When someone inadvertently stubs their toe on the edge of a furniture, more often than not a curse word is blurted out. And since conventional wisdom tells us that curse words are bad especially when spoken around children, it seems that we should try to moderate our profane tongue.
However, a linguist named Benjamin Bergen says that swearing around children isn't as detrimental to their social behavior as government agencies like the FCC claims it to be. In a book he wrote titled "What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves," Bergen explains why cussing is so amazing.
Linguist Says That Slur Is The Word That Causes Harm Among People
Bergen categorized swearing in four different aspects. There are words that involve the divine and the supernatural; profanities that involve sex, both the body parts used and the act itself; the act of excreting and excretion, and finally there are slurs.
Among the four mentioned, only slurs have a negative effect on both the user and the people who are on the receiving end, according to Arstechnica. The other three are perfectly fine despite the protests of the FCC and conservative parents around the world.
Bergen began exploring this realm of language when he noticed that his used of profanity lessened when he became a father. He then began to question, on an academic level, how bad would it really be if he uses curse words around his child.
There Are No Evidence That Swearing Around a Child Causes Negative Effect
It's important to remember that while Bergen is saying that it's okay to use profanity around children, it is considered verbal abuse to say it at them as it causes psychological harm. Through his research, he found that there are no controlled specific experiments about swearing in front of kids.
Of course, this is because it isn't acceptable to subject a child through profanities in the name of research. Instead, Bergen based his claims on studies conducted on university students and extrapolated it on children.
He found that the only time that profanity had any negative effects was when slurs were used. On one study, those who were exposed to homophobic slurs subsequently said that less fund should go towards preventing HIV-AIDS prevention.
Another study involving 61 participants move their chair away from homosexuals when exposed to homophobic slurs versus a neutral term. Finally, Bergen cites a large observational study on children with ages between 1 to 12 who said thousands of taboo language, which ended up having no significant negative result.
"On no occasion did swearing lead to physical violence. Instead, taboo words were used mostly for positive reasons, for instance humor, and mostly were not produced out of anger," said the linguist.
However, he did point out that there will be social consequences to a child and the parents when their kid curses like a sailor in public, said Qz. Bergen then said that explaining the word and the use of it is imperative in helping the child understand this aspect of language and the repercussions surrounding it.
