There’s absolutely every need to swear, the science proves it

Swearing is even older than human beings, in fact some researchers believe it’s our version of a dog’s yelping, and it helps, it really does, writes Christine Manby

Illustration by Tom Ford

It was the first time I had ever been skiing. The skis my friend Collin picked out for me from the pile in the garage belonged to his mother, who had skied since she was a small child in Finland. I was 22 but had never been anywhere near a piste. We just weren’t that kind of family. However, I grew up in Gloucester, where Eddie the Eagle took his first leap into history on the dry ski slope. I met Eddie once, when he came into the kitchen showroom where I had a Saturday job. The unlikely Olympic hero was a very nice man and his example was at the back of my mind as I agreed to take my life into my hands.

I duly joined Collin and his sister Michelle on a day trip to Stevens Pass in the mountains near Seattle. In the car park Collin strapped me into the skis then loaded me onto a ski lift to an intermediate slope. At the top of the lift, Collin slid from his seat and disappeared down the mountain as speed, shouting “snow plough” as he went. I was halfway back down to the car park, still dangling from the chairlift before a stranger helped me get off but left me standing bewildered in knee-deep snow. Eventually, Collin’s sister came to the rescue.

Michelle showed me how to position my skis – so that’s a snowplough – and thus began the most terrifying 20 minutes of my life. While more experienced – much more experienced – skiers danced around me, I managed roughly three metres upright between each fall. And as the piste got steeper and the falls got harder, my vocabulary got more and more blue. Every time I uttered a swear word, which was often, Michelle would cheerily respond, “There’s no need to swear!”

There’s no need to swear!

She said it every time I dropped an F-bomb. Our duet – my stormy f***s and her sunny admonitions – became so loud and heated that eventually the people gliding overhead on the ski lift joined in.

“There’s no need to swear!” the wholesome Americans chanted.

“There is every f***ing need to swear!” I responded.

I’d never thought of myself as being a particularly potty-mouthed individual until I spent some time in the States. On a road trip to Santa Fe 10 years after the skiing disaster, I met a man who claimed he was a roadie for Guns and Roses. He observed that I “sure swore a lot for a girl”. When a rock band’s tour-hardened roadie tells you to wash your mouth out, it makes you start to wonder.

But is swearing really such a bad thing? Increasingly, researchers into swearing, and it’s uglier sister blasphemy, think it might actually be good for you. The key to swearing’s purpose may lie in when we use it. Or when we can’t help but use it, to be more accurate.

In 2009, a group of researchers from Keele University ran a study to examine the theory that the expletives which slip out when we’re in pain have an evolutionary function. They activate the amygdala to trigger the fight or flight response and a surge of adrenalin, which is known to bring natural pain relief.

The Keele researchers had their subjects hold their hands in ice cold water while either swearing or speaking neutral words. They found that the swearers were able to bear the iced water for twice as long and claimed to feel less discomfort than the control group. They repeated the experiment several times, always finding the same outcome. Swearing made the pain of having one’s hand frozen easier to stand.

More recently, researchers from Massey University devised a similar study to see whether swearing out loud might also have an analgesic effect on psychological pain. Their results echoed the Keele study, with the swearers reporting that upsetting memories were less painful if they cussed and swore while recalling them. Other studies have found that the naughtier (from the subject’s point of view) the swear words, the bigger the analgesic effect.

It’s hard for a writer to find an equivalent to a swear word that won’t offend at least one reader regardless

In his book The Stuff of Thought, Canadian-American psychologist and author of The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, explored the possibility that swearing has its roots in the most ancient part of the brain and as such may not be unique to human beings. He likens swearing to the sudden yelp of a dog when you step on its tail or the shriek of an angry monkey, believing that such involuntary vocalisations served an evolutionary purpose as a means of frightening off an attacker.

Psychologist Emma Byrne examines how those inarticulate but highly effective vocalisations might have developed into swearing as we know it. In her book, Swearing is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, she describes one of the world’s most famous language experiments. In the 1960s, a female chimpanzee called Washoe was taught to use sign language. Washoe eventually had a vocabulary of some 350 words. What’s more, she was an expert at using words in conjunction to give them further meanings and uses. For example, upon seeing a swan, Washoe would sign “water” and “bird”. For a Thermos flask, she signed “metal cup drink”.

Over time other chimpanzees were brought into the study and Washoe, who lived to be 42, passed on the words she had learned. These included the sign for “dirty” (bringing the knuckles to the underside of the chin). Washoe originally associated “dirty” with faeces but she had also come to use as a pejorative, referring to her keeper as “dirty Roger” when he wouldn’t let her have what she wanted. There seems little doubt that Washoe understood the power of a curse.

So swearing is older than mankind, but shouldn’t we have evolved to no longer need it? Especially when so many people find it offensive?

What Washoe’s use of swearing shows is that it isn’t so much the words we use that upset people within earshot as the taboos with which those words are associated, especially sex and defecation. What’s also interesting is that the words people find offensive change from generation to generation and place to place. Writing for an American market made me much more conscious, for example, of the kind of blasphemy that’s relatively common in British English so I make an effort to cut it out.

However, sometimes there’s something slightly unnatural about fictional dialogue without the odd expletive. What real human being, side-swiped in a car accident or faced with the worst news of their life, ever said “blimey”? It’s hard for a writer to find an equivalent to a swear word that won’t offend at least one reader regardless. Fiddlesticks? Flipping huck? Personally, I’m offended by their inauthenticity.

The good news is that it’s been proven by researchers Kristin and Timothy Jay that people who use a large variety of swearwords with an understanding of their nuance tend to have a bigger vocabulary in general. But next time I find myself in a situation where there’s a need to swear, I’m going to bloody well do it properly.