The use of taboo words represents one of the most common and arguably universal linguistic behaviors, fulfilling a wide range of psychological and social functions. However, in the scientific literature, taboo language is poorly characterized, and how it is realized in different languages and populations remains largely unexplored. Here we provide a database of taboo words, collected from different linguistic communities (Study 1, N = 1046), along with their speaker-centered semantic characterization (Study 2, N = 455 for each of six rating dimensions), covering 13 languages and 17 countries from all five permanently inhabited continents. Our results show that, in all languages, taboo words are mainly characterized by extremely low valence and high arousal, and very low written frequency. However, a significant amount of cross-country variability in words\' tabooness and offensiveness proves the importance of community-specific sociocultural knowledge in the study of taboo language.

The recognition of taboo words - i.e. socially inappropriate words - has been repeatedly associated to semantic interference phenomena, with detrimental effects on the performance in the ongoing task. In the present study, we investigated taboo interference in the context of reading aloud, a task configuration which prompts the overt violation of conventional sociolinguistic norms by requiring the explicit utterance of taboo items. We assessed whether this form of semantic interference is handled by habituative or cognitive control processes. In addition to the reading aloud task, participants performed a vocal Stroop task featuring different conditions to dissociate semantic, task, and response conflict. Taboo words were read slower than non-taboo words, but this effect was subject to a quick habituation, with a decreasing interference over the course of trials, which allowed participants to selectively attend to goal-relevant information. In the Stroop task, only semantic conflict was significantly reduced by habituation. These findings suggest that semantic properties can be quickly and flexibly weighed on the basis of contextual appropriateness, thus characterising semantic processing as a flexible and goal-directed component of reading aloud.

Speech production involves the careful orchestration of sophisticated systems, yet overt speech errors rarely occur under naturalistic conditions. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study sought neural evidence for internal error detection and correction by leveraging a tongue twister paradigm that induces the potential for speech errors while excluding any overt errors from analysis. Previous work using the same paradigm in the context of silently articulated and imagined speech production tasks has demonstrated forward predictive signals in auditory cortex during speech and presented suggestive evidence of internal error correction in left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) on the basis that this area tended toward showing a stronger response when potential speech errors are biased toward nonwords compared to words (Okada et al., 2018). The present study built on this prior work by attempting to replicate the forward prediction and lexicality effects in nearly twice as many participants but introduced novel stimuli designed to further tax internal error correction and detection mechanisms by biasing speech errors toward taboo words. The forward prediction effect was replicated. While no evidence was found for a significant difference in brain response as a function of lexical status of the potential speech error, biasing potential errors toward taboo words elicited significantly greater response in left pMTG than biasing errors toward (neutral) words. Other brain areas showed preferential response for taboo words as well but responded below baseline and were less likely to reflect language processing as indicated by a decoding analysis, implicating left pMTG in internal error correction.

This research investigated the possibility that semantic control mechanisms are recruited only when the interfering semantic information does not overlap with task-relevant semantic dimensions. To reach this goal, we investigated two semantic types of Stroop interference-the semantic and the taboo Stroop effects-and used delta-plots to investigate the role of attentional and semantic control in these two interference phenomena. The semantic Stroop effect, where interference stems from the task-relevant color-related information, was absent in faster responses, whereas it steeply increased in the slowest ones. Contrary to our predictions, the same pattern was detected even for the taboo Stroop interference, with no trace of selective suppression of the interfering semantic connotation, despite its dissociation from any task-relevant semantic dimension. Further, there was a significant correlation between the increase of the two effects in the slowest responses, pointing towards a common underlying processing dynamic. We identified such common background with lapses of executive attention in maintaining task goals and schema, which in turn make the participants performance more prone to interference phenomena. Finally, the absence of any interference effects in the fastest responses suggests that an effective filtering of the distracting word stimuli can be implemented in the context of Stroop paradigms.

This study examined whether the context of acquisition of a word influences its visual recognition and subsequent processing. We utilized taboo words, whose meanings are typically acquired socially, to ensure that differences in processing were based on learned social taboo, rather than proficiency. American English-speaking participants made word/non-word decisions on American taboo (native dialect), British taboo (non-native dialect), positive, neutral, and pseudo- words while EEG was recorded. Taboo words were verified as taboo by both American and British English speakers in an independent norming survey. American taboo words showed a more positive amplitude of the Late Positive Complex (LPC), a neural correlate of emotionality and social processing, compared with British taboo words and all other word categories. Moreover, in an item-wise analysis, LPC amplitudes of American taboo words were positively correlated with their taboo ratings. British taboo words did not show this effect. This indicates that American participants, who had very limited social contact with British English, did not have the same perception of social threat from British taboo words as they had from American taboo words. These results point to the importance of social context of acquisition in establishing social-affective meaning in language.

