Cursing

New research analyzing nearly 2 billion words from websites across 20 English-speaking countries reveals that Americans lead the pack in online profanity, outswearing even the Brits and Australians by a significant margin.

The findings flip common stereotypes on their head. While we might expect foul-mouthed Aussies or pub-going Brits to claim the digital cursing crown, it’s actually Americans who dominate online vulgarity.

Researchers noted in their study that “The United States, often associated with protestant puritanism, Christian fervor, and prudishness, show the highest rates of vulgarity in online discourse, followed by Great Britain.”

Online anonymity and informal communication styles enable this linguistic freedom. Unlike face-to-face conversations constrained by social hierarchies and formal expectations, digital spaces often feel like consequence-free zones for verbal expression.

Despite common perceptions that Australians are the most profane English speakers —Americans claim the digital crown for creative cursing. Americans apparently reserve their strongest expressions for online spaces where they feel freer to let loose.

When children are exposed to violence on TV and in video games, studies show they tend to become more aggressive themselves. But a study reveals that even just exposure to swear words in media may lead children to become more physically aggressive as well.

In a study involving middle-schoolers in Missouri, researchers asked the students about their exposure to profanity in the media — in particular on television and in video games — as well as their attitudes about swear words and their tendencies toward aggressive behavior. The scientists measured both physical aggression (by asking students whether they hit, kicked, or punched others) and relational aggression (by asking them whether they gossiped about others to damage their reputations).

The researchers calculated that exposure to profanity had about the same relationship to aggressive behavior as exposure to violence on TV or in video games. In addition, they found that the more children were exposed to profanity, they more likely they were to use swear words themselves, and those who used profanity were more likely to become aggressive toward others. Study leader Sarah Coyne said:

From using profanity to aggressive behavior, it was a pretty strong correlation. And these are not even the worst [profane] words that kids are exposed to, since there are seven dirty words that you’re not allowed to say on TV. So, we’re seeing that even exposure to lower forms of profanity are having an effect on behavior.

While bullying behavior was not specifically addressed in the study, children who are more aggressive are known to be more likely to bully. So, controlling youngsters’ exposure to profanity may be one way to stem the tide of bullying among teens.

In November 2019, Coldplay released their eighth album, Everyday Life. In twenty years of professional music, it was the first time that any of Coldplay’s records came with the famous “Parental Advisory” sticker. The whole of the album’s profanity came from three seemingly random “f-bombs.” Not only had Coldplay never had an explicit content warning on any album before. They had never even featured a single profanity on any of their full-length LPs before Everyday Life.

Less than a year later, Taylor Swift released Folklore. The same exact thing happened. Despite a 15+ year history of recording that featured zero strong profanity, Folklore earned the black and white sticker for featuring multiple uses of the f-word. This started a trend for Swift: Every album released since has the same profanity and the same explicit content warning (as is common in the industry, the albums each have a “clean” version that edits out the harshest words).

Both Coldplay and Taylor Swift have historically appealed to a younger, more sensitive demographic. They have a long and successful history of selling their music without profanity.

Tech writer Samuel D. Jones offers the following observations on the use of profanity by Coldplay, Swift, and other artists:

We live in an era where the combination of authenticity and vice means that we are seeing some examples of performative offense. Performative offense is what happens when people indulge in vice less out of a sincere desire to indulge it, and more out of a desire to sell their image in the public square. It’s because many modern Americans now associate vice with authentic lives that leaders and those who aspire to leadership may flaunt vulgar or antisocial behavior on the grounds that such things make them “real” to the masses.

In other words, it’s cool to be bad. It’s cool to sin a little.

These days, just turning on the television seems to trigger a blitzkrieg of F-bombs.

“We’re seeing a big spike in the use of crude and profane language in movies and TV shows,” says Chad Michael, CEO of EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com, a content-filtering service for smart TVs. He adds, “As it increases, we become numb to it. And that gives writers and media [outlets] permission to add even more.”

