F-ck the whole business — the power of profanity

As it turns out, profanity isn’t merely ornamental. It instead serves an incalculably important role in our ability to engage the world around us.

Just how useful are all those obscene words we’re not supposed to utter in polite company?

Perhaps, the better question to ask is whether or not “polite company” is actually worth the effort if they can’t handle a bit of fucking language from time to time.

As frowned upon as profanity might be in certain circles, most Americans seemingly can’t get enough of it. One study suggested the average American swears 21 times each day — an average that I undoubtedly help drive upwards on occasion.

And yet, despite its prolific deployment in our daily vernacular, it remains socially verboten. That contradiction raises an interesting question: What use do all those naughty words actually serve?

One would think, after all, that if they were merely colorful additions to our working vocabulary, they would have long ago faded from common usage. Instead, it seems quite clear that most people have no intention of striking such language from their verbal repertoire.

Nor should they.

As it turns out, profanity isn’t merely ornamental. It instead serves an incalculably important role in our self-expression, communicative abilities with others, and even in our ability to persuade the world around us.

The idea that such language carries with it a powerful effect is understood intuitively. Sometimes, there’s simply no replacement for a judiciously applied expletive — and science seems to back us up on the notion that it isn’t merely some verbal crutch for those who lack a more artful lexicon.

Indeed, plenty of research has indicated that creative and intelligent minds are more prone to uttering the unutterable while expressing their emotions. Because use of profanity requires deployment of the “right” side of the brain — the side most commonly associated with creative intelligence and emotion — it’s no wonder science has often drawn such connections.

Of course, like everything else, causation and correlation are two different things. Simply replacing your PG-rated exclamations with something a bit edgier isn’t going to magically add a few points to your IQ. Nonetheless, as the British national treasure Stephen Fry once pointed out, anyone who believes profanity is a sign of low intelligence is “a fucking lunatic.”

Regardless of how smart or creative one has to be to audaciously lace their vocabulary with vulgarities, the judicious usage of such language has an undeniably powerful effect — on both those who hear it and those who spew it.

Simply put, uttering a malediction is profoundly satisfying for us emotionally, socially and even physically. Research has, for example, supported the seemingly obvious notion that bad words tangibly increase our tolerance for pain and help us cope with physical ailments — a study result that could have easily been replicated by observing literally any human being react to catching their finger in a cupboard drawer.

The painkilling effects of cursing are, in fact, so profound that its use has even been incorporated into certain types of physical therapy.

Beyond the creative indulgence and pain management provided by swearing, however, certain blasphemies simply carry with them a unique and irreplicable set of emotive translations that aren’t found in words plucked from “everyday” language.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, an expletive must be worth closer to a million. As the great Sir Billy Connolly so delicately put it, phrases such as “fuck-off” simply don’t have a PG-rated equivalency in the English language.

And in this sense, profanities are a perfect example of one of the true wonders of language: Some words and phrases simply amount to far more than the mere sum of their parts. A well-placed profanity leveled at the right moment can embolden us to endure physical pain, overcome mental wounds or share in the elation of an emotional high.

And, intrinsically, we know the weight such words are capable of carrying — which is why profanity can often endear an audience to one who lets such unfiltered emotive vernacular pass their lips.

There’s a reason, for example, Joe Biden telling President Obama that the passage of “Obamacare” was “a big fucking deal” didn’t injure his appeal to the masses. After all, pretty much everyone understood that the bill’s signing was, in fact, a big fucking deal. Biden’s moment of raw communicative honesty being caught by a hot mic simply made him appear more human… not somehow obscene or vulgar.

It’s for similar reasons Nevada’s governor has felt perfectly comfortable adopting “getting shit done” as an unofficial motto for his administration.

Even when, for the sake of “polite company,” attempts are made to ostensibly obscure the explicit, it’s not as if we’re suddenly spared the weight of the word in question. As Ernest Hemingway once told his editor:

If you decide to cut out a letter or two to keep inside the law, that is your business — I send the copy and you are supposed to know what will go to jail and what will not. F-ck the whole business — that looks all right. It’s legal, isn’t it?

To be sure, there is a natural limit to the effective use of such words. As Ernest Hemingway pointed out separately, “all our words from loose using have lost their edge” — and part of what allows profanity to carry with it such a magical power is the fact that it’s not a routine part of our ordering coffee, listening to the radio, watching the news or interacting with individuals in a professional capacity.

Beginning your next business Zoom call by welcoming all the “fuckwits to this bullshit meeting,” for example, isn’t likely to go over well. However, a little judicious sprinkling of “colorful” language into your regular repertoire provides your lexicon with a powerful occasional punctuation — provided that you know when to add a few censorious dashes to save “polite company” from unnecessary offense.

After all, even linguistic prudes are likely able to work out what that dash is hiding.