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Swearing in Political Discourse: Why Vulgarity Works
Abstract
An experimental study investigated the effect of politicians’ profanity and gender on their perceived and actual persuasiveness. Results showed that a candidate’s use of swear words increased the perception of language informality and improved the general impression about the source. The latter effect was particularly strong for male candidate, as female candidate was already evaluated positively, irrespective of her cursing. In addition, though the manipulation of the politician’s vulgarity did not directly affect participants’ self-reported likelihood of voting for him or her, an indirect effect through language informality and impression about the candidate emerged. On the contrary, profanity use reduced perceived persuasiveness of the message, suggesting that the influence of swearing could be automatic and unaware. Theoretical implications are discussed.
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In the citing paper
“Like alveolar [ɪn], swearwords index informality (Beers Fägersten, 2012;Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014;Stapleton, 2010).”
From Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable (2023) · cites this paper as Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014
In the citing paper
“Swearing is associated with a multiplicity of meanings outside of offensiveness, including toughness (Hughes, 1992), intimacy or trust (Stapleton, 2003), humor (Stapleton, 2010), trustworthiness and intelligence (DeFrank & Kahlbaugh, 2019), and increased persuasiveness (Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014).”
From Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable (2023) · cites this paper as Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014
In the citing paper
“As well as affecting how speakers are socially evaluated (Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014;DeFrank & Kahlbaugh, 2019), swearwords are sufficiently socially salient to also affect the perception of other sources of social meaning in a word.”
From Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable (2023) · cites this paper as Cavazza & Guidetti, 2014
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable
Hunt, M., Cotter, C., Pearson, H., & Stockall, L. (2023) · Journal of Sociolinguistics · doi:10.1111/josl.12588 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Cavazza, N., & Guidetti, M.
- Affiliations
- Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy
- Venue
- Journal of Language and Social Psychology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2014-05-01
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 537-547
- ISSN
- 0261-927X
- 1552-6526
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 0
- Language
- en
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- Cavazza, N., & Guidetti, M. (2014). Swearing in Political Discourse: Why Vulgarity Works. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927x14533198