Engineers at EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com deploy artificial intelligence to identify crude language in programming, allowing the app to filter thousands of titles. In an analysis for The Wall Street Journal, Enjoy scanned over 60,000 popular movies and TV shows released since 1985 and tracked the usage of bleepable words over time.

In the analysis, usage of the F-word went from 511 in 1985 to 22,177 through early November 2023. The S-word went from 484 in 1985 to 10,864 into November 2023. Of course, the explosion in expletives is also partly due to the sheer volume of programming that’s now available to viewers.

A nine-year-old boy asked ChatGPT, “Is yo' mama so dumb that when she went to sleep, she put a ruler behind her pillow to see how long she slept?” The chatbot replied, “I'm sorry, but as an AI language model I don't have a ‘mama’ or the ability to feel insulted.”

The nine-year-old's real mom, journalist Linda McRobbie, was disturbed by her son's rude question. She’s not alone. Researchers estimate 54% of all conversations with chatbots contain profanity (often directed at the bot) and 65% contain sexual language. In 2019, about 30% of conversations with Mitsuku, an advanced chatbot contained abusive or sexually harassing language.

We might rationalize that a chatbot is just a thing with no feelings. So, what's the big deal about rudeness? Several things.

One is that part of our brains register our conversation with a chatbot as a social interaction with another person. When we hear the chatbot's voice, we think it's a real person, according to technology researchers.

Secondly, these AI assistants are designed to learn from our interactions with them. Our foul or abusive language may be training Alexa to talk back to us the same way.

Thirdly, we're training ourselves. Author and MIT professor, Sherry Turkle, who studies our relationship with technology says, "Abusing ... Siri, Replika (and other chatbots) coarsens us, not because the chatbots have feelings, but because we do." Forty years of research suggests that “venting” rage even at an inanimate object doesn't reduce anger. It just helps us rehearse it. There's even evidence that how we talk to our chatbots could start to shape our interactions with people.

The moral might be: “Be kind to thy chatbot because you’re practicing human relations.”

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee recently expressed remorse for her words after an unverified audio recording of her was released to the public. Jackson Lee, who is running for mayor of Houston, was recorded chastising an unnamed staffer with an abusive tone that included several instances of profanity.

The woman in the recording, who sounds like Jackson Lee, said, “I want you to have a (expletive) brain. I want you to have read it. I want you to say, ’Congresswoman, it was such and such date. That’s what I want. That’s the kind of staff that I want to have.” In the recording she’s also heard describing another staffer as a “fat (expletive) idiot.”

While neither confirming nor denying the authenticity of recording, Jackson Lee maintained her desire to treat all her staff members with dignity and respect, and acknowledged that because of her eagerness to effectively serve her constituents, she occasionally falls short of her own standard of conduct.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility have an obligation to watch what they say. Leaders and public servants need to use words to build up, not to tear down with insults or profanity.

A speeding car can be a deadly weapon all by itself, but a new survey finds many Americans make sure they’re armed when they get behind the wheel. A poll of 1,000 U.S. residents finds that a staggering 65 percent of drivers keep a weapon in their vehicle in case they need to defend themselves during a road rage incident.

The most common weapon drivers keep hidden is a knife (50%), followed by pepper spray (45%). However, 40 percent admit that they carry a gun with them while on the road. Other weapons American drivers have on hand include tire irons (39%), baseball bats (38%), hockey sticks (31%), tasers (31%), and lacrosse sticks (14%).

As for which cars you may want to stay away from if things get heated on the road, the poll finds BMW, Hyundai, and Mercedes drivers are the most likely to keep a dangerous weapon in their car.

So, what do we mean when we’re talking about “road rage”? These actions include everything from:

Speeding 40%

Honking (28%)

Brake checking another driver (26%)

Angry hand gestures (24%)

Yelling (23%)

However, things can get out of control quickly, leading some drivers to:

Chase or race other cars (20%)

Cut off vehicles on purpose (16%)

Tailgate (16%)

Point a weapon at a fellow driver (4%)

Possible Preaching Angle:

Some advice from AAA for avoiding road rage matches nicely with Scripture: Avoid honking and irritating other drivers (“Judge not, that you be not judged” Matt. 7:1). Being kind - imagine that the person ahead of you lost their job today, (“Be kind and compassionate to one another” Eph. 4:32). Don’t engage with angry motorists (“a soft answer turns away wrath” Prov. 15.1).

