Steven Fry documentary notes.

Documentary By Steven Fry.

'Uses and abuses'

- He has found that there is a limit as to what swear words people will aloud to be broadcasted in the media.

- Many different things are only acceptable in certain languages, for example, somewhere in india might not take some swear words as offensive however in English it would be looked at in a completely different way.

- some swear words, like 'fuck' can be used and said in many different ways, for example, as an adjective, verb or noun.

- Words only make a difference when they are said in a specific way, for example, this lady who had touretts, swore in a real context and it was only that that which made her get in trouble for it, regardless about the fact she swears on a regular basic all through the day.

- The lower part of the brain controls the language reflect, therefore, someone who has had damage to that specific part knows how to do nothing but swear. This condition is a lot worse than touretts. With this condition it is almost impossible to control. This happens to many people after having gone through a stroke.

- For many people swearing is used instead of physical contact, learning to use vocal anger instead of physical is also a way of people controlling their anger, instead of punching, kicking etc.

- There was an experiment carried out whereby two men; one extreme swearer and one not so frequent swearer, stuck their hands into ice cold water, first time attempting to hold it in for as long as possible without swearing and saying just an ordinary word. The results were...

- Non swearer, first time, without swearing - 38 seconds.
Swearing, second time - 2 minutes, 29 seconds.

- Frequent swearer, first time, without swearing - 1 minute, 27 seconds.
Swearing, second time - 1 minute, 22 seconds.

- For the non swearer, swearing helped him a lot to relieve the pain of the cold water. However, it was clear that the person who swore frequently didn't have that much of impact and it didn't help him to withstand the pain of the cold water.

- Throughout this experiment it became almost certain that the theory of swearing reliving pain. There are many mixed views on whether swearing is a positive aspect to the society or whether it is negative.