Don't Drown the Cat

Megan and Carrie talk with Dr Rebecca Roache about her book, For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun. 

• Great British Bake Off

Chapters

• 10:15 Interview with Rebecca Roache

Transcript

Carrie : Firebreathing Kittens is an actual play one-shot podcast that plays various tabletop role-playing games with a season-long plot. Because of such a beginning and an end to each week's story, you can start at any episode. Every week has a different combination of four from the same rotating cast group of people. Join Firebreathing Kittens as they solve detective mysteries, attempt comedic banter, and enjoy friendship. 

Megan: Hi and welcome to The Vocal Fries Pod podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. 

Carrie: I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan: And I'm Megan Figueroa. 

Carrie: Once again, our patron from Patreon, Diego Diaz, has sent us a multitude of things to talk about but yes.

Megan: I'm so grateful! So grateful for it.

Carrie: But this comes from Metro in the UK. Great British Bake Off fans slam offensive comments about contestants. And there's a contestant named Tasha and I guess some viewers took aim at her because she was using BSL or British Sign Language. 

Megan: Okay, what? Okay, tell me about it because I'm just like why?

Carrie: We know why but...

Megan: Ultimately know why but...

Carrie: She's from Bristol and she's the first ever deaf contestant and the presenters learned some sign language so that they could communicate.

Megan: Oh, that's good.

Carrie: But she also had an interpreter with her named Daryl. 

Megan: Daryl? Okay.

Carrie: Well, yeah. I guess they would have to have an interpreter because there's...

Megan: Only so much they can learn to communicate with her and... Right on the fly, really quick? 

Carrie: Yeah. 

Megan: Yeah, there's only so much you can learn.

Carrie: Absolutely.

Megan: It's nice that they tried and but it's also better than obviously there is an interpreter.

Carrie: I guess because she decided to sign rather than speak, a bunch of people were riled up.

Megan: From what I gather from the deaf community, it's also a privilege to be able to have speaking privilege.

Carrie: Well, yeah. Not all deaf people can speak.

Megan: Exactly.

Carrie: Some can.

Megan: Right.

Carrie: But I guess she can because she said when she was explaining the cake to, the cake that she made. Apparently, this had elderflower and hibiscus flowers on it. Sounds kind of fun.

Megan: That sounds [inaudible]. 

Carrie: But anyway. So when she was explaining the cake to the judges she said, okay, I'm going to be signing now. So she probably was talking a little bit during the, preparation of her things. Of her concoctions. And she said I'm going to be signing because I don't feel comfortable pronouncing quite a few words.

Megan: Completely reasonable. 

Carrie: Fine. Okay. But her cake had ten layers. My word! My word!

Megan: Oh, I'm going to have to go back and see this cake. I bet you it was beautiful.

Carrie: Oh, I'm sure. She explained, described her ten-layer creation and so Daryl was interpreting for her and then they went to speak to some of the other bakers so she then signed to the camera. She was trying to decide whether she should reduce the number of layers of her cake, but then she's like no I'm going to continue. That's when the viewers were like well, woah, why are you signing you were talking before? And one person said they were "confused by her decision."

Megan: And this is not up. That's not for you to, who gives a shit that you were confused?

Carrie: It's so weird. It's so weird. Like fine, you're confused.

Megan: Whatever.

Carrie: That's fine. You're allowed to have that feeling.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: Sometimes things confuse you and you don't know why. But like, you're gonna express this online, everybody needs to know about your internal state at any given moment?

Megan: Right. that's another thing where it's like we don't need to know not everyone needs to know what's going on with your inner monologue.

Carrie: Yeah, you are not, your main character syndrome is too much. Just calm down.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: Go to bed. 

Megan: Yes. Instead of being online and griping about this just go to bed. Just go to bed. Oh my God, and...

Carrie: Obviously some people were defending her. So I can't believe we're still, people are still tweeting. But anyway someone on X/Twitter. The sheer ignorance shown regarding Tasha and why she is mostly using BSL this episode is absoluteness staggering and poor people who have a similar attitude, assist to educate yourself on deafness/hearing loss before sharing your ill-informed opinion. As someone else said. Very upsetting to see people criticizing Tasha her decision to sign. Deaf people are entitled to communicate however they want and feel comfortable and that doesn't always need to be one way or another. If it bothers you that you can't understand learn BS or BSL.

Megan: Yeah. Amen. Yeah, it's, they are entitled to communicate in any way they want to and I'm wondering if in other episodes she speaks much more.

Carrie: I have a feeling that it, at the beginning of the episode she was speaking, and then she made the switch when she was trying to describe her cake because she was like, okay, this is too much for me. There's too many words that I don't know how to say. And then when she made that switch it was probably just she was just comfortable okay I'm just going to communicate this way. At least for the, few minutes afterwards. It totally makes sense.

Megan: Especially in that high chaos environment. It's chaotic. If anyone's ever... They're being timed. They're trying to do these very intricate, elaborate things and  everyone's running around and rushing around and there's a camera. They, like all of these things it's no surprise. Like, wow that she's trying to  like speak in the first place if that is not like her most comfortable state of being, a state of communicating. Just think about that. Be more thoughtful. Why can you not be more thoughtful? Isn't that hard?

Carrie: Yeah, maybe but I just think at least maybe think to yourself. Is this something that I need to share do I really need to show my ass right now?

Megan: Yeah, we've talked about this before because you and I have things that we find annoying about language but just like everyone else does but we keep it to ourselves.

