Grammar Girl here, today's episode is about swearing.

Swearing has been in the news a lot lately, especially since a U.S. Court of Appeals struck

down the longstanding FCC ban on vulgar language on radio and network television.

Listener Michael Oberdacker wonders what makes a word vulgar.

He wrote in an email, quote, who decides that?

I mean, it's just a word like any other, who has the authority to say it's not polite

to say it in public or polite company, end quote.

Strange as it may seem, as speakers of any language intuitively know, a swear word is

not just a word like any other.

People who suffer loss of speech because of damage to the language processing part of

their brain often retain the ability to curse, for example, because swear words are

processed in the brain's limbic system, the area responsible for emotions.

Experiments have shown that hearing or reading dirty words affects people emotionally,

as indicated by an increase in their galvanic skin response.

Obscenity or profanity truly does have the power to shock people at an emotional level.

But what gives swearing this power?

In short, it's society's taboos.

Taboos in this sense covers not just the forbidden, but any domain of activity or social interaction

or social norms regulate behavior.

Whatever a society deems taboos is a well spring of words deemed obscene or profane,

as well as euphemisms for those words.

Taboos vary over time, and as they change, so do the words that are considered socially

...