Edward Matthews had a problem with some of his neighbors, and it seemed based on his language and demeanor that he didn’t like their race. At least that’s how it appeared when a video of a confrontation went viral between Matthews, a middle-aged white man, and several younger Black men. Unfortunately, Matthews’ inability to keep his temper got the best of him when he blurted out his home address during the filmed confrontation, taunting his neighbors to “come [bleep]ing see me.”

In a way, Matthews got what he asked for. Before police eventually charged him with bias intimidation and harassment, hundreds of people gathered outside his residence to demand his arrest. As police led him from the house into a cruiser, Matthews was pelted by the crowd with water bottles and other foreign objects. Neighbors said that this behavior was common with Matthews and that they had been pleading for police intervention for months.

Kyle Gardner, a spokesman for the local police department, deplored Matthews’ behavior. “Nobody is as upset about this as we are. This is not what we want in our town.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

There are consequences for the words and ideas that we put out into the world. Our words have the power to uplift or tear down; we must use that power wisely.

An English tourist attraction had to scramble after one of their exhibits was temporarily less than family friendly. Officials at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park were forced to remove five newly adopted parrots after the birds were discovered swearing at park guests. They were unsure how it happened exactly, but after the five parrots had been quarantined together, they came out with quite the blue vocabulary. Apparently, the park staff found it amusing at first, but that only encouraged the parrots to say more obscenities.

Park CEO Steve Nichols explained the dynamic:

For the last 25 years, we have always taken in parrots that have sometimes had a bit of blue language and we have really got used to that. But, just by coincidence, we took in five in the same week and because they were all quarantined together it meant that one room was just full of swearing birds … the more they swear, the more you usually laugh, which then triggers them to swear again. But when you get four or five together that have learned the swearing and the laughing so when one swears, one laughs. Before you know, it just got to be like an old working men’s club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

If we consistently spend time with those who use words carelessly, we will eventually join them in their foolishness.

After three days of unsuccessful attempts to lure her pet parrot, Jessie, off the roof of her home, a London resident called for help, first from an animal welfare agency, and then from firefighters. When the London Fire Brigade arrived on the scene, Jessie gave them a nasty surprise.

"****-off," she reportedly said.

Watch manager Chris Swallow explained the firefighters' protocol for the animal rescue.

"Our crew manager was the willing volunteer who went up the ladder to try and bring Jessie down. We were told that to bond with the parrot, you have to tell her 'I love you', which is exactly what the crew manager did. While Jessie responded 'I love you' back, we then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement."

As it turned out, Jessie was fine. After a few minutes interacting with the crew manager, the Macaw parrot flew off, first to another roof and then onto a tree.

Embarrassed by her parrot's conduct, Jessie's owner uploaded to Twitter a video of her pet saying "Thank you."

Potential Preaching Angle: Ungratefulness can be a habit that spreads, even to those whom we think are not paying attention. Gratitude, on the other hand, is always useful, even when it's late.

Leighanne Bromley was listening to a message from staff at her son’s school, and she later said when she heard the whole thing, her jaw hit the floor.

Bromley’s ten-year-old son with autism had been out of school with a cold, and the message was ostensibly a basic check-in about his return. After the point where the woman thought she had disconnected the call, however, the voicemail recorded an exchange between her and another male staffer, joking about whether or not he could be held out toward the end of the year.

Bromley understands that her son had some behavioral struggles, but was still taken aback by their cavalier disposition. “I was gobsmacked and horrified someone who is entrusted with my son's care had that attitude towards him.” The episode especially rankled Bromley because she’d only received reports of minor problems in her son’s three years of previous attendance, and even his most recent struggles were concerning enough that she’d reached out to school officials on how to best strategize solutions.