Carrie: Or anything.

Megan: Or anything. Yeah.

Carrie: There are many thoughts that I have that are churlish. I do not need to be spreading them. I do not. It's okay that I have them because I'm a human being and we're allowed to have shitty emotions or shitty feelings.

Megan: We're going to.

Carrie: But spreading them is really, is this necessary? Like that's  maybe you have a really close friend that you can share those really shitty thoughts with or so you're not just getting them off your chest like spreading them around the world, the planet like why?

Megan: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Maybe you have a friend or a therapist or something. Someone can...

Carrie: Yeah, maybe a therapist is better.

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: But yeah, I only just think that most people have main character energy. They really think that every thought they have is like, worthy of sharing. And like, no we know.

Megan: Yeah, maybe that's the main problem here. That's wild. And it's wild to me, and of course, it's not surprising but that it's their first deaf contestant in how many seasons? So may seasons.

Carrie: And Tasha also said that she found it very emotional to see Daryl among the rest of her co-stars. So, "It was a big moment when Knoll introduced not only Alison but also Daryl as part of the lineup. Seeing Daryl up at the front and feeling fully part of the show was a really special moment." She said, she went on to just explain she couldn't have competed without him. 

Megan: Oh, I just got chills.

Carrie: And "Without the dedication from the show ensuring I had the same access as the other bakers." Yeah. 

Megan: Oh good.

Carrie: Shitty internet commenters, I guess thank you because now I get to hear about this in like you see her perspective because I doubt I would have seen this.

Megan: Yeah, and it makes me want to watch the show honestly. I've seen it before I've seen previous seasons. But to go back to it and watch, and it sounds like they did a good thing and actually made the environment accessible.

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, I know that it seems like they did the right things. So that's great.

Megan: Yeah Tasha. I'm glad to hear your perspective and fuck the haters.

Carrie: Fuck the haters. Okay but...

Megan: Speaking of fuck.

Carrie: Now before we get to that even. I would like to thank our newest patron at patreon.com, Henry.

Megan: Thank you so much, Henry. We appreciate it so much so so much. We appreciate all of our Patreon supporters.

Carrie: Yes. We really do and they really, they do help us pay for the editing and for the transcriptions. So yeah. Anything that you send our way goes to, other actually, other people. So thank you so much.

Megan: Yes. Thank you. 

Carrie: And now speaking of fuck.

Megan: We get to talk about swearing today, which is one of our favorite topics.

Carrie: Yes, and I don't know why but I didn't think I would learn that much because we've talked about swearing before but turns out no, I was wrong. We learned.

Megan. I know. We learned. We always learn and that's hopefully, we'd pass on some learning to you as well.

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah and it's great.

Megan: Well it is great. So enjoy. So today we have Rebecca Roache who is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London. She is co-editor of Psychiatry Reborn. Her work has appeared in places like BBC, The Guardian, The Times, Harper's MIT Technology Review, EON, and Slate. Her podcast The Academic Imperfectionist draws on philosophy to deal with things like self-doubt and procrastination. She's also the author of For Fuck's Sake: Why Swearing is so Shocking, Rude, and Fun and that's why we're here right now to talk about that. So thank you so much for being here.

Carrie: Yeah. Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. This is the first interview as where somebody has actually said the the full uncensored title of the book.

Carrie: Oh, really? How funny.

Rebecca: Yeah, I've been doing a lot of talking about swearing without actually swearing.

Carrie: Oh. Feel free to swear to your heart's content here.

Megan: Yeah I was going to say. Thank you for being here here so that we can swear so much. We usually do, we always have an explicit rating but now we get to swear even more. So do you introduce your book as for F's sake and in other interviews or?

Rebecca: Well it's usually not me introducing it. There's just the, whoever's interviewing is kind of just stumbling over how to say without upsetting anyone.

Carrie: Well, that reminds me, oh this is a while ago now like we're talking early 2000s early 2000s. I was listening to CBC radio and the woman just could not say Vagina Monologues. She just couldn't do it and I was so embarrassed on her behalf because I was like, it's perfectly fine word. It's not like its cunt.

Megan: Right. Right at least cunt and Canada and not in England right? Because that's different.

Carrie: Although would you say cunt on the radio in England?

Rebecca: No. People don't say that. It's weird. It's a word that has sort of different connotations in different places. So there's places in the UK where you can use it pretty much benignly. It's vulgar right? But it's, it can be affectionate. But not really sort of South East England and even worse in the US.

Carrie: Oh, way worse yeah.

Rebecca: That's sort of a different connotation there. So yeah.

Carrie: Right after that we want to ask why did you want to write this book? What drew you to swearing?

Rebecca: So the first time I can remember being interested in it was I wright about this in a book but over the past decade or so, there's been this sort of real proliferation in predatory academic journals so journals with sort of impressive sounding names, but they just sort of spam people asking for articles and they'll publish pretty much anything as long as you pay the publication fee and it made the news that an article had been accepted. And it and it was called, I can't remember the name of the journal was but it was one of these journals. The title of the article was Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List.

Carrie: Oh, yeah.

