# Do we swear more today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 18, 2010, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134 "2010-07-18T16:49:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/41 "2010-07-20T00:07:50Z")
> [@Bartman](#): > > But the actual words are different. Or so Milch has claimed. And, in line with **Exapno** ’s skepticism, I ask: how does Milch know what actual words they used, and how frequently? Anecdotally, there seems no question to me that common, careless public use of profanity is more widespread than it was just twenty years ago. I once asked a couple young guys on a DC Metro train to watch their language around my kids. In their sputtering response, they were literally unable to formulate a single sentence that did not include “fuck,” even to deny that they were excessively profane for a public setting. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/42 "2010-07-20T01:16:41Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > There are always things in polite society that aren’t said or done in mixed company, like swearing. Church, casino, or dog track, shouldn’t matter. Swearing is definitely done in mixed company here, even by fine and upstanding members of the community. > [@](#): > > Huh? :dubious: Still swearing, still not innocent. Possibly even more objectionable to religious types than typical four-letter words. _Not_ swearing to non-religious people, but perhaps best avoided in front of ultra-conservative religious people if you like them or have some sort of pressing requirement not to offend them. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/43 "2010-07-20T01:21:17Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > 1. I some words, like “damn” or “christ” aren’t swearwords today, but were before. Therefore, when doing research, a typically innocent sentence today like “God damn!” might be considered a serious curse in a certain place at a certain time. Right, dudes swore all the time, it’s just that their swearwords wouldn’t shock today, nor would ours shock them. The dudes that made deadwood said that period cursing sounded too much like Yosemite Sam. ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/44 "2010-07-20T02:10:22Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > What is the documentation that we think we swear more in the U.S. today? [http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national\_world&id=4034648](http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national_world&id=4034648) [http://www.biblequestions.org/archives/BQAR395.htm](http://www.biblequestions.org/archives/BQAR395.htm) > **[Yahoo Search - Web Search](https://search.yahoo.com/)** > > The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web. > **[Yahoo Search - Web Search](https://search.yahoo.com/)** > > The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web. [http://www.writework.com/essay/persuasive-speech-profanity-taking-over-america](http://www.writework.com/essay/persuasive-speech-profanity-taking-over-america) And this might be a good reference: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/a-profanity-primer,16436/](http://www.theonion.com/articles/a-profanity-primer,16436/) Thanks for all of the responses! This is a very enlightening thread. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/45 "2010-07-20T02:56:54Z")
None of those are real cites, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/46 "2010-07-20T03:27:42Z")
Did you click the first link? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/47 "2010-07-20T03:35:18Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > None of those are real cites, of course. Well, I’ll give him the first one, since that reports on a poll. The rest don’t have "we"s, they just have "I"s and aren’t worth the electrons wasted in their posting. You could find idiots like the Heaveno lady (the one who wants to take Hello out of the language) at any time in the past; they just spewed their idiocy in different forms. The expressions “swear like a sailor” or “swear like a fishwife” or “swear like an irishman” are ancient and come from the behavior of real people. Looking down at people who swore was a standard form of signifying the “other.” People who were lower class. People in “rough” professions. People not like “us.” As soon as you hear someone ask, do “we” swear more, your first question should be, who is “we?” “We” usually tends to be “not them.” Once you know that, the rest of the answer quickly follows. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/48 "2010-07-20T04:01:45Z")
I just realized that **Exapno** asked for “documentation that we think we swear more,” rather than evidence that, in fact, we do. I responded as if it was the latter, which was in line with the OP question in which the _perception_ was taken as a given, and the SDMB was asked, “do we really?” > [@Sinisterniik](#): > > Did you click the first link? I did. I followed every one of them. It’s a poll of people’s perceptions. It supports, indeed, the assertion that most of us _think_ we swear more today than before. > [@AP](#): > > Two-thirds said they think people swear more than they did 20 years ago. Well, I think so too, but that’s not _data_. It’s not much more scientific than what we could conduct here. If we wanted a genuine study of the incidence of profanity, no single poll conducted in one year could suffice. We’d need polls which asked a series of quantitative questions (maybe, “How often did you hear the word [expletive] in the past week, in a public setting or workplace?”) periodically over a period of years. That’s still based on people’s own recollections and reporting, but it asks them to judge only the past week rather than twenty years, and it asks for direct factual answers rather than judgments _about_ facts over time. ---
**Author:** ![Sinisterniik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@Sinisterniik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinisterniik)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/49 "2010-07-21T22:05:01Z")
To address the last couple of posts, I agree that only the first link was scientific. I was simply trying to show how ubiquitous the idea is that we are more profane today than we used to be. And again, I’m not interested in the impression we have, but rather the reality of whether we swear more or not. If you think I’m incorrect about my previous assertion, I’ll gladly have a discussion about that as well. As for data documenting instances of profanity, I never expected for anyone to dig up a major scientific study showing one thing or another (although I had hopes!). Can anyone find any historical documents talking about profanity? A journal entry? A news report? A doctoral thesis? I appreciate all of the input thus far, especially all of those primary sources out there in the teeming millions! ---
