Abstract
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.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 3794-3813 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Behavior Research Methods |
Volume | 56 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 9 May 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2024 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2024.
Funding
Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. Jon Andoni Duñabeitia was partially supported by grants PID2021126884NB-I00 from the Spanish Government, ISERIE from Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Proyectos de Investigación Científica 2021, and H2019/HUM-5705 from the Comunidad de Madrid. Dušica Filipović Đurđević was supported by Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Republic of Serbia, Grant no. 451-03-68/2020-14/200163 (University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy). Ernesto Guerra was supported by ANID/PIA/Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence Project FB0003. Fritz Günther was supported by DFG Emmy-Noether grant “What’s in a name?” (project no. 459717703). Simone Sulpizio was partially supported by the grant PRIN nr. 2022N87CR9 from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR).
Keywords
- Best–worst scaling
- Emotion
- Semantics
- Swearing
- Taboo words