Rebecca: And the whole thing was just, it was just that repeated and repeated but it was formatted like a scientific paper and I saw a story about this. I can't remember where now and the headline was censored. So it was sort of Get Me Off Your F-star-star-star-ing Mailing List. But the article was illustrated with a picture, like a screenshot of the article where you could just see all these fuckings everywhere. And yeah, I started thinking about that. I was thinking how does that work? Like it really does. It does seem to work to include asterisks in swearing to censor it. But  we all know what it means, and usually that's the whole point right? It was a story about this article. So how is that working? So I looked around and tried to see if any philosophers have written about this and nobody had so I thought okay, I'll do that then. So I just sort of dived into swearing from there.

Carrie: That's great. I had completely forgotten about that article. But as soon as he said it I was like, oh, yeah, that's such a brilliant fuck you. Such a brilliant fuck you. So, let's start. Yeah, even very basically what is swearing and why is it interesting?

Rebecca: Yeah. I suppose a few things characterize swearing, I guess so everyone who's listening is going to sort of have a list going through their mind, we sort of all know what the words are so it's taboo language. So language that, will it's interesting. It's Taboo in two ways. So taboos are just topics that are informally prohibited so things you wouldn't mention in polite company. So swear words are taboo in the sense that you shouldn't say them in polite company or that's what we all tend to think. And they're also taboo in the sense that they center around taboo topics. So things like sex, defecation, religion, disease. So that's one feature of this. Swearing is taboo, but it's not,  there's plenty of things that are taboo that aren't swearing. Plenty of language that's taboo but not swearing. So there's a few other features of it too. One is that it seems to have this particular role in helping us express emotion. So, you know that experience of just stubbing your toe on the table leg and deliver ahh! Or swearing at people when you're driving according to my kids. This is where they pick up their swearing.

Carrie: Hey, I believe that. I believe that.

Rebecca: So there's that too. It seems to have this weird unique role in the brain. It seems like, so there's a condition where  if sometimes if people have a brain injury or a stroke they can lose the ability to use language. But they will often retain the ability to say certain things and that might include swearing along with things like  it's psychologists call it automatic speech. But reciting the days of the week, counting, saying um and ah, this sort of thing. So yeah, it seems to have this sort of interesting psychological role. And it's not always the case that we swear in order to offend people. But that's kind of part of what swearing is for. I think you know sort of part of what it's for is to break taboo and shock people. So there's that as well. I think that's an interesting feature of it. You know, we have plenty of things that we're not supposed to do but usually when we shock people by breaking the rules, it's not usually by doing something that's been designed to shock people and upset them and so on. So yeah, I could go on but there's this sort of cluster of features that define swearing I think.

Megan: I'm thinking about using it as shocking. We carry and I host a podcast we're two women and you know that is a unique place to be in podcasting world in the first place and to have an explicit show where we actually allow, swearing I think that I guess yeah, it could be considered shocking. To some, I don't think we're meaning to offend in this case but more to be kind of that shocking, use that shocking factor.

Rebecca: Yeah. That's long been this taboo around women and swearing I think. You know that in the sense, well in a few senses, so there's the fact that the strongest swear words tend to be words that have to do with women's bodies. And also the taboo against swearing in front of women and especially women swearing,` there are still some people who will be shocked by that. I actually remember when I was writing the book which took me far too long. I was about to pick my kids up from school and I'd arrived a little bit early. So I knit into the pub around the corner and just had a cup of tea. Let's say it was a cup of tea. And  I have my laptop on and I was making progress on my book. And it was slice of midafternoon. It was really quiet in there. But there are these two old guys sitting at the bar just sort of nattering and at one point they swore and then they kind of noticed that a lady was present and they turned and go, God, sorry, sorry love. And I was literally writing a chapter called Cunt at the time.

Megan: Which would have offended them right?  Or shocked them.

Rebecca: Well, I tell you I... It says like God says surprised and alarmed them right? I didn't mention it. But yeah, that was kind of fun.

Megan: I know exactly what you're talking about that whole excuse my French or sorry that I'm saying this in front of a lady or you know. It's the lady. Bring out the word lady. I feel like that happens too.

Carrie: I feel that happens a lot less now here at least like in North America. I remember when I was a kid that that would happen a lot. There will be men apologizing to women for swearing in front of them. And I don't hear it very much at all anymore.

Megan: I think it's a generational thing, right?

Carrie: That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah and I think that's also sort of ambiguity. So for men who kind of want to do the right thing, they're probably thinking something like, I'm in the company of this woman, maybe a woman who I don't know that well, should I just go ahead and swear because I don't think that women's ears are more delicate. So, it's a sort of motivation from equality, or is it that is it the fact that she might then think me a bit aggressive and be alarmed by it, in which case I'd better watch my language because there's this whole background of ways in which women are alarmed by men's behavior. Sure. I think. It's Tricky. It's tricky to know what to do to break down easter beings because they certainly seem like ones that need to be broken down, but sort of how to do that is not always easy to work out.

Carrie: So what are the some of the factors that affect whether or not swearing is offensive or shocking or acceptable?

