Swearing Is Good for You

by Emma Byrne

  It was here, in a place of both space and safety, where Washoe was to live out the rest of her forty-two years. In 2007 she died in her bed, surrounded by primates of two species who loved her.

  Does It Matter If Chimpanzees Can Swear?

  Chimpanzees like Washoe—and people like the Fouts and the Gardners—have taught us so much about our next of kin in the animal kingdom. Through a heroic half-century of living with chimpanzees, treating them as our cousins and observing how they behave, Project Washoe gives us a clearer idea than ever of what our own pre-sapiens origins might have been like.

  There are a lot of things that convince me that Washoe and her family had self-awareness and a rich emotional life, but none more than her ability to notice when people were sad or hurt and to offer comfort. Roger tells the story of when one of his colleagues, Kat, returned to work after losing her baby. Washoe wanted to know why Kat had been away. Kat signed to Washoe: my baby died. “Washoe peered into Kat’s eyes again and carefully signed CRY, touching her cheek and drawing her finger down the path a tear would make on a human,” said Roger.26

  Chimpanzees aren’t primitive humans. They have their own distinct genetics and evolutionary history. But they are our closest cousins, and by studying them we have filled in some of the gaps in our own evolutionary record. They share our gifts for humor, for compassion, and for learning as well as our burdens of conflict and frustration. Washoe and her extended family have shown us that, whatever else our ancestors did, it’s a pretty safe bet that they swore almost as soon as they learned to talk.

  Whether you’re a chimpanzee or a human being, in order to swear you need an understanding of the psychology of others, a working theory of mind, to be able to anticipate how your words are likely to make someone else feel. You also need an emotional life; without meaningful emotions there would be no swearing. You need a complex enough mind to understand social concepts like taboos; if we didn’t have an idea—however vague—of a society that disapproves of some things and approves of others, we would never know shame or taboos and there would be no such thing as swearing.

  And we can be thankful that our ancestors swore, too. As a safety valve and a bonding mechanism, swearing has no equal. Those proto-humans who first banded together to hunt might never have been so successful if it weren’t for the gift of swearing that developed right alongside the very first speech.

  It matters that chimpanzees can communicate because we finally have evidence of a non-human intelligence living here on earth. For years, in my discipline of artificial intelligence, we’ve been debating the ethics of how we should treat non-human intelligence if we ever manage to create it. But non-human intelligence already exists: chimpanzees can think, feel, want, grieve, teach, fear, and feel shame and compassion. They are self-aware enough to communicate, and have a complex enough internal life to recognize taboos, which they can use to swear, and they have strong emotions that drive them to swear. In June 2013 the American National Institutes of Health said they would no longer give financial support to experiments on chimpanzees, and in June 2015 the US Fish and Wildlife Service put captive chimpanzees on the “endangered” list, meaning that anyone who wants to carry out research using chimpanzees as subjects will have to apply for a permit.

  Modern medicine is based on the use of uncounted numbers of animal test subjects from rats and rabbits to apes and monkeys, but I’m profoundly relieved that we’ve finally recognized the intelligence that exists in chimpanzees. And nowhere is that intelligence more obvious than in their invention of swearing.

  _____________

  * Washoe gave birth to a son, Sequoyah, while she and Roger were based at the University of Oklahoma. Sequoyah became injured and died of an infection when he was just days old. Roger describes Washoe’s grief, and his fury, in Next of Kin, which changed the way I think about our relationship with other primates. I defy you to read about Washoe’s time in Oklahoma without wanting to swear.

  * * * * * 6 *

  No Language for a Lady:

  Gender and Swearing

  One of the things I’ve learned as a woman in a male-dominated profession is that a laissez-faire attitude to swearing can go a long way. As a shortcut to being accepted as one of the boys it’s more effective than learning the offside rule and easier than burping the theme song to the Muppets. But while it might make me one of the lads in the lab, swearing is likely to hold me back in the real world, while it’s more likely to help my male counterparts. Whether we like it or not, research shows that we are still a lot more judgmental of women who use taboo language than we are of men.1

  But this double standard is relatively new. Sometime around the early eighteenth century there was a significant change in culture. Male and female language began to undergo a shift that can best be described as power for men versus purity for women. Influential commentators at the time encouraged women to adopt a “clean” style of language, shunning taboo words—especially those that related to bodily functions—on pain of social exclusion and the threat of an eternity in hell. Faced with such impressive threats, women devised increasingly elaborate euphemisms as they sought to say what had become unsayable. Men, on the other hand, were expected to master power, and that power can still be seen today. Men’s verbal styles tend to be more direct than women’s: women are more likely to use euphemisms (“I’m going to powder my nose”) and are more likely to hedge requests with face-saving get-out clauses (“Would it be OK to . . . ?”).

  This shift meant that swearing became part of the male side of the lexicon. Swearing isn’t just full of “impurities”; it can also be very direct, sometimes even aggressive. The power of swearing isn’t limited to the verbal equivalent of beating one’s chest, however. In a society where only men can speak of (and by extension learn about) taboo subjects like sex and other bodily functions, that knowledge—that power—was extended to men and denied to women.

