UQ Mythbusters

Whether you grew up with a swear jar at home or expletives were simply part of everyday conversation, you probably inherited some rules about when – or whether – it's okay to swear. You may even judge others by how well they obey them.

But if we're all following a different rulebook, are we leaving ourselves vulnerable to prejudice and misunderstanding?

Dr Martin Schweinberger, a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at UQ, studies the social and cultural dimensions of obscenity. He spoke to Contact about what the use of so-called dirty words can actually tell us about the people who use them.

Does swearing tell us anything reliable about the swearer? For example, their personality, background or morals?

Swearing does carry some signal, but it's noisy. Research links higher swearing frequency to traits like extraversion and lower agreeableness, and there are well-documented patterns by age (younger people swear more) and gender, with males typically swearing more (though the gap is narrowing). Socioeconomic background and regional culture also shape what words people reach for.

What swearing doesn't reliably signal is morality. The idea that frequent swearers are somehow morally deficient has no serious empirical support. What it usually signals is context-sensitivity, pragmatic competence and potentially even intelligence: most proficient swearers know exactly when to switch it off.

Why do swear words carry such strong moral judgments compared to other types of language?

Swear words are emotionally potent because they tap into domains that cultures police most heavily: the body, sex, death, the sacred and social taboos around race or disability. Their power is socially constructed and maintained. This means that we pass the sense of transgression on through emotional reactions, especially in childhood.

Neurologically, taboo words are processed differently from neutral language, activating regions associated with threat and emotional arousal. That visceral response is what makes them feel morally weighty rather than just semantically offensive. Crucially, their charge is to some extent culturally specific: a word that is deeply offensive in one community may be unremarkable in another – although there are words that are commonly considered vulgar across cultures.

Swearing in the workplace can be controversial. What does the research say about using rude words at work?

The research suggests swearing at work is less about individual rudeness and more about group membership and hierarchy. In many workplaces, think, for example, of trades or creative industries, controlled swearing functions as in-group bonding and can signal authenticity and trust. The key variable is power: swearing downward (a manager at a subordinate) reads as aggressive; swearing laterally between colleagues of similar status tends to be better tolerated.

Australian workplace culture is comparatively permissive by international standards, but context still matters enormously. An expletive in a casual team meeting lands very differently than the same word in a client presentation or a formal review.

Is there any evidence to support the notions that swearing comes from a lack of education or self-control?

No! And this myth is worth retiring. Studies consistently find no negative correlation between vocabulary size and swearing frequency; if anything, people with larger vocabularies tend to have larger swearing vocabularies too. Swearing is linguistically and pragmatically highly functional and not a verbal failure.

The self-control claim also doesn't hold up: strategic, context-appropriate swearing requires social awareness and control, not a lack of it. The stereotype likely persists because swearing is more socially visible in working-class contexts, which gets misread as a class marker for deficiency rather than what it actually is: a different set of stylistic and pragmatic norms.

What's the significance of swearing in an Australian context? Is it part of our national character?

Australia has a distinctive relationship with taboo language, and the evidence bears this out. My corpus research with Kate Burridge shows that Australian English online discourse features notably high rates of vulgarity compared to other English-speaking countries. Culturally, this connects to egalitarianism and the tall poppy ethos: directness and irreverence are valued, and excessive formality can read as pretension.

Terms like bloody and bastard have been so thoroughly domesticated they barely register as offensive anymore. That said, it would be too simple to call swearing a monolithic national trait: it varies enormously by region, generation and social context within Australia too.

Does swearing serve any valuable social functions?

Absolutely, and the evidence is stronger than most people expect. Swearing serves at least 4 documented functions: emotional expression and relief (cathartic swearing genuinely reduces perceived pain, per Stephens et al.’s work); social bonding and solidarity; humour and emphasis; and authentic self-expression.

In close relationships, mutual swearing can signal trust and comfort. Clinically, the ability to swear is sometimes preserved in patients with aphasia when other language is lost, suggesting it is neurologically distinct.

The question isn’t really whether swearing has value – it very clearly does – but whether the social risks outweigh the benefits in a given context.