Rebecca: Yeah. I think this is a sort of whole can of worms. So I think there's a sort of background of what the rules are in a particular social context. So if you are in a job interview or at a funeral or something like this, you probably ought not to swear. And if you are in a group of friends who you know well and you're all relaxed with each other and swearing is just something that you do perfectly benignly then that's fine too. So there's different sets of rules that govern different situations. But I think on top of that there are things like whether the swearing is directed at anyone versus just sort of punctuation. So fuck you would be worse probably in any context than oh fuck it or just something that's sort of directed at nobody in particular. So that directedness is a factor. How often it's repeated, sort of ones might be a slip of a tongue and you can get away with it in a polite context. But if you keep on doing it then even though you apologize every time that's probably going to end up shocking people. Things like the tone and body language. So I guess this is sort of a general point really about how we interpret other people's mood and their intentions towards us. But somebody's swearing really aggressively and sort of getting right up in your face, then that's going to be more alarming than if they are sort of relaxed and not angry or in the grip of any strong emotion. You can just stop me when I've said enough but  I'm just [inaudible ] And they all say sort of who's doing the swearing? So, there's some people who it's kind of more on brand I think. We tend to have this, this thing in newspapers in the UK where if a member of The Royal Family swears, it will just instantly make headlines. Even if it's somebody that you, the late Prince Philip was just sort of notorious for just sort of speaking without thinking. Just sort of saying really controversial things and yet still if he swore even in a fairly uninteresting way, it would still make headlines the next day and people are kind of delighted by it. By that sort of thing.

Megan: Yeah. When I think about how our US President Joe Biden, it wouldn't be shocking if he cursed because he kind of does that like, I feel like he has and it hasn't been taken seriously if like say President Barack Obama had.

Carrie: I can think of him actually... Right.

Megan: That like there's different things going on there.

Carrie: Definitely could get away with it more but I don't think I've heard him swear. Like malarkey that's not swearing.

Megan: I am I thinking about, am I confusing malarkey and thinking that he said something stronger than malarkey? I don't know.

Carrie: I don't know. I just had, I just personally can't think of anything. It doesn't mean he has that he hasn't.

Megan. That's true. But this even brings up the point of who we imagine in our heads would get away with swearing. Right?

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting actually that the issue of politicians and swearing. I think to look this up to say anything sort of definitive about it, but I'm sure that a few years ago there was a study looking at people's attitudes to politicians swearing which found that when politicians swear it can make them seem more trustworthy and more human I guess. But this was done before Trump and I'm sort of interested to know if they did that study again with the results be different because he was rarely someone that you sort of thought that what he was saying was barely bypassing his prefrontal cortex. It was sort of so thought this that I want to be in a case like that. Whether their conclusion might be you got no idea what your talking about really.

Carrie: Right. But then, also partisan politics will play into that too. So you would expect like MAGA types to be like, totally okay with like whatever speech Trump does but it's hard to know for sure because yeah, the study would need to be done.

Megan: Yeah, somehow making someone who's rich seem more down to earth somehow. If they already bought into his politics. I think it's a good point and I'm thinking again like female politicians wouldn't be able to get away with swearing in the same way. Certainly black politicians, indigenous, I know it's a small population of our politicians, but just think about all the ways that they would not be able to get away with this because it would seem unprofessional.

Rebecca: Unless, there's a class issue here as well. I think there was a case about a decade ago in the UK where a conservative MP, Andrew Mitchell, who was I guess, sort of older white guy who was cycling past 10 Downing Street and police officer outside there asked him to get off his bike. And he responded in a sort of... I can't remember exactly what he said, but part of it was calling them fucking plebs. And he and that's really, so that I think is a really, a particularly nasty type of swearing because in other words plebs is a slur before the lower classes in the UK. Nobody really uses it apart from apparently older conservative politicians. But he didn't really, he didn't face any... There was a fuss in the Press about it, but he didn't get arrested, and sort of by comparison I think around the same time there was a black teenager in London who swore while he was getting searched for drugs by police officers in London. He didn't have any drugs on him, but he saw and in not an aggressive way at all. He said something like I told you you wouldn't fucking find anything or something like that. It was sort of swearing in the course of what he was saying and he got arrested and convicted.

Carrie: Convicted of what?

Rebecca: It was later of a term. But I think its still really brings out this sort of class, in that case I think racial double standard.

Megan: Yes so that brings up the question of who gets to swear and who doesn't and is that very... it's very contextualized.

Rebecca: Yes it is and it's, there's a serious point here because on the one hand it's sort of isn't it funny that men are so shocked when also certain men of a certain age are so shocked when women swear but I think that there is this sort of serious issue behind it, which is that it shouldn't be the case that some groups pay a higher price for swearing or using any sort of expression compared to other groups. You know, something like swearing should be, if it's available to anyone it should be available to all and we should all suffer that whatever the consequences might be in a particular situation. It shouldn't really matter who you are. But no that's not the world we live in.

Megan: It's absolutely not.

Carrie: Sure isn't. So what are some of the ways that the powers that be have tried to regulate swearing and do they work?

Rebecca: So, well let me continue with the, sort of what I was talking about a couple of minutes ago about  this sort of double standard of swearing in the UK. So after Denzel Cassius Harvey the black teenager who was convicted of swearing during a drug search by police officers, and then his conviction was overturned. The overturning of the conviction was really controversial,  because there was a sort of reaction in the Press about you still got these going around swearing at police officers and getting away with it. And Boris Johnson, who later became Prime Minister, but he was London the Mayor at the time and in the sort of fallout from this, he pledged a zero-tolerance approach to swearing at the police.  And then a few years later he was filmed I think on his bike shouting at a taxi driver in London. Why don't you fuck off and die. So yeah, I write about this in the book. It's like there's so much going on now. What is it? Is it that he thinks the rules don't apply to him? Is it,  that's probably.

Megan: Yes. The answer is yes.

