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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the spillover effects of offensive commenting in online community from the lens of emotional and behavioral contagion. Specifically, it examines the contagion of swearing – a linguistic mannerism that conveys high-arousal emotion – based upon two mechanisms of contagion: mimicry and social interaction effect. Design/methodology/approach The study performs a series of mixed-effect logistic regressions to investigate the contagious potential of offensive comments collected from YouTube in response to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign videos posted between January and April 2016. Findings The study examines non-random incidences of two types of swearing online: public and interpersonal. Findings suggest that a first-level (a.k.a. parent) comment’s public swearing tends to trigger chains of interpersonal swearing in the second-level (a.k.a. child) comments. Meanwhile, among the child-comments, a sequentially preceding comment’s swearing is contagious to the following comment only across the same swearing type. Based on the findings, the study concludes that offensive comments are contagious and have impact on shaping the community-wide linguistic norms of online user interactions. Originality/value The study discusses the ways in which an individual’s display of offensiveness may influence and shape discursive cultures on the internet. This study delves into the mechanisms of text-based contagion by differentiating between mimicry effect and social interaction effect. While online emotional contagion research to this date has focused on the difference between positive and negative valence, internet research that specifically looks at the contagious potential of offensive expressions remains sparse.

Although swearing is taboo language, it frequently appears in daily conversations. To explain this paradox, two studies examined contextualized swearing in Indian and non-Indian participants. In Study 1, participants assessed the appropriateness of mild, moderate, and severe swears in casual and abusive contexts; in Study 2, participants completed contextual dialogues with mild, moderate, or severe swearwords. Results indicated that mild and moderate swears were more appropriate in casual settings than in abusive scenarios; severe swears were the most inappropriate, regardless of context. Mild and moderate swears were likely to be used to complete casual and abusive dialogues respectively, even though it was expected that severe swears would be compatible with abusive settings. Moreover, gender and nationality differences suggested that assessing appropriateness of swearing behaviour and likelihood of swearword usage provided independent and contrasting findings. Cultural variations in swearing behaviour, particularly contextualized swearing, and suggestions for further research are outlined.

The use of taboo words represents one of the most common and arguably universal linguistic behaviors, fulfilling a wide range of psychological and social functions. However, in the scientific literature, taboo language is poorly characterized, and how it is realized in different languages and populations remains largely unexplored. Here we provide a database of taboo words, collected from different linguistic communities (Study 1, N = 1046), along with their speaker-centered semantic characterization (Study 2, N = 455 for each of six rating dimensions), covering 13 languages and 17 countries from all five permanently inhabited continents. Our results show that, in all languages, taboo words are mainly characterized by extremely low valence and high arousal, and very low written frequency. However, a significant amount of cross-country variability in words’ tabooness and offensiveness proves the importance of community-specific sociocultural knowledge in the study of taboo language.

Swearing, a highly emotive form of expression, has recently attracted growing interest from researchers. Yet, swearing is still largely unexamined as a form of self-talk among professional athletes, coaches, and casual exercisers. This study aims to fill that gap by creating and validating the Use of Swear Words in Sport and Exercise Questionnaire (USWSEQ), an innovative instrument intended to assess how often athletes, coaches, and recreational exercisers utilize common swear words. The questionnaire was administered to 513 participants and underwent exploratory (n = 333) and confirmatory (n = 180) factor analyses to evaluate its content structure, reliability, and validity. Results confirmed a robust two-factor model: (1) Self/Other Degradation, and (2) Situational Swearing. Notably, the study emphasizes the complexity involved in researching language, because swear words can be semantically ambiguous, pragmatically flexible, and deeply embedded in culture. These attributes present challenges for conventional psychometric methods and highlight the importance of function-based and context-aware frameworks.

Rap songs often feature artists who utilize explicit language to convey feelings such as happiness, sorrow, and anger, reflecting audience expectations and trends within the music industry. This study intends to conduct a socio-pragmatic analysis of explicit, derogatory, and offensive language in the songs of the American artist Doja Cat, employing Hughes’ (1996) Swearing Word Theory, Jay’s (1996) Taboo Words Theory, Luhr’s (2002) classification of social factors for sociolinguistic examination, Salager’s (1997) categories of hedges for pragmatic assessment, and Austin’s (1965, 1989) theory of speech acts. The researchers collected the data using the AntConc corpus analysis tool. The data shows the singer’s frequent use of general profanity (46%), followed by excrement (29%) and animal words (13%). She employs hedges for rhythm and harmony and directive and representative speech acts for future meaning. For pragmatic reasons, she employs more directive (44%) than representative speech acts (34.1%) in her songs. She also employs hedges, mostly, modal auxiliary verbs (27.8%) and “if” clauses (72.1%), which are more frequently used than the others because they are more aligned with common speech. The sociolinguistic research shows she connects with the lower class by using phrases like “gonna” and “nigga” that signify her association with them. Furthermore, she uses slang terms finishing in “-in”, thus making a statement as a masculine female rapper among the Black community. Finally, researchers can learn more about the social and linguistic factors behind the use of profanity in rap music by comprehending the socio-pragmatic element such words.

