Two linguists in Australia studied a database of words used in written communication on the internet to see where all this vulgar language comes from. In other news, the words you write end up on a database called the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE). They ranked twenty English-speaking nations to see who uses the most vulgarities online, including misspellings designed to get past filters. The research paper published in the journal Lingua included terms defined as "blasphemy, curses, ethnic-racial slurs, insults, name-calling, obscenity, profanity, scatology, slang, swearing, tabooed words, offense, impoliteness, verbal aggression, and more."
The top nation for swearing is the United States. That's not because there are so many internet users in the US, because the study analyzed frequency, meaning Americans use the highest percentage of swear words in the total amount of words written. The UK came in second, with Australia in third place. Of the Aussies' third place ranking, the lead author said, "Some may find it disappointing," but surmises it may be that Australians are likely to filter themselves in writing, but not so much in face-to-face discourse. Read more on the rankings at Popular Science. -via Fark
(Image credit: Anna Frodesiak)