Rebecca: My money would be on that. But yet it is that if it's a police officer it's not allowed but unless you're Andrew Mitchell. But if it's a taxi driver, it's fine or you know what going on? There just seems to be this ridiculous set of just a mess. And actually sort of across the pond in the US, that's a couple of decades ago, an attempt to introduce something called the Clean Airwaves Act which would forbid the broadcast of certain words and it was just a list of swear words. And that didn't get through but there is, there's just a mess of double standards and sort of confusing precedents when you look at how lawmakers and broadcasters and so on have tried to regulate swearing. So there was a law professor, an American law professor called Christopher Fermon who sadly no longer with us, but he wrote one of those really long law journal articles. They tend, tend to be like 60 pages long, but it was called Fuck and it was just exploring all the weird double standards and conflicting decisions about these words. So one thing I tried to do in the book is try and sort of okay just set out some, a structure for making sensible decisions about this. Because I think what's going on, the reason why this tends to be so confusing is that when people swear and we don't like it our reaction is kind of knee-jerk, we're not necessarily thinking, oh why am I so shocked? Would I be shocked if it had been this person swearing rather than this other person swearing. What if it was in a different context. We just sort of react in a knee-jerk way and I supposed you know if he's especially if you are a lawmaker or  sort of an organization that regulates broadcasting, this is pressure to do something about it. To uphold the standards of society. But I think because it's so kind of knee-jerk and intuitive it often doesn't make sense and there's a lot of you know sort of because it's not sort of rationally thought through and the underlying principle analyzed. That's a load of sort of stuff that smuggled in with these decisions. So, you know bias. Yes, misjudgments. All the rest of it.

Megan: What kind of basis?

Rebecca: Well, I think you know sort of so part of it will be things like people from a certain race or class or gender paying a higher price for swearing than others. We've seen that, that comes out in some of the examples I already talked about. But also I think you know if you look around there's plenty of research on implicit bias. So things like, black men tend to be viewed as more threatening than white men even if they are similar sized. And this is especially if white people are doing the viewing. There's loads of stuff like that. Job applicants with a female sounding name or all sort of ethnic minority sounding name or less likely to get a job interview than people with a sort of more majority male name. There's lots of really disturbing studies like this and the reason, a reason why it's so disturbing is that even when you have people are trying to do a good job. So say recruiters who are trying to make their decisions in a fair way based completely on somebody's qualifications and experience. These things do end up affecting us whether we like them or not. And so I think you know when we are offended by swearing especially if as is often the case, we don't stop to think why we're offended by swearing. Then it's just sort of opening the door for all these sorts of judgments to come in. I think it's  it's really, maybe not so worrying when it's just about in fairly kind of low-key context where the worst is going to happen is somebody would have also clutch their pearls. But when it comes to people being fined and arrested and all this then it is, it's much more of a justice issue.

Megan: Yeah, and I'm thinking about the US and like it's not the case that people are getting arrested for let's just use black men because they're disproportionately arrested for swearing. But they are seen as the "angry black man", or if they swear it gets them in what they don't get themselves in the situation. But the perceiver who maybe white even  black themselves may see, I don't know.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. So people  from a minority group can internalize the same prejudices as everybody else. But yeah, and I think you know what you said there is important that after that it's not people being penalized for swearing explicitly. It's it's kind of an inference. So there might be, a rule about behaving in an anti-social way or disturbing the peace or acting disrespectfully. But whether or not you've, you swearing ask any of those things is going to depend on a load of other factors. So, if it tends to be the case that black men are viewed as... Oh, I think black people in general sort of tend to be viewed as angry when they're just behaving in a way that if it was a white person nobody would think there was anything amiss. if that's the case and you get sort of a black person swearing versus a white person swearing then it looks like it's going to be the case that the black person's more likely to be interpreted as swearing in an especially objectionable way and might end up paying a penalty for that.

Megan: Right. Even in situations where it might be a moment of camaraderie like in the workplace. When there's maybe some swearing. Will black people or other people of color be viewed differently when they're swearing in the situation even though it's like a moment where maybe the person that has the more power did swear. They still run the risk. I think of being viewed differentially.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. And I was actually talking to a friend the other day who, so a female friend who actually ended up on her HR record of her boss saying she needs, she swears too much. This was at the US, so maybe in a context where it's sort of quite a religious corner of the culture and, so there is this dislike of swearing. But I did sort of find myself wondering whether that would have happened if she was male.

Megan: I do wonder. I've never gotten in trouble like that even though I do swear quite a bit. But in the, in a particular part of the states that yeah, I probably would have got myself into trouble and probably a man wouldn't? But yeah, we can't prove it.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That is the frustrating thing that happens more.

Megan: We can't prove it.

Carrie: Well we probably can but it would take some time. We can't do it in this exact moment, but...

Rebecca: No, no, you can't magic it out of thin air.

Carrie: What are some ways that people try to mitigate the offensiveness of swearing and why do people feel the need to do it?

Rebecca: Yeah. There's a few interesting ways. So we talked about one of them right at the beginning which is using asterisks to replace some of the letters in swearing and then of course people will do things like say funk instead of fuck or whatever. You know the sort of the usual alarm.

Megan: Oh, by the way, before we get too far away from the asterisk, book is amazing and that it has the asterisk. But it also like in the same color it has... It's very... yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah it's very censor Yeah, I was so happy that OUP, did that, that they've taken such a light touch to the censorship on the Kaaba and also if you look at the, because you could look at the list of chapters on the OUP website and `there's a lot of good chapter names. There's one called Cunt. There's one called Can't and Can't, I Can't in Inverted Commas. Yeah. Yeah. I was sort of really, there was a sort of process of writing the book and then thinking okay, like what what form is this going to end up being published in but no  they were so great. So yeah.

