Taboo language across the globe: A multi-lab study

Simone Sulpizio; Fritz Günther; Linda Badan; Benjamin Basclain; Marc Brysbaert; Yuen Lai Chan; Laura Anna Ciaccio; Carolin Dudschig; Jon Andoni Duñabeitia; Fabio Fasoli; Ludovic Ferrand; Dušica Filipović Đurđević; Ernesto Guerra; Geoff Hollis; Remo Job; Khanitin Jornkokgoud; Hasibe Kahraman; Naledi Kgolo-Lotshwao; Sachiko Kinoshita; Julija Kos; Leslie Lee; Nala H Lee; Ian Grant Mackenzie; Milica Manojlović; Christina Manouilidou; Mirko Martinic; Maria Del Carmen Méndez; Ksenija Mišić; Natinee Na Chiangmai; Alexandre Nikolaev; Marina Oganyan; Patrice Rusconi; Giuseppe Samo; Chi-Shing Tse; Chris Westbury; Peera Wongupparaj; Melvin J Yap; Marco Marelli

doi:10.3758/s13428-024-02376-6

Taboo language across the globe: A multi-lab study

Behav Res Methods. 2024 May 9. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02376-6. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Simone Sulpizio^#^{1

2}, Fritz Günther^#³, Linda Badan⁴, Benjamin Basclain⁵, Marc Brysbaert⁶, Yuen Lai Chan⁷, Laura Anna Ciaccio⁸, Carolin Dudschig⁹, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia¹⁰, Fabio Fasoli^{11

12}, Ludovic Ferrand¹³, Dušica Filipović Đurđević¹⁴, Ernesto Guerra¹⁵, Geoff Hollis¹⁶, Remo Job¹⁷, Khanitin Jornkokgoud¹⁸, Hasibe Kahraman⁵, Naledi Kgolo-Lotshwao¹⁹, Sachiko Kinoshita⁵, Julija Kos²⁰, Leslie Lee²¹, Nala H Lee²¹, Ian Grant Mackenzie⁹, Milica Manojlović¹⁴, Christina Manouilidou²⁰, Mirko Martinic¹⁵, Maria Del Carmen Méndez²², Ksenija Mišić¹⁴, Natinee Na Chiangmai¹⁸, Alexandre Nikolaev²³, Marina Oganyan²⁴, Patrice Rusconi²⁵, Giuseppe Samo²⁶, Chi-Shing Tse⁷, Chris Westbury²⁷, Peera Wongupparaj²⁸, Melvin J Yap²⁹, Marco Marelli^#^{30

31}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy. simone.sulpizio@unimib.it.
² Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMI), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy. simone.sulpizio@unimib.it.
³ Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10117, Berlin, Germany. fritz.guenther@hu-berlin.de.
⁴ Department of Humanities, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
⁵ School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
⁶ Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
⁷ Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁸ Brain Language Laboratory, Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁹ Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
¹⁰ Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain.
¹¹ School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.
¹² Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
¹³ Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive, CNRS, Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
¹⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
¹⁵ Center for Advanced Research in Education, Institute of Education, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
¹⁶ Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
¹⁷ Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
¹⁸ Cognitive Science and Innovation Research Unit (CSIRU), College of Research Methodology and Cognitive Science, Burapha University, Chonburi, Thailand.
¹⁹ Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana.
²⁰ Department of Comparative and General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
²¹ Department of English, Linguistics, & Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
²² Facultad de Filosofia y Letras I, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
²³ School of Humanities, Foreign Languages and Translation Studies, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland.
²⁴ Department of Linguistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
²⁵ Department of Cognitive Sciences, Psychology, Education and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, Messina, Italy.
²⁶ Department of Linguistics, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.
²⁷ Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
²⁸ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Burapha University, Chonburi, Thailand.
²⁹ Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
³⁰ Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy. marco.marelli@unimib.it.
³¹ Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMI), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy. marco.marelli@unimib.it.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 38724878
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02376-6

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.

Keywords: Best–worst scaling; Emotion; Semantics; Swearing; Taboo words.

Abstract

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