When it comes to swearing in Casa de BuddhaDog® no one can compare to my wife. She could make a truck-driving sailor blush with some of the obscenities I have heard her say. Man, I love her. But thats besides the point.
My question is, and I am asking in IMHO because I dont think that there have been any clinical studies done on this, after injury does it help to swear?
IMHO, yes, it does. Something takes place almost immediately afterward that has a calming affect on the aformentioned injured part of the body. What caused this? Is it psychological? Does it matter what word(s) you use? If I were to stub my toe and, instead of sh!t or f*ck, started using words like sunshine and flowers, would it have the same calming affect?
Do you have a favorite swear word? Or non-swear word? (I had a teacher who would use Jiminy-Cricket as opposed to Jesus Christ). Or are you a non-swearer??
In my experience, if I’m injured enough to need to vocalize, I’m usually in too much pain to make sense. Instead of cursing, I wind up having to resort to incoherent snarling and Yosemite Sam noises.
I only use one swear word and that word is fuck. Its my American duty to use this word however I feel fit. But one of my favorites (I think it comes from Simpson’s) is (loudly) GM CHRYSLER!!
Its a sure way to turn a few f**king heads.
I love swearing! Not those slack-jawed, illiterate wife-beaters whose every other word is “fuck,” but IMHO, obscenities and profanities are to language what condiments are to fast food. Swearing, when done well, is an art form.
As far as favorites go, “Jesus fuck-a-monkey!” is one of my favorites. You just can’t go wrong combining blasphemy and profanity.
I’m not at all sure why, but swearing does seem to help. Perhaps there is a release of tension that using profanity assists (because we associate the words with that needed release?) or perhaps it just distracts us for a bit while the pain dies down?
Of course, with four impressionable children under foot, I have taught myself to use substitutes, and they seem to do the trick just as well when it comes to injuries. Just this evening, after burning myself slightly while making dinner, I yelled “fudgecicle!” even though no children were actually present.
One thing I have noticed is that, when I am angered, the real words come out, no matter who is around. Last week, my kids (and my neighbor’s-sorry, guys) got quite the earful when a car pulled around another car (who had stopped for us at the crosswalk) in order to cut in front of us.
I’ve learned at work that you really can clap your hand over your mouth fast enough so no sounds come out. Man, those little kid bookcases are hell on your ankles when you bump them though.
I’m generally a non-swearer, except when I’m alone with my closest friends. We swear to joke around with each other and sometimes see how creative we can be, but usually it doesn’t get very obscene. The reasons are basically social and religious; to me personally, swearing seems disrespectful: in my mind it tends to symbolize a disregard for the people around you. It’s like saying “I don’t care about you” in different wording. (BTW, I’m not lecturing or condemning anyone here; I only mean to say why I don’t generally swear. I don’t find too much of a problem swearing when I’m alone with a few of my friends because it doesn’t mean the same thing to us: we do it because it’s kind of funny, and it’s a sort of bonding thing because we know we can do this with each other when we’re alone, and we wouldn’t do it anywhere else.) The other reason I don’t swear is because many of the people that are closest to me would be offended by it (they being the religious sort too) so I’d rather just maintain their comfort and protect my reputation.
And now, how this applies to the OP:
Since I was raised not to swear, swearing can cause a physical reaction in me because when I do it, I know I’m doing something that I think is wrong. It’s kind of like the feeling one would get from stealing (I would imagine ;)). So when something happens to me that upsets me (experiencing pain, for example) and swearing comes naturally, it requires resistance to keep from doing; in effect, it’s tough not to swear in some instances, and preventing myself from doing so then has the opposite effect of “calming.”
I would probably agree then that swearing has a natural calming effect (since it seems to come so naturally when I need to be calmed). But then, having developed an artifical averse reaction to it, it’s pretty much negative for me either way: I can either swear and feel bad for it (although it may calm a different problem), or not swear, but have to offer resistance to my more basic desire in order to do it. Guess I can’t win either way… except, I do admit I feel a bit of pride in myself for being able to do “the right thing” even when it’s not the most pleasant alternative. This becomes a nonissue, though, to those who don’t have my distaste for swearing.
My grandpa was a master of obscenity. He used to be in the Royal Canadian Navy. He spoke Quebecois (I know that’s probably spelled wrong) French as a native language. Yet when he was mad…I mean really mad…he yelled one particular phrase. What was it?
“Christopher Colombus.”
He yelled it in French, of course. But boy did that scare the crap out of my mom and my uncles.
My most common injury is kicking a table leg or something like that with my little baby pinkie toe. And it does seem to help to cuss (which I only do alone, never EVER around other people, especially my mother) I think it takes your mind off the pain. If I could only distract myself with calculus I would never feel pain again.
When I do cuss I spew out a couple fucks and shits before degenerating into primal grunts and scream. When I’m around others I go right to the grunts and screams.
But oddly enough when I got a 1 cm wide by 1 cm long splinter shover up under a finger nail, it was so painful that I was just shocked and stared at my finger in awe at how much it hurt.
P.S. All my favorite swear words now come from Spongebob Squarepants likes tartar sauce and barnacles and fish paste
csg
Whenever, I’m really truly shocked, I don’t swear. the time the dogs tripped me headfirst down the stairs, I just lay at the bottom trying to get my brain working again enough to process what had happened so it could do a quick inventory of where I hurt, and trying to comprehend the china mug half an inch from my eyeball that had broken into a perfect spike. Swearing never even crossed my mind till much later.
I definitely swear. A lot. I try not to say more than “damn”, “hell”, and “shit” around my parents. For what it’s worth, “fuck” does not go over too well with either of them from the mouth of their daughter, even though I know they both use it occasionally.
I try not to cuss around old people unless I know they won’t mind; and I really try hard not to cuss around kids… the parents generally freak.
Having not long ago stubbed my little toe, I can state that swearing does help. A simple, heartfelt “fuck” is good; short and to the point.
In different situations, ie computer crashing for the third time in a day, I tend to get a little more elaborate and see how many words and expressions I can use before I start repeating myself (thanks to jarbabyj, my vocabulary’s been expanded about 300%).
Just remember, any word will do in an emergency: with the right intonation, anything can sound downright bloody shocking.