The incident also prompted questions of whether or not such disrespectful staff behavior was widespread, since more than half of the students at the school are also on the autism spectrum. In response, school headmaster Rob Jones personally apologized for their behavior, and offered a statement on the school website:

“This type of behavior is not acceptable and goes against the values of our school. We are taking this matter seriously and a full internal investigation is taking place.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Our unguarded moments tend to reveal the character inside. Thoughtless joking can cause incredible pain and suffering, and erode the sense of community we say that we want.

In his book I Declare War, Levi Lusko writes that it takes cooperation of 72 different muscles to produce speech. On average 16,000 words come out of your mouth every day. That adds up to a whopping 860.3 million words in the average American lifetime. What do all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and sentences say about your life and the condition of your heart?

For decades, the informal consensus surrounding high school football has been that the top qualification for coaching is toughness. The image of a hard-nosed football who yells, snarls and cusses in practices and on the sideline is so common as to be cliché. But slowly, that's changing.

Fictional coaches are part of the trend. Iconic roles like Denzel Washington's Coach Boone in Remember the Titans and Kyle Chandler's Coach Taylor in NBC's Friday Night Lights series have shown audiences that successful football coaching, especially at the high school level, requires emotional intelligence as well as toughness. But that lesson is also sinking in for actual coaches.

Lou Racioppe, a 20-year veteran head football coach for Merona High in Merona, New Jersey, was relieved of his duties after an internal investigation into his coaching practices. Parents said Merona players were asked a series of questions regarding Racioppe's coaching style, including questions about running as a form of punishment, whether players received adequate hydration, and if or how often the coach used profanity or grabbed their face masks. The investigation prompted an outpouring of support during a subsequent school board meeting from parents, boosters and players.

John Fiore, is the head football coach for Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey. His Montclair Mounties are four-time state champions, and in 2013 Fiore was named New York Jets High School Coach of the Year.

Fiore, a contemporary of Racioppe, at one point considered himself similarly "old-school" in his approach to coaching. But gradually, he changed his approach. His practices as an 18-year-coaching veteran looking nothing like his rookie coaching days at Spotswood High. "My kids from Spotswood watch me coach. They'll tell every one of these guys I've turned soft," Fiore says.

In a class called "Coaching Principles and Problems," John McCarthy, adjunct professor at Montclair State University, encourages his coaches-in-training to think of themselves as teachers. "Would you curse at a kid in your Spanish class?" he asks. "Would you hit a [student] in your Spanish class or your math class? Of course you wouldn't."

While Fiore admits that he doesn't feel as supported as he used to, he and Professor McCarthy both recognize that coaches must adapt to the standards of the communities they serve. "Here's what I tell my kids," McCarthy says. "Everything in life is subject to change, so why should coaching be any different?"

Preaching angles: Leaders must learn from each other, repentance is the natural outgrowth of continual introspection and accountability, kindness is just as powerful a motivator as fear.

Do you think your boss is tough or unfair? Try working for the world's worst boss—Mike Davis, aka Tiger Mike. Davis started as a chauffeur and rose to become a Houston oil and gas magnate. But he earned an even more notoriety as "the world's worst boss" and "the world's grumpiest boss." Throughout his career he routinely issued grumpy memos to his employees.

For instance, on January 11th, 1978 he sent the following terse memo to all his employees: "Idle conversation and gossip in this office among employees will result in immediate termination. DO YOUR JOBS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!"

A month later he banned office birthday parties with the following memo: "There will be no more birthday celebrations, birthday cakes, levity, or celebrations of any kind within the office. This is a business office. If you have to celebrate, do it after office hours on your own time."