Megan: Sorry go ahead. Yeah. 

Rebecca: No. No, so yes, we're talking about so the way so that we mitigate the the damage of swearing. However, you might interpret damage. I think so this is really puzzling. as I said, this was what first drew me into swearing. You know, why? Why do we do this now? Why do we send the swear words when we doing it in a way to make sure that people can still understand what the word is right? You could just fuck is rarely censored by replacing all of its letters with asterisks, there's enough left to kind of give people the idea. I think it becomes less puzzling when we kind of take a step back and look at why swearing what makes wearing offensive doesn't all have to
do with the words themselves. It's not like those words have this power to offend and nothing else is going on. I think one of the reasons that swearing can be so offensive is because it's not always but it can be like an overt expression of disrespect. If you say a swear word in a sort of in a context. It's obviously polite and you know that nobody's going to want you to swear and you swear anyway, then I think what's going on there is the people you're talking to take that as an expression of disrespect because they know that you know that they're not going to like it, you know that they're going to be shocked by it and yet you go ahead doing and do it anyway, so they end up thinking. Okay. I guess you don't care very much about my feelings.  there's more to say about that but I think go back to asterisks. What we're doing is sending so there's that message that we would send if we chose to use a swearword without censoring it. this would be in writing now and by doing that we would be sending that message of disrespect but when we obscure some of the word with asterisks, I think there's this other message that we're sending which kind of balances out that disrespectful message and it's something like, there's reasons why I want to communicate this word,  perhaps it's if it's a news report say I want to report accurately what's been said not leave you guessing but at the same time I care about how you might receive this and how you might react to it. So I'm going to send some of the letters as a I all showing that I care about your feelings and I think that's what people hear when they all see when they say a, I call it sanitization when they see a sanitized swear word one with some of the letters replaced by asterisks that there's that that message of concern and consideration which balances out the message of disrespect and I think that really comes out if you think about what it would be like so generally when you see in a news report say a swear word with some of them it has replaced by asterisks. It will just appear once or twice,  just enough to kind of the bare minimum to let you grasp the fact but if it was throughout the news article, it was just like peppered throughout every pretty much every sentence then I think the asterisk wouldn't do so much of a good job because I think you know this messenger I care that you don't like swearing would be kind of In conflict with the fact that it's every other sentence right? So I think it if asterisks are used. And they use sparingly and in a sort of this hurts me more than it hurts you sort of way, then, you can convey this I care about accuracy. I want you to understand this thing that I'm communicating but at the same time I don't want to offend you and I think that's what's going on. I think it kind of works partly because of that but also because when we read a swear word with asterisks obscuring some of the letters we understand all this right we understand that it's being used a technique to make sure we don't get upset. 

Carrie: It's interesting because I kind of get annoyed not all the time and some isn't instances. I understand why they're using the asterisk, but I guess like on social media like we're all friends here. Why are you sanitizing and I guess I'm offended that they think I'm going to be offended or something. I'm not sure what's going on. 

Rebecca: Yeah, no that you're bring a really good point that I think which is,  sort of that, we all know that swearing can be a way of offending people, but I think we also all know but maybe think about it less that it can also be a way of establishing trust and intimacy, if you think about going out with a new group of people who don't know that well and getting to know each other and then there might be a moment when somebody takes the risk and swears in a benign way and everyone sort of goes. Okay, we can relax but there are no and then everybody sort of there's this sort of building up a trust because they've taken a risk and trusted you not to take offense and you're happy with that and so on and I think in that context, so if  if you imagine sort of being invited to join a new group of friends who swear with each other and and whenever you're with them they make sure to hold back and they don't swear. I think that can be quite excluding that sort of you're not one of us because it does have that it is that way of signaling trust and intimacy. Yes, I think absolutely it can using asterisk can be can be annoying sometimes for exactly that reason. So do you not trust me to react sensibly to this words?

Megan: Yeah. This reminds me of an example of purposefully not sanitizing a word and going back to politicians. When Donald Trump used the term shithole countries. I remember specifically some choosing to actually say shithole countries and saying that their choice was to purposely say what he said. It seems to me maybe like a matter of like trying to convey that trumps disrespect there not the journalists trying to be disrespectful but conveying someone else's disrespect.

Rebecca: Yeah, but that's a good point. I think as well. This is a it's one of those ambiguous risky context, isn't it? Because the journalist who is saying that they're sort of it sounds like the intention there was what I'm not going to apologize for him. I'm not going to be the one to make this better. He said it he can live with it. So yes, it's this way of sort of let him suffer the consequences of what he said, but at the same time, that that journalists is risking people thinking, you know pinning the offense on him right sort of thinking. Okay. Do you not know that this word is not one that we use in this context.

Carrie: It's true. But like you're  sanitizing it really doesn't help that much because there's the meaning is still vile.

Megan: And you wonder what they would say. Otherwise, do you spell it out [crosstalk] I think I don't think you can... Well I think when it was on the banner or whatever they call those I forgotten the word. I know there's a specific word but it didn't actually say spell out shithole, but the journalist did say it. 

