Swearing Is Actually a Verbal Shortcut

In my previous posts on swearing, I took the easy route in talking about the left and right hemispheres, saying that the right hemisphere is the emotional side and the left is the reasoning side. To a significant degree, that’s just pop psychology. It’s very clear that the two hemispheres work in tandem. They’re closely connected—they’re interconnected and they collaborate. Both hemispheres automatically talk to each other.

If you’ve had some science courses in college, you know that you have an amygdala on both sides of the brain and that they’re connected and that they talk to each other. The two are a major processing center for the entire brain, including both hemispheres.

It’s been hypothesized that one of my grandsons has thinner connections between the two amygdala and that’s why he’s had some difficulty with abstractions and interacting with people. However, with a lot of support, counseling and coaching, he’s gone on to graduate from college and interact fairly easily with people.

Because of what we know about mental plasticity, we think that his education, coaching and counseling have enabled some further development of the connections, but like a lot more people than you might imagine, he’s still neurodivergent.” He does have some skills that are far richer than most humans. He was learning arithmetic as a four-year-old because he wanted to understand sports statistics. His memory of certain kinds of statistics and their applications in sports makes him a genius in these areas. We think this is because of the quality of the connections between the amygdala on both sides of the brain.

But the thin amygdala connections, we think, are also what have made it difficult for him to manage his emotions and his thinking and awareness of them without a lot of help over the years. Thankfully, my family has the resources to support his extensive learning to teach to manage his emotions and relevant thinking.

So the connections of the amygdalae (plural form) have a lot to do. Scientists now know from a lot of unexpected surgeries that the removal of the amygdalae “reduces emotional responsiveness in general and aggression in particular.” That also means the flip sides of warmth and affection are not quite as responsive. Scientists have also found that this removal does not impair overall cognitive function, including intelligence and working memory. My grandson, surprisingly, has phenomenal memory abilities with certain kinds of physical and mathematical facts. But we also learned early on that he had deficits having to do with the recognition and emotional interpretation of facial stimuli. So he’s had a terrific amount of coaching—very successful—to remedy that deficit. I suspect, although we don’t know for certain, that his development is tied to the extreme plasticity of our brains.

I tell you about my family experience because it’s important to understand the role of those two almond shaped nodes in our brain. What we’ve learned is that practically nothing in the brain works by itself. The brain is characterized by immense connections. Its work is always a team effort. So, inevitably, weakness in one element of the team impacts the normal potential for its success.

A team effort
But that means that swearing, too, is always a team effort. Many different parts of your brain are involved in swearing—thankfully. I say thankfully because I learned very early on that swearing needs controls and management more than just freewheeling emotions.  In her book, Swearing Is Good for You, Emma Byrne emphasizes that because of the immense brain connections, swearing never operates in isolation. It’s a team effort. The many parts of your brain work like an orchestra. They are a set of highly specialized elements working together to create what seems to be a “unified whole.”

In sum, swearing relies on the very sophisticated structures in both hemispheres as well as their connections. Actually, a very complex process, not just one to three simple words driven by emotion. That means that as thoughtful, conversationally educated adults we can readily figure out when to let loose with the relevant language—or, when letting it rip might be dangerous. Of course, swearing, like all conversation is very much a learned behavior and some of us need some learning about that activity. The amygdala make possible some very complex internal team processing around the swearing competencies.

If you happen to have immense work responsibilities like my vocation of executive consulting, you develop some highly articulate management swearing tools along with an immense set of interpersonal assessment competencies that let you know you need to keep your mouth shut—or let it rip. Or sometimes just do a partial job!

Swearing, then, can best be thought of as a linguistic and emotional shortcut. Our language serves us for getting along socially. But it also lets us communicate things, including our emotions, in urgent, brief ways. “Go to hell,” for example, needs no further explanation.