Translators face some problems when they translate swear words and taboo expressions, as they belong to different cultures and they have different impacts on the audience. Although some studies examined the problems faced in translating swear words and how to deal with them, little is known about studies that examined the strategies employed in translating such words and expressions from English into Arabic. Therefore, this study examines the strategies employed in translating such words and expressions from English into Arabic in the \"Training Day\" movie; and to assess the quality of subtitling these expressions. Samples from the movie were selected and analyzed. The results of the study showed that the subtitler used different strategies to subtitle swear and taboo words and expressions. Two of the most common strategies were found to be translating the swear and taboo words euphemistically, and by omission. As regards, the quality of the subtitles, they were found to be of good quality. This study concludes by proposing a model for subtitling swear words and Taboo expressions.

We investigated whether semantic interference occurring during visual word recognition is resolved using domain-general control mechanisms or using more specific mechanisms related to semantic processing. We asked participants to perform a lexical decision task with taboo stimuli, which induce semantic interference, as well as a semantic Stroop task and a Simon task, intended as benchmarks of linguistic-semantic and non-linguistic interference, respectively. Using a correlational approach, we investigated potential similarities between effects produced in the three tasks, both at the level of overall means and as a function of response speed (delta-plot analysis). Correlations selectively surfaced between the lexical decision and the semantic Stroop task. These findings suggest that, during visual word recognition, semantic interference is controlled by semantic-specific mechanisms, which intervene to face prepotent but task-irrelevant semantic information interfering with the accomplishment of the task\'s goal.

The use of socially opprobrious words (taboo words) is a cross-cultural phenomenon occurring between individuals from almost all social extractions. The neurocognitive correlates of using taboo words in the native language (L1) as compared to their use in a second (L2) language are largely unknown. We used fMRI to investigate the processing of taboo and non-taboo stimuli in monolinguals (Experiment 1) and highly proficient bilinguals (Experiment 2) engaged in lexical decision tasks. We report that for L1 socio-pragmatic knowledge is automatically conveyed and taboo words are processed with less effort than non-taboo words. For L2 the processing of taboo words is more effortful and engages additional structures (anterior cingulate cortex, insula) involved in social-norm representation and evaluation. Our results contribute to understand the interface between language and social-norm processing indicating that lexical processing is affected by socio-pragmatic knowledge, but only when the speaker has a contextual use of the language.

Every language has words deemed to be socially inappropriate or \'taboo\' to utter. Taboo word production appears prominently in language disorders following brain injury. Yet, we know little about the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in processing taboo compared to neutral language. In the present study, we introduced taboo distractor words in the picture word interference paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how these words influence spoken word production. Taboo distractor words significantly slowed picture-naming latencies compared to neutral words. This interference effect was associated with increased blood oxygen level dependent signal across a distributed thalamo-cortical network including bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus, left posterior middle temporal gyrus and right thalamus. We interpret our findings as being consistent with an account integrating both domain-general attention-capture/distractor blocking and language-specific mechanisms in processing taboo words during spoken word production.

Previous studies suggest that taboo words are special in regards to language processing. Findings from the studies have led to the formation of two theories, global resource theory and binding theory, of taboo word processing. The current study investigates how readers process taboo words embedded in sentences during silent reading. In two experiments, measures collected include eye movement data, accuracy and reaction time measures for recalling probe words within the sentences, and individual differences in likelihood of being offended by taboo words. Although certain aspects of the results support both theories, as the likelihood of a person being offended by a taboo word influenced some measures, neither theory sufficiently predicts or describes the effects observed. The results are interpreted as evidence that processing effects ascribed to taboo words are largely, but not completely, attributable to the context in which they are used and the individual attitudes of the people who hear/read them. The results also demonstrate the importance of investigating taboo words in naturalistic language processing paradigms. A revised theory of taboo word processing is proposed that incorporates both global resource theory and binding theory along with the sociolinguistic factors and individual differences that largely drive the effects observed here.