  In retaining the right to swear, men also held on to the power to express a much wider range of emotional states. As swearing in the workplace shows, it’s a powerful tool for joking, bonding, and being part of a team. Jocular abuse between women was written out of the language and a more indirect—and occasionally hypocritical—form of interaction had to take its place. Those insisting that women’s language should be pure managed to rip the most powerful linguistic tool out of the hands (and mouths and minds) of women for centuries.

  Surely things are starting to change? Here I am, a woman writing a book about swearing. As far as I know my friends don’t hold me in contempt for my obsession with taboo language; my sex has never made me feel as though I shouldn’t swear. Research shows that women are using swearing and other equally powerful forms of language more effectively than ever, but that same research shows that doing so still comes at a greater social risk for women: a man swearing is more likely to be seen as jocular or strong; women are likely to be seen as unstable or untrustworthy. To which I can only ask: where the fuck did this bullshit come from?

  “Why won’t you listen?” The Indirectness of Women’s Speech

  Wherever it comes from, it’s pervasive. We all internalize the norms of politeness as we grow up, and what counts as polite varies depending on your social group, generation, and gender. One parameter is how bluntly we speak to each other. This quality, which linguists call directness, varies from culture to culture, but also between subcultures. As a woman who has worked in several male-dominated fields I’ve had to learn the hard way that statements starting with “Would you mind if I . . . ?,” “I wonder if maybe . . . ?,” or “Could we perhaps . . . ?” tend to go unheard, or at the very least unattended to. More direct colleagues would say, “We’ll do it this way.” (Even more direct ones: “Why the hell aren’t we doing it this way?”) When linguist Deborah Tannen studied male and female conversational styles she found that men are much more likely than women to state their beliefs, desires, and intentions directly. They’re also more likely to interrupt with contradictions,
whereas women respect “turn taking” and are more likely to interrupt only when they are agreeing with the speaker.2

  Indirectness is largely about saving face, allowing the person you’re talking with to disagree with what you’re saying or not comply with what you’re asking. “Is anyone else cold in here?” contains the tacit information that I might like the heating on but doesn’t demand a yes or no answer to the question, “Please may I put the heating on?” Some cultures are much more indirect than others: when my husband and I were studying Japanese I seized with glee on all the different ways of saying no to a request that don’t involve the mortification of actually saying ‘No!” “It’s difficult right now . . .” (complete with a slightly helpless trailing off at the end) was one of my favorites and I took great delight in jokingly using it around my considerably more direct husband, who has very few problems saying “no” and who finds my sense of obligation somewhat bizarre.

  The indirect register in Japanese made me very comfortable indeed, and when I worked there I finally found myself having conversations that felt like I was on a par with my male colleagues. Only when studying the language more intensively when I returned home did I realize that the indirect register was the reason for my greater comfort. That’s because, in British English at least, women and girls tend to be socialized into preferring a more collaborative, less competitive style of communication, while men and boys are generally rewarded for directness. In Japan, indirectness of expression is a widespread preference regardless of gender.

  What does this have to do with swearing? Few speech acts are more direct—or more likely to lead to a loss of face if used inappropriately—than swearing. There is potentially a strong bias against swearing for many women, a bias that comes from the same social conditioning that sees us adopt more indirect and conciliatory forms of speech. However, as more of us are working in previously male-dominated workplaces, and as later generations are starting to resist some of the constraints of traditional femininity, women and girls are changing their speech patterns. And nothing says “one of the boys” like swearing. But why is this so? Directness aside, why do we assume that women don’t swear as much as men? And if we don’t swear as much as men, then why not?

  Femininity Means Never Having to Say “Fuck You”—Protecting the Fairer Sex from Fouler Language

  Plenty of researchers have started with the assumption that women swear less than men and have then tried to explain why that might be the case. In the early twentieth century, linguists were still confidently asserting that “women will often invent innocent and euphemistic words and paraphrases while men tend to favour more coarse language.”3

  The most common explanation boils down to the same double standard that makes “slut” an insult and “stud” a compliment. Swearing in both sexes is associated with sexuality and—given that women are judged more harshly than men for their sexual adventures—women supposedly keep a lid on bad language to prevent accusations of bad behavior.4 Swearing is also part of that direct register that we are comfortable hearing from men but that still seems aberrant coming from a woman. However, this attitude is relatively recent.

  From the books and pamphlets that were popular in the 1600s, we know that attitudes to the allegedly fairer sex were starting to change sometime around then. Despite the fact that women were the ones going through the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth (which, by definition, involve fucking, shitting, and bloody cunts) we were now expected to have pure minds, unsullied by even the notions of bodily functions or other taboos.

  The most influential advocate for refinement in women’s language and behavior was Richard Allestree. His position as provost of Eton College and chaplain to King Charles II gave him an extremely effective platform for his ideas. In his book The Ladies’ Calling (1673) he insisted that women who swear begin to change sex, undergoing a “metamorphosis” that makes them “affectedly masculine.” According to Allestree, this would be such an affront to God’s order for the world that: “there is no noise on this side of Hell can be more amazingly odious” than “an Oath … out of a woman’s [mouth].” What a claim! Not the crying of a hungry child or the groans of the sick—no, what really pisses God off is a woman saying “asshole.”

