The Geography of Profanity

The United States is a wide, diverse country, with different preferred cuisines (if you can call hotdish or Cincinnati chili cuisines, for God's sake!), regional accents, dialects, political orientations (the usual suspects), customs, and even religions. People have already noted that sugary beverages may be referred to as soda, pop, or coke in different sections of the country. Still, there are pressures towards homogeneity: breakfast burritos and sausage with gravy are pretty widely served.

But Jack Grieve, a British forensic linguist at Aston University, has looked into the American geography of profanity. Now here we have some surprises. For  instance, the word shit is widespread from East Texas up the Southern and Atlantic coasts until New York City. By way of contrast, it is infrequently used in Maine, the Appalachian region, the mountainous West, and parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

(Areas in orange use the word more; areas in blue use it less.)

Contrast this with the usage of the F-bomb. There's a fuck belt running from Brownsville to New Orleans. This picks up near Atlanta and runs along the Eastern seaboard up well into Maine. And Californians are well comfortable with this word. Apparently, it is more taboo in the inland states

Or the use of the word asshole. Very clearly New Englanders, New Yorkers, and Pennsylvanians use that word collectively more often while Southerners less so. I think that in the South that word falls into the category of fighting word. I remember some research in which Southerners were more likely to respond autonomically to that stimulus.

The word damn seems to have high potency across the Deep South. Maybe this is from that old time religion, or the penchant of some to refer to damned Yankees. (There was actually a play with that title about the Bronx Bombers, specifically).

And, looking at  minced profane word, gosh definitely has a regional usage, more frequently used in Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, Texas, and Oklahoma. It's almost unheard in New England. 

So what can we generalize from this? Well, the Eastern states are, relatively speaking, profane; while those in the Rockies are relatively frugal with their cussing. Or they have more to be profane about.