I was watching a documentary on Tourettes Syndrome, and got to wondering about something. I saw that a lot of people suffering from Tourette’s had facial and body tics, but some would go into a few second burst of curse word shouting. Is this only because the words are deemed socially unacceptable? For example, if “nurse” and “Mountain Dew” were socially unacceptable words, would a Tourette’s sufferer have an outburst with those words? What would happen if a sufferer grew up in a house where they never heard a curse word at all? Just wondering…
You’re correct. “Forbidden” words is the key concept in your question. In addition, people with Tourette’s make a lot of non-linguistic noises, which alerts us that this is a motor phenomenon and not primarily a language problem. As with many motor tics, the person may also “correct” the tic to a behavior that makes more sense–a person with a tic that makes him raise his arm over and over may divert it to become a tic of pushing his glasses more firmly onto his nose; a person with a tic that makes him make a noise may divert it to become a tic where a name is shouted, or the person makes a barking sound, etc.