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Before the publication of Douglas Adams's novel Life, the Universe, and Everything (the third part of the Guide to the Galaxy), the publisher asked him to get rid of the dirty words at the beginning of the "F". Adams made a naughty decision: he chose to replace all foul language with "Belgium". Recently, a linguistic analysis suggests that Adams' approach may reflect a common pattern in many languages-the use of specific phonemes to weaken "vulgar language".

A study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on December 6, 2022 found that sometimes speakers use similar but softer words to euphemistically "spit fragrance", such as "darn" instead of "damn". And this practice is reflected in several different languages.

Linguists have found that the pronunciation of a word can sometimes reflect its meaning. Benjamin K., Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the language and Cognition Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. Benjamin K. Bergen, who was not involved in the study, said it was not surprising for words that mimic real sounds in nature that different languages share similar phonetic symbols (caused by certain phonemes, phonemes or other phonetic units). For example, "snap", "crunch" and "cock-a-doodle-doo", whether in Chinese or English, the pronunciation of these words corresponds to the sound they represent.

But swearing is different. In different languages, the pronunciation of those "taboo words" often varies from language to language. For example, for English, most swearing depends on "K", "T" and "P" in words (you may have thought of some words that contain these consonants), but in other languages, the situation is different.

What is surprising about the new findings, Bergen said, is that "this is the first time that someone has recorded the effects of abstract words such as swearing in different languages." People use less harsh pronunciation to cover up foul language, perhaps to lighten the intention of the word. These findings may have broader implications: "words with other communicative functions" may also be shared between different languages, he said.

Source: to detect foul language weakening patterns in different languages, Ryan Mckay, a professor of psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, and colleague Shiri Shiri Lev-Ari conducted a pre-experiment. They recruited 100 volunteers whose mother tongues included Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean and Russian. The volunteers listed the most offensive swearing in their language (excluding words related to racial discrimination). The results show that in the five languages, dirty words often have no near sound (approximants, when pronouncing, the two vocal organs do not keep in close contact with each other, and sometimes they are considered to be between consonants and vowels), including "l", "r", "w" and "y" in English.

The results show that near sounds may sound too mild to be used to form swearing. To test the idea, McKay and Lev Ali recruited 215 more volunteers, this time in Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German and Spanish. Each volunteer listened to 80 groups of fictional words based on non-swearing words in 20 languages (excluding English).

All the original words do not contain near sounds. To create word pairs, the researchers modified each word so that one contains a near sound and the other contains a more powerful consonant, affricate (such as "ts" in "tsar"). For example, the Albanian word "zog" means "bird". The researchers first used the near sound "y" instead of "z" to create "yog", and then used the obliteration "ts" instead of "z" to create "tsog". The volunteers heard "yog" or "tsog" and judged which of the two words sounded more like a dirty word.

The results show that people are more likely to think that words with near sounds (such as yog) are not dirty words, while words with stronger pronunciation (such as tsog) are more like dirty words. There are many dirty words in French that contain near sounds (such as merde), but even for volunteers whose mother tongue is French, they are more likely to treat obliterated words as dirty words.

Finally, the researchers specifically studied whether near pronunciation is often used to "weaken" swearing in English. They found that soft pronunciation is indeed more common when replacing swearing.

Photo source: pixabay Lev-Ali says the three studies provide different types of evidence, but all prove that "when you want a word to sound less offensive, you use proximity."

But it is not clear how ears distinguish swearing, Lev-Ali said. "We are not sure about the mechanism behind this."

For example, some researchers believe that in English, the pronunciation of all "P", "T" and "K" in swearing sounds so strong that it takes enough strength to produce them, which may make these words act as "stress relievers" for people. Before this study, it was thought that this alternative model existed only in English. But Bergen said, "We may have made a mistake before-in fact, in both English and other languages, there is a phenomenon of weakening swearing with near sounds," regardless of whether the weakened words contain "stress-relieving" consonants.

However, Bergen and other researchers are reluctant to over-popularize the practical significance of these findings. To reduce tension under pressure or in a subtle atmosphere, speakers may choose softer pronunciations, such as near sounds, but "we can't draw conclusions from the study yet," Lev-Ali said.

After the 2020 US presidential election, there is an unforgettable substitute for foul language: a lot of "Let's go Brandon" (go! Brandon! ) slogans began to appear on bumper stickers and T-shirts. The phrase originated in an American NASCAR car race (NASCAR) in October 2011, when contestants shouted "Fuck Joe Biden" (*! Joe Biden), but a sports journalist who interviewed the champion heard it as "Let's go Brandon".

The misunderstanding quickly became a hot spot, and then became a vague slogan, allowing those who did not support Biden to express their anger on shirts and cars without a torrent of abuse. "although to us, the phrase 'Let's go Brandon'' is only an indirect expression of 'Fuck Joe Biden', it fits our psychological model because it contains some near sounds that are not in the original slogan-it makes sense," McKay said. "

For the next research, Lev-Ali and McKay hope to find other possible cross-language patterns. "We are interested in both religious and biblical words," McKay said. is there a special pronunciation between different languages that connects people in different cultures with things that have power and resonance? "

Original text link:

Https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-linguistics-of-swearing-explain-why-we-substitute-darn-for-damn/

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: global Science (ID:huanqiukexue)

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