**Author:** ![DogRatCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8e8cbc/32.png) [@DogRatCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DogRatCat)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/50 "2010-07-21T23:34:49Z")
I enjoy movies far less when they swear. It’s completely unnecessary and distracting. I don’t enjoy being around people who swear, and I certainly don’t enjoy second-hand swearing as I am going about my business or trying to relax and enjoy myself somewhere. Has society replaced smoking to be cool with f-bombs and smack talk? I have to also suggest that the tendency to swear varies by culture, location, age, peer pressure, and other factors. I consider it to be a bad habit that one can simply choose to break. I think it is more likely, and I hope it always does remain more likely, that swearing is going to offend someone than not, and so it would be in anyone’s best interest to choose not to. However, it is also obvious that some people want to offend others (look at the t-shirts and bumper stickers and it doesn’t take long to find one). ---
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/51 "2010-07-21T23:36:13Z")
Relating back to Deadwood for a moment. I have a companion book for the series which has a section on the language of the show. David Milch actually did a fair bit of research on the language and cursing of the era. His take on it was the the amount of swearing you see in the show is about spot on, so if you take incontext that Deadwood was a frontier town you’d expect far more swearing than in ‘polite’ society in the big Eastern cities. The big change he had to make was what swear words were used. Milch subbed into the script far more modern equavilents. A modern audience wouldn’t be shocked, and would probably be amused, by profligerate use of ‘Damn’, ‘Bloody’ and ‘Hell’ and other words of that ilk. Which in modern society are no longer considered swear words. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/52 "2010-07-22T03:14:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Your paragraph might make a good test question because it is badly thought through in so many different ways. Just listing them all would make a solid three-hour essay. That’s the only good thing I can say about it. The bombast and hostility in your post are a bit uncalled-for, don’t you think? Where I grew up there were social and religious taboos against cursing. Most Protestant faiths have such taboos. Those taboos were observed, in public anyway, by _most_ people. (On the other hand, if you put a bunch of men together in private, with maybe a bottle of whiskey, blue streaks ensued.) These days the influence of religion is less, and the taboos against cursing in public have been lowered _somewhat_. Those are just my observations, which are _not_ what the OP asked for. I was just responding to your strangely absolutist assertion that there is “no reason to think” cursing is any more common today. Since the OP is looking for data, I can’t help. I imagine actual data on cursing are pretty thin. Regarding the _Deadwood_ hijack, we had this discussion once before, and I think the consensus was that while the word “fuck” has been around a long time, it wasn’t used as an intensifier in those days. (My fucking shirt, that fucking hammer). Instead, “damn” and “goddamn” were the intensifiers of the day. (My damn shirt, that goddamn hammer.) As evidence, I recall an article by a historian mentioning the factoid that Indians in the vicinity sometimes referred to white people as “goddams” because of the frequency with which they were overheard to utter the phrase. ---
**Author:** ![Retief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Retief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Retief)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/53 "2010-07-22T16:31:03Z")
I would say yes. As someone raised in Canada in the 40s and 50s the strongest words I ever heard in our family was bloody or damm. That is not to say we were not aware of stronger profanity but it was just not used around anyone you had any consideration for. “Goddam” would get your mouth washed out with sunlight soap by the handiest female adult, and a dressing down that did not need any profanity for emphasis. Even today none of my siblings will use profanity casually (although I cannot say the same for our children, however they know better than to use it in front of our generation. When I hear someone going on as in the Mel Gibson tapes, I am not so much offended as amazed at their limited vocabulary. Retief ---
**Author:** ![TerpBE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc8723/32.png) [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/54 "2010-07-22T17:20:29Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The same with the final line in **Gone With The Wind** (Selznick had to fight with the censors to keep it in, even though it was also in the book). “After all, tomorrow is another f–king day”? ---
**Author:** ![Dana\_Scully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@Dana\_Scully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dana_Scully)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134/55 "2010-07-22T18:12:36Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > My strong impression, which I don’t have evidence right now to back up, is that, in the past, most people would not think to swear in “mixed company” (when ladies were present), or in “polite society,” or where children were present. “Cursing like a sailor” was the expression, because sailor (and soldiers, and such people) lived in milieus where none of these conditions applied. Very good observation; I think you’re right on, about swearing in mixed company. And I think women swear more freely now than they used to–in mixed company. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-swear-more-today/547134.md?page=2)