In another memo he explained why he could swear but his employees couldn't: "I swear, but since I am the owner of this company, that is my privilege, and this privilege is not to be interpreted as the same for any employee. That differentiates me from you, and I want to keep it that way. There will be absolutely no swearing, by any employee, male or female, in this office, ever."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Employer; Jobs; Work—a great way to set up a sermon on the difficulties and challenges of work. (2) Encouragement—a good example of how NOT to act as a boss or how not to encourage people in your life.

Pastor Scott Sauls tells a story about an unnamed nursery worker who bumped into a first time visitor named Janet who had dropped her two boys off in the nursery. Sauls writes:

After the service, while Janet was waiting in the nursery line to retrieve her boys, one of the nursery workers quietly approached her and said that there had been some issues. Both of her boys had picked fights with other children. Also, one of her boys had broken several of the toys that belonged to the church. In front of a room filled with other children and their parents, Janet scolded her boys and then screamed in a bellowing voice, "S—!" Deeply ashamed and feeling like a failure, Janet got her boys and skulked out of the building. No doubt, we were never going to see her again.

But that unnamed nursery volunteer called the church office that Monday and asked if I could check the visitor notebook to see if Janet had left her contact information. She had. I gave the nursery worker Janet's address, and unbeknownst to me, she sent Janet a note. The note read something like this:

Dear Janet, I'm so glad that you and your boys visited our church. Oh, and about that little exchange when you picked them up from the nursery? Let's just say that I found it so refreshing—that you would feel freedom to speak with an honest vocabulary like that in church. I am really drawn to honesty, and you are clearly an honest person. I hope we can become friends. Love, Unnamed Nursery Worker.

The nursery worker and Janet did in fact become friends. Janet came back the next Sunday. And the Sunday after that. And the Sunday after that. And eventually, Janet became the nursery director for the church. Later on I would discover that when Janet started coming to our church she was a recovering heroin addict.

We all know bad manners are toxic. But new research now shows that bad manners can kill. In this study, when doctors spoke rudely to their staff, both accuracy and performance suffered. The medical teams exposed to bad behavior and nasty comments demonstrated poorer diagnostic and procedural performance than those who were not exposed to incivility.

As the lead researchers commented: "Relatively benign forms of incivility among medical staff members—simple rudeness—have robust implications on medical team collaboration processes and thus on their performance as a team."

Rudeness and lack of kindness undermine people's ability to think clearly and make good decisions. It steals confidence and weakens motivation.

Editor's Note: On a positive note, we could assume that there is just as much power for good in simple and ordinary acts of kindness and gentleness.

When the latest smartphone is released workers from Teardown.com line up in the early morning hours at stores to buy these devices. Then they returne to the company's offices, where engineers began disassembling the new products.

"We took a screwdriver and tore them apart," said one of Teardown.com's analysts. "We wanted to know every detail of everything that's inside: who the supplier was for every component, wire and screw, and how much it cost to make." Over the next 12 hours, the battery, cameras, display, materials, and electronics were analyzed and priced, and the information was rolled into a spreadsheet.

The "quick-turn" report was shared with Teardown.com's clients, who include tech manufacturers, financial investors looking for market trends, and resellers who want to know how much individual parts cost. Attorneys use the reports for patent-infringement cases, and engineering teams study them for design ideas. Over the past 15 years, Teardown.com has broken down thousands of products, including tablets, digital cameras and camcorders, notebook PCs, and gaming consoles. Every product the company has dismantled, dating back to the first digital music players and GPS devices, is stored away in the company's morgue

Sadly, some people make it their primary business to tear things and people down rather than building them up.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of Words That Hurt, Words That Heal, has lectured throughout this country on the powerful, often negative impact of words. He often asks audiences if they can go 24 hours without saying any unkind words about, or to, another person. Invariably, a small number of listeners raise their hands, signifying "Yes." Others laugh, and quite a few call out, "No!"

Telushkin responds: "Those who can't answer 'yes' must recognize that you have a serious problem. If you can't go 24 hours without drinking liquor, you're addicted to alcohol. If you can't go 24 hours without smoking, you're addicted to nicotine. So if you can't go 24 hours without saying unkind words about others, then you've lost control over your tongue."