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Burridge, from Monash University, is one of the world’s leading experts on swearing. Two years ago she and colleague Keith Allan published Forbidden Words, an academic exploration of how words become taboo, and how that leads to our attempts – guaranteed to fail, she says – at censoring them.

The pair knows more oaths than a barrack-room of bovver-boys and can expound with great erudition on the different reasons we swear, the unique way the brain handles these words, and the possible origins of them. There is, for example, the mingled evolutionary path going back at least 800 years of the Old Norse kunta, Middle Dutch conte, Old Frisian kunte, and Latin cunnus; or, if you prefer, the mongrel offspring of Old Icelandic fjuka, Old English firk, German ficken, and foutre from the French.

So do the TV networks. It’s quite likely someone will be saying it on TV on any night, and not just in high-profile examples like British chef Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen programs. Several recent editions of Australian Story, shown at 8pm on the ABC, have featured the f-word. Even Millionaires’ Mission, about entrepreneurs helping Ugandan villagers, can suddenly throw up a “f..king hell” or a “shit”.

But it’s Ramsay, who is both casual and aggressive with his swearing, who has produced the harshest breast-beating. Heavily salted with f..ks, it was two venomous c- ingredients thrown into one episode that stuck in some viewers’ throats, especially given Nine’s decision to run the program with

Underbelly couldn’t have been shown at that time in the UK. Britain has a 9pm TV “watershed” before which serious swearing and sex is not allowed, and the prohibition includes any program that carries into that timeslot. The program wouldn’t have been shown at that time on commercial TV in the US, either. Perhaps Australia is just less bothered; the offending Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares episodes were among the most-watched shows in the country, with up to 1.5 million viewers. Advertisers remain keen. Does anyone care?

CORY BERNARDI CLEARLY DOES. The Liberal senator from South Australia thinks the c-word is something that should never be heard on TV, and he convinced his colleagues to open a formal Senate inquiry examining the broadcasting codes of practice – the results of which were due to be handed down this week.

And this is really the nub of it. The code of practice is drawn up by the networks in conjunction with ACMA. It’s supposed to reflect community standards, and places a high priority on the protection of

kids from material that may be harmful. After all, Kevin Rudd has argued in the debate over artist Bill Henson’s photos of naked children that we should “just allow kids to enjoy … the innocence of childhood”.

Timothy Jay, an American psychologist and author of several books on swearing, says the evidence suggests more women do it, and that young children swear more at school and are using more offensive words than before. But, he says, he has found no credible evidence that this damages them.

“Children start swearing at age 1-2 years, as soon as they learn to speak,” he says. “By the time they get to school they know most of the words that adults use. The idea that we need to protect them from sexual language is a myth.

afford. “We therefore censor our behaviour so as to avoid giving offence, except when we deliberately intend to offend.”

The flip-side is that swearing makes a handy weapon. “If you deliberately use these words and don’t care about the shock value, then you are one up on everyone else,” says Sue Butler, the editor and publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary. “So the people who wield these words with apparent indifference and impunity are going to be the tough guys, and I think that’s why blokes want to master them rather than women.” Yet it’s not so daring these days. “We seem to be less concerned with swearing, but I think these things do come in waves. You can’t say that about the whole community; there will be segments that take a very firm view on taboo language.”

It hasn’t gone entirely, though, as her experience on the Seven Sunrise program in 2003
demonstrated. Butler was talking on-air about words that offend, and ventured it was a no-no to tell someone they were a boofhead in the same way it would be to call them a f..kwit. “At that point, they snatched me off the program,” she recalls. “I thought it was just the short attention span of TV, as we were just getting into the topic.”

Later, she got a stroppy call, upset over her language. “But they overreacted. The next day they told me they didn’t have anything like the negative feedback they thought they’d get. In fact, most people were ringing up saying, ‘That was an interesting discussion, why did you break it off so quickly?’”

SO TV IS AN ACCELERATOR, but not the originator. The urge to swear is so strong, so linked to emotional parts of the brain, that there are thousands of euphemisms created over the centuries to allow people to satisfy the necessity to get out a “bad” word, without crossing the social boundary that causes them, or their audience, to lose face.

Our preoccupation with these taboos produces a vast array of alternative words – Allan and Burridge estimate English has 1000 expressions for penis, 1200 for vagina, 800 for copulation and 2000 for wanton woman. “When people say they don’t swear, of course they swear,” says Burridge. “They use remodelled swear words. Golly, gosh, heck. They’re remodelled from something stronger.”

Pinker argues there’s an ancient reflex to swear. It can be deeply satisfying, he says, and may go back to an old mammalian “rage reflex”. It’s like a good howl. As well, he says we know that to use swear words gets attention, because they create an emotional response in the listener.

The reason is that we appear to store swear words in a part of the brain separate to other speech, or at least to access them differently. Burridge says taboo words go with a red-flag to the limbic part of the brain, more attuned to emotions than analytical thinking. And our bodies react to them in a very different way than to other language. Our brains more readily remember them and are distracted by them, and our skin goose-pimples on hearing them. “Forbidden words are more arousing, more shocking, more memorable and more evocative than all other language stimuli,” Burridge says.

Then there’s abusive swearing, where a female body part is deemed more effective. “Male body parts tend to have associations with stupidity, while female body parts have associations that are much stronger and nastier,” she says. Why is the female sex organ so potent? The obvious reason is that women’s sexuality has stronger taboos, yet that doesn’t seem like a satisfactory answer. Perhaps it is just male frustration with something they can’t control.

Ramsay ranges across the possible uses. But for all the focus on his language (and some would see his aggressiveness as more perturbing), there’s not much evidence that the nation is in uproar about swearing on TV. Free TV Australia, which represents the commercial networks, says the number of complaints averaged less than one a week over the past decade. However, unlike the ABC, the commercial networks require written complaints, and won’t investigate email or phone whinges.

Fifty two per cent said the c-word should never be broadcast, and another quarter said only after 11pm. But 53 per cent said nigger should never be broadcast, and 50 per cent said the same for Paki. Only 38 per cent opposed f..k at any time. Notably, the racist words had become much more disliked in the two years since the previous survey.

Burridge believes it is impossible to stamp out swearing, but is convinced taboo words about sex and body functions are loosing their oomph, partly because they’ve become so commonplace. “What is now perceived as truly obscene are racist and ethnic slurs, the use of which may provoke legal consequences,” she says, pointing to the furore when footballer Michael Long was called a “black c..t”. The controversy was not the c-word, but the racist taunt.

The upshot today is that the c-word is in a category of its own. The f-word is increasingly common in TV, books and movies, if not in the mainstream press. It’s likely the boundaries will be further eroded. “Forbidden words flourish all the more vigorously on a diet of individual censoring and public disapproval,” says Burridge. One day she might even feel comfortable using them publicly herself.

Freelance writer Roy Eccleston’s previous article for the magazine was “Generation wise” (May 26-27, 2007), about the development of wisdom.