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.Cursing is not chaotic orrandom speech.In the NPS Theory, all acts of cursing are purposeful andcaused by one or more of the NPS components.Syntactic and semantic rulesof cursing are included in the psychological component of the theory becausecursing is acquired in the process of language learning, cognitive develop-ment, and socialization.Coprolalia produced in Tourette Syndrome has few grammatical rules tofollow.In contrast, propositional statements incorporating curse words usemore grammatical and semantic rules.Postulate 2.10 addresses propositionalcursing, not coprolalia, epithets, or response cries.One goal for the NPSTheory is to outline the grammatical and semantic rules that speakers use to 136 Chapter 16produce sentences that include curse words.Linguists working on naturallanguage must incorporate rules for cursing; otherwise, the grammar, as itexcludes cursing, ultimately fails to produce emotional speech.Curse words must follow some set of syntactic rules governing proposi-tions, or they would appear at random locations in sentences.One should beable to define grammatical cursing and thereby specify grammatical viola-tions.The quotations at the beginning of the chapter are exemplary.There isnot enough space to develop a cursing grammar fully here; the NPS Theory isjust beginning to formulate its grammar.The remainder of the chapter exam-ines psycholinguistic research on cursing.Denotative and Connotative ReferenceDenotation is the mental representation of the set of objects, characteristics, orevents that a word is used to refer to.Connotation is the affective or emotionalrepresentation commonly associated with a word s denotative meaning.It isoften difficult to separate these two aspects of a word s meaning.When onehears or sees a word, the denotative meaning comes to mind, and one can dolittle to inhibit the connotations that come with it.Curse words are different inthat the connotative meaning dominates over the denotative meaning.It is a biteasier to separate these two aspects of meaning in curse words than innoncurse words.But curse words are not limited to connotation; they do havedenotative uses.For example, in Lady Chatterley s Lover (Lawrence, 1959),characters describe genitals denotatively (cunt).Even though curse wordsprimarily elicit emotional interpretations (Jay & Danks, 1977), all of theseconnotative utterances are meaningful and purposeful.One cannot restrict the interpretation of cursing to connotative meanings.Curse words are used denotatively in humor, vulgarity, sexual talk, slang, andcolloquial conversations.For example, the statement, Bill is shitty, canconnote that Bill is a bad person, or it can denote that Bill needs to have hisdiaper changed.The denotative uses of curse words in sentences must besubject to linguistic rules, presented later in the chapter. Syntax and Semantics 137Emotional IntensificationCursing intensifies emotional expressions in a manner that inoffensive wordscannot achieve.This is important: Curse words do things to sentences thatnoncurse words cannot do.The intensity or offensiveness of a particular curseword (e.g., darn you versus fuck you) conveys the speaker s level of emotion.Extremely powerful language (e.g., fuck you) expresses extremely powerfulemotions.Inoffensive language (e.g., darn you) will not achieve a deep levelof intensity; only a curse word will do it.Cursing s unique emotional shadingis essential for the production and comprehension of deep emotional expres-sions.Anger Metaphors and Sexual Figurative SpeechOne overlooked feature of curse words is their use in figurative and meta-phorical speech.Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson s (1980) bookon metaphors, psycholinguists have spent a good deal of effort trying todetermine how we understand figurative language, metaphors, cliches, andidioms.Although frequent and common, curse words are rarely included inmetaphor research (see Kovecses, 1988; 1990).But curse words are frequently employed in figurative language andmetaphors associated with emotions (see Jay, 1991; Jay, 1992a; Stross, 1975).Curse words have a long history of use as figurative speech in song lyrics.Agood example is the presence of sexual figures (e.g., jelly roll) in the songlyrics of blues musicians (see Gold, 1957; Johnson, 1927; Lomax, 1993;Titon, 1994).The lyrics in these old blues songs represent sexual desire andsexual acts in metaphorical terms.Curse words used as metaphors to express anger are also meaningful(Jay, 1992a).For example, one curses at a person who has committed athoughtless deed, You shithead! This term, shithead, metaphorically de-notes the doer of the misdeed as having a head full of shit. Pragmatically,this metaphor informs the target, in a meaningful manner, that the speaker isupset about his misbehavior. 138 Chapter 16Cursing and Production RulesWith few exceptions, linguistic scholarship has not included taboo words.Thebest documents on the syntax of cursing include Zwicky et al.(1971) StudiesOut in Left Field, Andersson and Hirsch (1985a; 1985b), and Eble s (1996)analysis of college slang.Zwicky et al.(1971) showed that the verb fuck andthe phrase fuck you can appear in a limited set of sentence types; also, althoughfuck you looks like an imperative, it is not because it lacks reflexivization andcannot be embedded in a matrix:*please fuck you.In addition it cannot be conjoined with other imperatives:*wash the dishes and fuck you
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