The purpose of swear words and smudge is often affiliate with rudeness or ignorance . But according to a new work , that could be a load of sh*t : A prominent noesis of profanity could in reality be affiliate with a wider articulateness with words in general .
One part of the study , published inLanguage Sciences , gathered 43 participant in their previous adolescent to other XX and compared their general lexicon with their knowledge of forbidden words .
foremost , the participants were ask to do a check unwritten Word Association Test ( COWAT ) . This assesses the subject ’s ability to spontaneously produce words on command . The content is given one minute to list as many words as possible that start with a certain varsity letter . After this initial COWAT , they were then given another minute to name as many animals as possible and then do the same for “ out words . ”
The results showed that the participants who listed a lot of word in the world-wide fluency tests also be given to be able to name more creature and more “ dirty news . ” Interestingly , they found a electropositive family relationship between taboo fluency and psychoneurotic and undetermined personality traits , but a negative correlation coefficient with amenity and painstakingness .
For your curiosity , “ f*ck , ” “ sh!t ” and “ bi^ch ” were the top three swear lyric that occurred most frequently in the test . A few of the slurs only occurred once or twice , but there was a total of 400 unlike swear words generated , which included creative concoctions such as “ screw plagiarist , ” “ cockass , ” and “ pissant . ”
It is deserving mark , however , that the main finding of the small bailiwick was substantiation of the “ volubility - is - eloquence “ hypothesis . This idea basically says that your proficiency with words is oecumenical across all contexts , whether that ’s world-wide mental lexicon , noun or profanities . It doesn’tnecessarilymean that your lexicon is across-the-board if you swear more often in workaday aliveness .