Rebecca: I think there's some cases. Well, yeah sort of sanitizing it can just send the wrong message. And there  was an interesting case of this quite a few years ago in the UK where the footballer John Terry was in court. He was charged with racial abuse for allegedly calling another player a fucking black cunt and in a lot of newspapers this what he said was reported with the word black left intact. No that's not a word that we sensor but fucking and can't were obscured with asterisk. And I'd pay people there were letters so around at the time written to newspaper saying No, this is this is just where  he so John Terry was on trial for racial abuse. It wasn't for swearing.

Megan: Rage.

Rebecca: And it was... No that one word, but if he hadn't included the word black it would have just been used of another sort of an interesting example of swearing but I think that was a case in it and it was I think that wasn't unsanitizable expression because you couldn't have sanitized the word black. I think that would have sent a really the kind of offensive message. If that's not an offensive term. 

Carrie: Yeah absolutely. 

Rebecca: So I think that was a case of well, you kind of just have if you want to report this you have to leave it as it is because anything you do to it is going to make it work. 

Megan: Yeah, I totally agree. What are some positive things about swearing? 

Carrie: Yeah actually I mentioned one of them [crosstalk], but are there other things? 

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. So that's the way we talked about the role of swear against our friendships.
Yes, so there's a few things there was a few years ago. There was a series of studies by the psychologist Richard Stevens and his colleagues where they looked at the capacity of swearing to help people withstand pain, so they had people hold a hand in a bucket of icy water and see how long they could keep it there and they were so there were various sort of permutations of this experiment took they were either allowed to say no
nothing, or they were allowed to swear or they were allowed to say sort of fairly like a benign word like table or book something like that or they were allowed to say sort of made up words that sort of sound a little bit funny. I think one was twizpipe so they were sort of like made up words, but they were supposed to send a bit silly looked at all these sort of different things that people could say while they were coping with pain and they found out that when people were allowed to swear then they were able to keep that hand in this icy water for longer than in any of the other cases and it tends to work better apparently for people who don't usually swear so, if sort of someone who just swears all the time, then it doesn't have so much of an effect. But yeah, the thought was that it's the swearing especially when you don't do it has this and physiological response attached to it and it can help us withstand pain, which I suppose explains why we might swear when we hurt ourselves. Yeah, that's another thing. There is one view that swearing can help full stall violence. So, when you it's a violence-free form of aggression. Basically the idea is that you can kind of use strong language to vent your anger at somebody rather than hitting them which is  I guess if we encounter somebody in the street just screaming swear words at somebody else. We're not going to necessarily think oh that what a positive aspect of swearing. But the alternative is that they are hitting each other then it may be the lesser lesser of two evils. So there's a few things and there's something I wrote about towards the end of the book which is about how not everybody has the capacity to cause offence by swearing that some people just can't get people to take offense. And this was something I got thinking about when I saw a blog post by a blogger who sadly died. They're called Mel Bax. So they were a disabled blogger used voice software to speak. So yeah, they would sort of type, press a button in the machine that would sort of say what whatever the word was that they wanted to say and they wrote a post about how people can be really sort of not respect the boundaries of disabled people so can get really kind of up close and treat them really, you know in quite a demeaning patronising way.
And Mel Bax said we have to have the ability to tell people to back off basically. So they designed a page of their voice software that was all dedicated to telling people to back off and it had various expressions sort of ranging from something pretty mild all the way to fuck off which, then they could use to tell people to give us a more space. But then they wrote about how they had trouble getting people to take it seriously, and that when they use the machine to say fuck off that people would just laugh and say look this guy's cursing you through using a machine which was really not the reaction that was intended and they wrote in his post about just frustration at not being taken seriously and I think their expression was I'm not real to them and I think that is really worried. I think it's that's so not just people with disabilities can have a hard time causing offence to swearing but there's other groups to I think children but  it's not we often laugh at the swearing of children. And I don't think that's particularly concerning because they just they just grow up and they'll find their feet eventually but you know sort of people with an unusual appearance or people who sort of an unusual sound people with unusual acts and I think there's also the group's where people might not be able to bring about the effect that they want through swearing. And so I was thinking about why this is I think we should think about it more. I think there's you know sort of when we tend to think well, we need to be careful about swearing because we'll offend people when we do it and well for most of us that might be true right but then there's that's kind of a privilege that there's people who don't have that ability and I think it does it reveals some quite concerning attitudes I think. I think it's if someone swears at us and we don't take them seriously,  we're not offended then it's probably because we're not viewing them as one of us and in some cases we ought to view them as one of us, right if somebody's is somebody speaking to us using voice software. There's no reason that we shouldn't be including them in the community of speakers that we are participating in [?] sort of speakers of people have learnt our language as a second or third or whatever language. Yeah, and I think a general point here is that our patterns off being offended can reveal for quite deeply held attitudes towards people and and you know sort of actually being able to offend some or taking offense at somebody is in a way kind of paying him a compliment because it's like saying, well I care about whether or not you show me respect. You're part of the group of people who whose respect   I'm keen to have and then when it comes to certain other groups, we don't take offense maybe because we don't care whether or not we're respected by them. And I guess this is another set of attitudes it implicit bias. I guess where it's another set of attitudes that we don't necessarily notice because we might like to think we are overlooking differences and treating everybody equally, but then perhaps attitudes sort of who's capable of offending us and who isn't I think that the difference is there might reveal something else that it's probably worth us paying attention to 

Carrie: Absolutely.

Megan: Yeah. Absolutely. And I have haven't thought about that very deeply. So I appreciate you bringing it up. And I don't and reading it in the book as well. 

