A Psycholinguistic Study of Swear Words

 

Megan A. Ruwe
Dr. Darrin Hetrick, Faculty Mentor

Taboo words elicit strong negative emotions and may cause harm or offense to individuals. In English, certain taboo words - specifically swear words - appear often in everyday language. These words provide the speaker with psychological means of easily expressing emotions. Euphemistic language can replace taboos in situations where it is necessary to avoid negative language. Previous psycholinguistics studies studied taboo and euphemistic language processing through a Lexical Decision Task and determined that taboo words are more easily remembered than neutral words. Through a Lexical Decision Task and a free recall test, this research examines the memory of swear words and minced oaths, euphemisms that share phonetic properties with swear words. Initial findings of this research reveal that taboo swear words are more strongly associated in one’s memory than minced oaths. 

Keywords: Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Taboo, Euphemism, Psychology

Topic(s):Linguistics

Presentation Type: Oral Presentation

Session: TBA
Location: TBA
Time: TBA