.

The issue isn't as simple as "cursing is stupid" or "cursing is smart". It's really just a fairly obvious (and somewhat meaningless) fact that mastery of a language (including the profane bits) is an indicator of intelligence. Or, at the very least, is a standard by which we can measure intelligence (since the idea of "intellect" is, and always has been, extremely vague).

 

[malnin]

"fluency in swearing"

So just dropping fuck over and over does more to prove how unintelligent you are.

 

[lancar]

I could tell you had great fun writing this one

 

[DementedSheep]

So the ability to quickly recall words including swearwords is associated with fluency? What a shocker.

 

[FPLOON]

Bullshit! This study should know that swearing showcases intelligence in the "street shit" sense and not in the "book shit" sense...

Other than that, if someone ever told me to stop swearing, I would just say, "Linguistics, Muthafukka! Do ya speak it? Shit..."

 

[ASnogarD]

Good laugh to read but...

Its obvious that the study merely showed the more literate KNEW more swear words, rather than actually USED them, and that is the key here, when to USE swear words.

That is actually a problem, people these days are so conditioned to hearing the casual use of swear words the words dont register effectively any more, not that long ago if someone dropped a f-bomb in public you would know instantly something big had effected that person... now its just part of talking.

How do we swear these days? You know when you want to really emphasise a point... it ain't just any point, its a FUCKING POINT!

 

[BeeGeenie]

Pfff... this study proves nothing of the kind.

Just knowing a lot of swears doesn't necessarily mean you use them regularly.

They're saying that if you have a large vocabulary, your vocabulary of swears will be proportionally large as well.

In other words, smart people are more creative and varied in their profanity. If you only drop F-bombs, you're probably still stupid, so try to mix it up a bit. Expand your "vulgabulary."

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Using them effectively is the sign of a well patterned mind. Versatility, mental agility, those are great ways to determine intelligence level. If however one is constantly cursing with no fucking idea how to use them properly, that is a sign of what science calls "being a fucking moron."
Goddamn-son-of-a-*****-pile-of-monkey-nuts-level morons. Of course exactly those types of people will ultimately believe their overusage of swearing means they're fucking genius-level intellectuals.

 

[Deathfish15]

Taboo or profane language serves an important linguistic function. It would stand to reason that a more adapt use of them is something we could tie to intelligence.

I remember a study awhile back which linked swears to non-lingual sections of the brain in an attempt to show how they reveal a lack of intellect. Surely someone who rests on a singular word (like "fuck", which can be used for just about any grammatical purpose) doesn't have the mastery of language of someone who uses a larger assortment of terms. That certainly doesn't go against this study's findings.

The issue isn't as simple as "cursing is stupid" or "cursing is smart". It's really just a fairly obvious (and somewhat meaningless) fact that mastery of a language (including the profane bits) is an indicator of intelligence. Or, at the very least, is a standard by which we can measure intelligence (since the idea of "intellect" is, and always has been, extremely vague).

Well that explained in the article. "Diversity is diversity", meaning that having knowledge of a wide variety of curse words also correlated with having knowledge of a wide variety of words in general. The study was not really used to further probe frequency use of individual words and the subbed in situations which the words are used for. That kind of study would take far longer to produce an accurate result for publishing.

Take a Mad Lib sentence and use as an example:

"Sally _____ the _____ dog while she _____ it to the _____ school"

A person with a short vocabulary of curse words would write it like so:

"Sally fucked the fucking dog while fucking it to the fucking school"

Clearly showing a failed grasp of creativity and short understanding of the English language.

And then with this example:

"Sally bitched at the bastard dog while she half-assed it to the shitty school"

That still is a very provocative sentence riddled with curse words. However the diversity shows a higher educational background than the previous iteration showed.

 

[CrimsonBlack]

Reminded me of this from the Simpsons:

Faith: "Lisa, I'm Faith Crowley, Patriotism editor of Reading Digest."
Homer: "Oh I love your magazine. My favorite section is "How to increase your word power." That thing is really, really, really... good."

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Another misleading science/research article on the Escapist, who could have guessed? As other people before me in this thread has said, it is not that swearing is a sign of intelligence. The finding was that people with a big vocabulary in general also had a big vocabulary of swear words, the former being one of the indicators of intelligence. Whatever or not intelligent people swear more or less is still up there.