More on Women's — and Men's — Expletives

Men's & women's uses of expletives were investigated to see what differences appear between age groups, in different contexts, & between people of varying amounts of religious background. The data is taken from a self-report questionnaire administered by the authors to 14 women &am...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Anthropological linguistics 1976-12, Vol.18 (9), p.438-449
Main Authors: Bailey, Lee Ann, Timm, Lenora A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age groups
Christianity
Expletives
Liberation movements
Linguistic anthropology
Men
Mothers
Profane language
Profane/Profanity
Protestantism
Questionnaires
Religion/Religions/Religious
Sex differences (see also Gender differences)
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Summary:Men's & women's uses of expletives were investigated to see what differences appear between age groups, in different contexts, & between people of varying amounts of religious background. The data is taken from a self-report questionnaire administered by the authors to 14 women & 15 men, ranging in age from 19 to 61 & divided into age groups (women: 19-23, 31-35, & 43-56; men: 19-25, 28-32, 38-44, & 47-61). The results indicated that: (1) Men, overall, used more & stronger expletives than women, (2) Age, for women, appears to be a crucial variable: women over 43 almost never used strong expletives, whereas women aged 19 to 34 frequently opted for them, (3) Among women, the 31 to 34 year olds turned in the greatest number of strong expletives, (4) Among men, age was much less important, though those aged 28 to 32 did show use of more strong expletives than the other age groups, (5) Most respondents tempered their language in the presence of the opposite sex & older people, & (6) There was no correlation of expletive use & type or extent of religious upbringing. AA
ISSN:0003-5483
1944-6527