Carrie: Yeah. It is something that I think we should talk about more like yeah who we're worried about having respect from because we often think like when I think about these kinds of things like we do often still want respect from people who are below us on the social hierarchy. But like this is someone who just is like outside of the social hierarchy or something like children kind of are and like, what does that mean? Yeah haven't given it enough thought but it's very interesting.

Rebecca: Yeah. So we think about offending a sort of offensiveness that it's just it's something we want to avoid try. But if we kind of sit with it, I think okay. There might be some there might be more to it than that.  I think I got the check the chapter where I call where I discuss this. I called the value of offensiveness. I kind of wanted to it's towards the end of the book. I wanted to sort of end on a somewhat positive note, but sort of so even when you're causing offence there's something positive to say.

Cassie: Always good. I love it when I get a new perspective. 

Megan: Yeah. that's and that's what we hope for with the podcast too so what makes wearing so interesting from an academic perspective.

Rebecca: Good question. I was amazed that it's pretty neglected by philosophers or it was a few when I started writing the book. There's a big philosophical literature on other sorts of offensive language. So especially slurs what makes slurs offensive and what they are there's this big literature their but swearing is sort of relatively neglected. But in other disciplines, there is quite a bit written about it. So psychologists have written about it, cultural historians linguists and so on. Yeah, I think it's
One thing I find really interesting about it is that it's just not something we're ever taught so it's we don't get a class from our parents this sort of sit down and teach us how to swear. We're just told not to and so we sort of pick it up from older children and things like this and it's sort of all feels a bit naughty and then it's almost like there's no rules. So there's this is Steven Pinker the linguist. I think it was him, so looking at some of the interesting linguistic features of swearing. Here's what I'm going through why he was talking about fucking is not an adjective where he said, if you say drawn... This is a nasty example. Drawn the fucking cat. I don't like this example. I got a cat on my lap.

Carrie: Me too. 

Rebecca: Yeah, so he said, if that was an adjectives you'd be able to say drown the cat which is fucking but I'm actually thinking I misremembered here. I'm not sure this was.

Carrie: No that's what you said in your book.

Rebecca: I'm getting my linguist. Okay, [crosstalk] Thank you. I'm glad somebody knows what I write in my book. So reading things like this that have been written by linguists about  what he can and can't do with swearing. I'm reading and thinking I'm not sure how I feel about this sort of way of talking about swearing that you can't say this with the word fucking, you can't say drown the cat which is fucking and I was thinking well who says, it's just this sort of it's this sort of like wild west of language where you can I think so say anything. If you look at examples like the way that Scottish people reacted to Donald Trump when he insinuated that they had voted to leave the EU and the UK's brexit vote and just you know entire BuzzFeed posts devoted to like the elaborate unusual insults that they had levied at him and the character Malcolm Tucker. I don't know if he's so well known in the US but instead of a character from the political comedy show the thick of it famous for coming out with these bizarre sweary expressions. 

Malcom: And totally beyond the Realms of your fucking toes all here fucking dim-witted conquer fucking Hanson. I don't just take this fucking job home. You know, I take this job home and fucking taser me to the bed and it fucking fucks me from asshole to breakfast then it wakes me up in the morning with a cup full of piss slumming my face slaps. But the chops to make sure I'm awake and I'm sucking kick me in a fucking balls. This job has taken me in every hole in my fucking body. Malcom it's gone. You can't know Malcolm because Malcolm is not here. 

Rebecca: So, sort of thinking about  what makes the difference between swearing in a way that you know makes people think you can't do that that's not correct and sort of thinking. Wow, what an unusual and creative way of swearing which I've never heard before. Yeah. I'm not sure whether there is any systematic way, we can draw a line there and I suspect that a lot of it just depends on who's doing a swearing. So if somebody swears really creatively and they are a unintelligent fluent speaker, then I suspect I could be wrong but I suspect we're more likely to think. Oh, they know what they're doing. They're just being creative. Whereas if it's somebody that we think of you so maybe somebody who is still to become fluent in the language that they use in usual sweary expression then maybe we're more likely to think. Okay. They don't really know what they're doing. 

Carrie: Well, you've made me defend Steven Pinker, which is anathema. But anyway, the point is that if you were to say the cat which is fucking it would mean something completely different from that fucking cat, but it's [crosstalk] true. 

Megan: You can be very creative though. So yes.

Rebecca: This is James the Cawley's point that there's two... He has these two senses of fucking and he calls them fuck one and fuck two and fuck one. Is the sense of fucking where it sort of is basically just another verb, which is I think the point you're making that you would think it means,  drown the cat, which is having sex is what you would think it would mean. But you wouldn't think it would mean,  just drawn the fucking cat it would mean something...

Carrie: That's not in my particular grammar. Is there anything that we didn't ask you that you would like to have her listeners think about before we let you go. 

Rebecca: No I think we've covered a lot. I think you've been really thorough and I'm really grateful for your interest in the Fuck.

Carrie: Well, we love swearing.

Megan: Yeah, we love swearing.
Yeah jeans. [crosstalk] And anything to do with language of course, we're always going to be interested in. So, yeah, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about this.

Rebecca: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

Megan: Thank you and leave our listeners with one final message. Don't be an asshole. 

Carrie: Don't be an asshole.

Rebecca: Definitely don't be an asshole.

Megan: Thank you. 

Carrie: The vocal phrase podcast is produced by me. Carrie Gillon, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr Twitter Facebook and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfries@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com

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