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Do you curse like a sailor? Maybe you’re brilliant

By Cox Media Group National Content Desk
Dec 15, 2015

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Perhaps you have heard someone claim a person’s use of profanity is a sign that the cursor has a limited vocabulary, is uneducated or lazy in language.

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But researchers who study such things say that is a load of … misconceptions.

Psychologists Kristin Jay and Timothy Jay conducted tests with students, asking participants to say as many different swear words as they could in 60 seconds.

They also asked participants to say as many different animal names as they could, then compared the results.

The results showed that subjects came up with as many non-swearing words as curses. That indicated to the researchers that fluency in curse words is an indicator in overall fluency, not an indication of limited language ability.

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