Why do swear words sound the way they do? Swear words are often thought to have sounds that render them especially fit for purpose, facilitating the expression of emotion and attitude. To date, however, there has been no systematic cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic patterns in profanity. In an initial, pilot study we explored statistical regularities in the sounds of swear words across a range of typologically distant languages. The best candidate for a cross-linguistic phonemic pattern in profanity was the absence of approximants (sonorous sounds like l , r , w and y ). In Study 1, native speakers of various languages (Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Spanish; N = 215) judged foreign words less likely to be swear words if they contained an approximant. In Study 2 we found that sanitized versions of English swear words – like darn instead of damn – contain significantly more approximants than the original swear words. Our findings reveal that not all sounds are equally suitable for profanity, and demonstrate that sound symbolism – wherein certain sounds are intrinsically associated with certain meanings – is more pervasive than has previously been appreciated, extending beyond denoting single concepts to serving pragmatic functions.

This article interrogates a commonly articulated idea in relation to the criminalisation of offensive language: namely, that swearing at police challenges their authority and thereby deserves criminal punishment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the article examines representations of swearing at police officers in offensive language cases and parliamentary debates, including constructions of power, authority and order. It contributes to - but also denaturalises -c onceptions about police power and authority in the context of public order policing. The article argues that criminal justice discourse plays a significant and often under-acknowledged role in naturalising the punishment of swearing at, or in the presence of, police officers.

Workplace violence against nurses is a serious problem. Nurses from a US urban/community hospital system employing more than 5,000 nurses researched the incidence of workplace violence against nurses perpetrated by patients or visitors in their hospital system. Survey research and retrospective database review methods were used. Nurse participants (all system-employed nurse types) completed a 34-item validated survey in electronic format. Retrospective database review provided annual nurse workplace violence injury treatment and indemnity charges. Institutional review board approval was received. Survey research participants (N = 762) were primarily white female registered nurses, aged 26 to 64 years, with more than 10 years of experience. Over the past year, 76.0% experienced violence (verbal abuse by patients, 54.2%; physical abuse by patients, 29.9%; verbal abuse by visitors, 32.9%; and physical by visitors, 3.5%), such as shouting or yelling (60.0% by patients and 35.8% by visitors), swearing or cursing (53.5% by patients and 24.9% by visitors), grabbing (37.8% by patients and 1.1% by visitors), and scratching or kicking (27.4% by patients and 0.8% by visitors). Emergency nurses (12.1%) experienced a significantly greater number of incidents (P < .001). Nurses noted more than 50 verbal (24.3%) and physical (7.3%) patient/visitor violence incidents over their careers. Most serious career violence incidents (n = 595, 78.1%) were physical (63.7%) (60.8% by patients and 2.9% by visitors), verbal (25.4%) (18.3% by patients and 7.1% by visitors), and threatened physical assault (10.9%) (6.9% by patients and 4.0% by visitors). Perpetrators were primarily white male patients, aged 26 to 35 years, who were confused or influenced by alcohol or drugs. Per database review, annual workplace violence charges for the 2.1% of nurses reporting injuries were $94,156 ($78,924 for treatment and $15,232 for indemnity). Nurses are too commonly exposed to workplace violence. Hospitals should enhance programs for training and incident reporting, particularly for nurses at higher risk of exposure, caring for patients with dementia or Alzheimer disease, patients with drug-seeking behavior, or drug- or alcohol-influenced patients.

In two online survey studies (N = 688 and N = 247, respectively) we developed and validated a new psychometric scale for measuring emotional resonance reduction in bilinguals’ LX (“later learnt language”) relative to their L1 (“first language”). The final scale, dubbed RER-LX (for Reduced Emotional Resonanc e in LX ), comprises 15 items and possesses a number of desirable psychometric properties. It yields good test reliability (expected alpha between 0.8 and 0.9), produces near-normally distributed test scores, and exhibits content validity in terms of its underlying factor structure. Moreover, it correlates well with the only other instrument previously used for the same purpose (BEQ subscale comprising BEQ-swearing , BEQ-feelings and BEQ-anger ). However, compared to the BEQ items, RER-LX has significantly better discriminant validity in relation to LexTALE, a widely used measure of proficiency in English as a second language. Our new scale will be useful to researchers studying bilingualism and emotion.