  Women’s experience of pregnancy and childbirth once made them mystical and slightly terrifying creatures, but these new views on femininity attempted to control this power, to impose purity and innocence on womankind. “From being dangerous creatures, women had been reduced to passive angels by the end of the seventeenth century with femininity in part being defined by a purity of discourse,” says Tony McEnery, professor of linguistics and the author of Swearing in English.5

  At the time that Allestree was writing, women’s social roles were narrowing. This was a process that he both welcomed and encouraged. In fact, Allestree recognizes only three types of women: “virgins, wives and widows.” Any other state disqualified one from society, or at least from the good graces of Allestree (and God’s good graces, the two being indistinguishable in his mind). Foul language was a sure sign that a woman had knowledge of foul deeds. According to Mr. Allestree, women’s swearing is a sign of a breakdown in the acceptable social order where masculine men were put on this earth to keep fragile femininity safe from the harsh knowledge of the world. Richard Allestree would have really hated my being a researcher—a woman whose job could best be described as professional curiosity: “There is none more mischievous than Curiosity, a temptation which foil’d human nature even in Paradise: and therefore sure a feeble girl ought not to trust herself with [it],” Allestree decreed.

  This campaign soon spread beyond the policing of women’s language. If men were still using profanities in the presence of women, who knows what we ladies might pick up? Jeremy Collier, one of the foremost campaigners against bad language at the turn of the eighteenth century, leveled his quill against the Restoration playwrights with their use of themes and language that were base, common, and popular. He accused these playwrights of using language that was likely to corrupt innocent women.6 “Do women leave all the regards of decency and conscience behind them when they come to the play-house?” he wrote. “To treat the ladies with such stuff is no better than taking their money to abuse them. It supposes . . . that they are practised in the language of the stews, and pleased with the scenes of brutishness.”

  Some playwrights pointed out that ladies were still attending theaters with every appearance of enjoyment. Perhaps these “scenes of brutishness” were exactly what drew them in? Inconceivable! Collier concludes. What has clearly happened is that these ladies have become so completely refined as to be entirely incapable of understanding the swearing and sexual humor shown on stage.

  There were those who thought Collier a bit extreme, even by the standards of the day. Playwright Thomas D’Urfey described Collier as “foaming at the mouth” for his criticism of Don Quixote. But then, D’Urfey did write a song called “The Fart,” so the two were never likely to see eye to eye.

  Mind you, when Collier was agonizing over the poor, innocent ladies who were being “abused” by the bawdiness of Restoration comedies he did, of course, mean “ladies” rather than women in general. For there was altogether another class of females that fell entirely outside his overbearing concern: “are these [depictions of female desire and strong language] the tender things Mr. Dryden* says the ladies call on him for? I suppose he means the ‘ladies’ that are too modest to show their faces in the pit.” (Today we might prefer the term “sex worker.”) “It regales their lewdness, graces their character, and keeps up their spirits for their vocation,” he goes on.

  And so we begin to understand Collier’s objections. It isn’t women’s delicate ears he’s worried about, but an altogether different part of the anatomy. Dryden and these other irresponsible playwrights didn’t care if their earthy language and earthier subject matter opened ladies’ minds to the sort of behavior that the doxies in the pit enjoyed, or at least used to turn a
modest profit. The idea that a woman could exist for whom sex was neither a matter of shame nor a profitable vocation was anathema to Collier and his adherents. So much of the way we judge women’s language, and their behavior, still rests on the antiquated double standards of a handful of long-dead churchmen.

  Eighteenth-Century Attitudes in Twenty-First-Century Lives

  Even in the twenty-first century there are still commentators who rail on the “new” habit of women swearing like the menfolk. A quick Google search of “women swearing” brings up a slew of articles and comments about how off-putting some men (and some women) find a woman who swears.

  While Google searches are highly anecdotal, numerous studies show that these attitudes are commonplace. From South Africa to Northern Ireland, Great Britain to the United States, women are judged more harshly than men for swearing. Teenage girls in the 1990s—my contemporaries and the daughters of second-wave feminists—considered swearing to be far less acceptable from a woman than a man,7 even though women now account for 45 percent of all swearing in public (up from 33 percent in 1986).8 In the United States at least, women have actually drawn closer to their male counterparts in swearing than in earnings, receiving just 43 cents of every dollar earned, while men earn the other 57 cents.

  Dr. Karyn Stapleton at the University of Ulster has carried out many in-depth interviews to find out why this perceptual mismatch exists: why is it becoming more usual for women to swear, but these old attitudes still persist? “Generally, swearing is becoming more acceptable in society as a whole but there are still differences in how it’s perceived coming from women and men,” she told me. “Men tend to feel comfortable swearing more freely across a wider range of contexts and with a wider range of people.” The division of language into purity and power might still be responsible for women’s reluctance to swear. “From numerous studies we know that women are expected to pay more attention to politeness than men. Swearing can be incredibly direct.” Because of the double pressure of inviting moral censure and being judged harshly for failing to be polite, “choosing to swear is still a much higher risk for women.”