Why is swearing so bad

Skip to content Skip to navigation. Swearing: why do children do it? Some children swear because it gets a strong reaction from their parents. When children swear: what to do If you know why your child is swearing, it can help you to decide on the best way to respond. Different places have different rules. Think of other words to use if you find it hard to stop swearing, and other ways to handle difficult situations. If your child has heard you swearing, it can also help to explain why you were swearing.

Praise your child when you notice them dealing more appropriately with anger or frustration. For example, if your child tells you that a friend was using swear words to tease them, praise your child for walking away from the situation and not using those words themselves. Be aware of what your child watches, listens to and plays with.

Monitor what your child is seeing on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, and check the ratings for TV shows, movies, games and apps. When children push the boundaries with swearing Some children will keep pushing swearing boundaries after being told not to. If you find yourself in this situation, you could try the following strategies: Clearly state the rules.

Tell your child what the consequences will be if you hear swear words — for example, quiet time or time-out or loss of privileges like TV time, pocket money and so on. For example, Americans consider it a big deal when a public figure is caught swearing.

No matter what age they start, the British seem far more fluent at swearing than Americans. They are more likely to link colourful language with having a sense of humour than with coarseness or vulgarity. Here they are:. Even without making up new words, the British definitely have, and make use of, a larger vocabulary of swear words than Americans.

The stronger your friendship, the more you can lay into each other and still come away with a warm feeling. This is not how Americans roll. Indeed, there are some words the British use casually that are considered more offensive or insulting by Americans.

Americans find it really shocking to hear it used carelessly. Since the Cathars made a special virtue of chastity, it was a shade unfair. However, since in the Middle Ages sodomy and buggery were linked to heresy as well as to witchcraft, it was perhaps only to be expected.

Bloody is an all-purpose intensifier that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, once qualified as the strongest expletive available in just about every English-speaking nation except the United States. They swear just as much as men. And that judgement can have serious implications. Whereas men who swear about conditions like testicular cancer tend to bond more closely with other men using the same vocabulary. The idea that swearing is a legitimate means of expressing a negative emotion is much more circumscribed for women.

Out in the wild, chimps are inveterate users of their excrement to mark their territory or show their annoyance. So the first thing you do, if you want to teach a primate sign language, is potty train them. That means, just like human children at a similar age, that they end up with a taboo around excrement. Washoe was a female chimpanzee that was originally adopted by R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix T.

Gardner in the s. Later, she was taken on by a researcher in Washington State called Roger Fouts. Washoe was the matriarch to three younger chimps: Loulis, Tatu, and Dar.

By the time they brought in Loulis, the youngest, the humans had stopped teaching them language, so they looked to see if the chimps would transmit language through the generations, which they did.

When Washoe and the other chimps were really angry, they would smack their knuckles on the underside of their chins, so you could hear this chimp-teeth-clacking sound. What had happened is that they had internalized that taboo, they had a sign associated with that taboo, so all of a sudden that language was incredibly powerful and was being thrown about, just like real excrement is thrown about by wild chimpanzees. The example that most people will be familiar with in English-speaking countries is blasphemy.

There are still parts of the U. In some communities, where that usage is reclaimed, they are saying that if I use it, it immunizes me against its negative effects. That is an example of a word that has fallen out of general conversation and literature into the realm of the unsayable. The great thing about the copulatory and excretory swearing is that they are common to the entire human race. As our taboos change, that core of language that has the ability to surprise, shock or stun the emotional side of the brain will change, too.

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