{"id":67532,"date":"2015-08-12T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67532"},"modified":"2015-08-12T12:35:40","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T17:35:40","slug":"the-geography-of-sht-and-dmn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/08\/12\/the-geography-of-sht-and-dmn\/","title":{"rendered":"The geography of sh!t and d@mn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAsshole is a wonderful word,\u201d said Mike Pesca in his podcast, The Gist<\/em>. His former colleagues at NPR had wanted to call someone an asshole, and even though it was for a podcast, not broadcast, and even though the person in question was a certified asshole, the NPR censor said no.<\/em> Pesca disagreed.<\/p>\n

Pesca is from Long Island and, except for his college years in Atlanta, he has spent most of his time in the Northeast. Had he hailed from Atlanta \u2013 or Denver or Houston or even San Francisco \u2013 \u201casshole\u201d might not have sprung so readily to his mind as le mot juste<\/i>, even to denote Donald Trump. The choice of swear words is regional.<\/p>\n

Linguist Jack Grieve has been analyzing tweets<\/a> \u2013 billions of words \u2013 and recently he posted maps showing the relative popularity of different expletives. For example,\u00a0every county in the Northeast tweets \u201casshole\u201d at a rate at least two standard deviations above the national mean.<\/p>\n

\"17\"<\/a><\/div>\n
To my knowledge, Grieve has offered no explanation for this distribution, and I don\u2019t have much to add. I assume that as with regional accents, historical factors are more important than the literal meanings of the words. It\u2019s not that tweeters in the Northeast are generally more willing to use foul language, nor is this about anal imagery since the Northeast looks nearly prudish compared to other regions when it comes to \u201cshit.\u201d<\/div>\n
\"18\"<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Less surprising are the maps of toned-down expletives. People in the heartland are just so gosh darned polite in their speech. When Donald Trump spoke at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, what got all the attention was his dissing of John McCain (\u201cHe\u2019s not a war hero. … He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren\u2019t captured.\u201d) But there was also this paragraph in the New York Times<\/em>\u2019s coverage:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mr. Trump raised eyebrows with language rarely heard before an evangelical audience \u2014 saying \u201cdamn\u201d and \u201chell\u201d when discussing education and the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I was turned off at the very start because I didn\u2019t like his language,\u201d Becky Kruse, of Lovilia, Iowa, said…\u00a0 Noting Mr. Trump\u2019s comment about not seeking God\u2019s forgiveness. \u201cHe sounds like he isn\u2019t really a born-again Christian.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aside from the insight about Trump\u2019s religious views, Ms. Kruse reflects the linguistic preferences of her region, where \u201cdamn\u201d gets softened to \u201cdarn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"journal.pone.0128832.g001<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>Unfortunately, Grieves did not post a map for \u201check.\u201d (I remember when \u201cdamn\u201d and \u201chell\u201d were off limits on television, though a newspaper columnist, usually in the sports section, might dare to write something like \u201cIt was a helluva fight.\u201d) You can find maps for all your favorite words at Grieve\u2019s website<\/a>, where you can also find out what words are trending (as we now say) on Twitter. (\u201cUnbothered\u201d is spreading from the South and \u201cfuckboy\u201d is rising). Other words are on the way down (untrending?).\u00a0 If you\u2019re holding\u00a0 \u201cYOLO\u201d futures, sell them now before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Originally posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAsshole is a wonderful word,\u201d said Mike Pesca in his podcast, The Gist. His former colleagues at NPR had wanted to call someone an asshole, and even though it was for a podcast, not broadcast, and even though the person in question was a certified asshole, the NPR censor said no. Pesca disagreed. Pesca is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":67533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,23384],"class_list":["post-67532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/17.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67532"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67706,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532\/revisions\/67706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}