{"id":19648,"date":"2015-06-24T00:21:17","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T05:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=19648"},"modified":"2015-08-04T14:01:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T19:01:35","slug":"word-aversion-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=19648","title":{"rendered":"Word aversion science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Thibodeau et al., \"An Exploratory Investigation of Word Aversion<\/a>\", COGSCI 2014:<\/p>\n

Why do people self-report an aversion to words like \u201cmoist\u201d? The present study represents an initial scientific exploration into the phenomenon of word aversion by investigating its prevalence and cause. We find that as many as 20% of the population equates hearing the word \u201cmoist\u201d to the sound of fingernails scratching a chalkboard. This population often speculates that phonological properties of the word are the cause of their displeasure. One tantalizing possibility is that words like \u201cmoist\u201d are aversive because speaking them engages facial muscles that correspond to expressions of disgust. However, three experiments suggest that semantic features of the word \u2013 namely, associations with disgusting bodily functions \u2013 underlie peoples\u2019 unpleasant experience. This finding broadens our understanding of language and contributes to a growing literature on the cognitive processes relating to highly valenced and arousing words.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Finally, an initial answer to the question I asked a few years ago:<\/p>\n

Given the thousands of academic psycholinguists, social psychologists, sociolinguists, and cultural and linguistic anthropologists, publishing hundreds of thousands of studies on topics from lexical neighborhood density in aphasia to the social construction of wine quality, why has no one ever (as far as I know) done the most basic demographic, historical, socio-cultural, developmental, or experimental studies of this curious phenomenon?<\/span><\/p>\n

One problem with the Thibodeau et al. study, however, is that their examination of word aversion focuses on moist<\/em>, and mainly engages the question of whether the aversion in that case is caused by phonetics (because the pronunciation \"engages facial muscles that correspond to expressions of\u00a0disgust\") or by semantics (because the meaning includes \"associations with disgusting\u00a0bodily functions\"). They find, unsurprisingly, that evidence favors the second explanation in the case of moist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But as a result, they fail to deal with\u00a0two problems: the fact that many cases of reported word aversion have no obvious negative-bodily-function associations (luggage, pugilist, nourish, wedge, furtive, squall,<\/em> …), and the fact that many words with plausible bodily-function associations don't seem to turn up as instances of word aversion (damp, wet, fishy, fermented,<\/em>\u00a0odor,<\/em> …)<\/p>\n

For more on the topic:<\/p>\n

\"Ask Language Log: The moist panties phenomenon<\/a>\", 8\/20\/2007
\n\"Don't say 'tin' to Rebecca, you know how it upsets her<\/a>\", 8\/20\/2007
\n\"Morning mailbag<\/a>\", 9\/10\/2007
\n\"The long moist tail<\/a>\", 10\/6\/2007
\n\"From cringe to offense<\/a>\", 10\/25\/2007
\n\"Moist aversion: the cartoon version<\/a>\", 8\/27\/2008
\n\"Word attraction<\/a>\", 5\/13\/2009
\n\"Word aversion and attraction in the news<\/a>\", 5\/19\/2009
\n\"The 'moist' chronicles, continued<\/a>\", 8\/8\/2009
\n\"Six words<\/a>\", 7\/23\/2010
\n\"Toot chuckle lil' kidnap Snooki<\/a>\", 2\/23\/2011
\n\"Hated words<\/a>\", 7\/1\/2011
\n\"Hydrated and delicious<\/a>\", 12\/14\/2012
\n\"Literary moist aversion<\/a>\", 12\/27\/2012
\n\"Malady on word aversion in Slate<\/a>\", 4\/1\/2013
\n\"Condensation and displacement in word aversion<\/a>\", 4\/3\/2013
\n\"Crispy Curly Noodle Cakes<\/a>\", 8\/21\/2013<\/p>\n

So what's really going on? Here's\u00a0what I wrote in my first post on the topic, back in\u00a0in 2007<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The words in question are not taboo in the culture at large. Women seem to be more more likely to have this reaction, though perhaps they are just more likely to talk and write about it.. Sounds and sound associations may play a role (the diphthong usually spelled 'oi', certain consonant clusters, etc.); semantic associations may play a role (slimy textures, lower-body garments like panties and slacks); but the process seems pretty random and erratic, also hitting on random-seeming words like hardscrabble<\/em><\/strong>, baffle<\/strong><\/em> and\u00a0tissue<\/strong><\/em>. Nevertheless, certain specific words (such as moist<\/strong><\/em> and panties<\/em><\/strong> in English) seem to be frequent victims. This lexical specificity could be because the process is more deterministic than it seems, or because of cultural transmission that doesn't reach the threshold of creating new lexical taboos, but does create a widely-shared aversion to particular words well above chance levels.<\/span><\/p>\n

One aspect of language acquisition seems to be a process that connects words, more or less strongly, to emotional responses. Presumably this is part of a more general process that picks up connotations as well as denotations. We know that word-learning in general is based on prior expectations (of what plausible word-sounds and word-meanings might be), as well as on the observational evidence. We also know, from experiments and from more general considerations, that words are often learned on the basis of a small number of trials.<\/p>\n

As a result, an individual's lexical outcomes are often idiosyncratic. And\u00a0this seems to include idiosyncratic emotional associations, not only to disgust but also to more positive emotions<\/a>. These associations might\u00a0be influenced\u00a0by phonetic symbolism, general semantic or pragmatic connections, and\u00a0random aspects of the learning situation, including the individual's physiological state at the time.<\/p>\n

As CM has suggested to me (\"Condensation and displacement in word aversion<\/a>\", 4\/3\/2013), such associations can be strengthened by processes like those that Freud called\u00a0Verdichtung<\/em> (\"condensation\") and\u00a0Verschiebung<\/em> (\"displacement\"). Quoting Wikipedia<\/span><\/a>:<\/p>\n

In 1957, Jacques Lacan \u2013 building on the way in Freud's work, condensation […]\u00a0and displacement are closely linked concepts, and inspired by an article by linguist Roman Jakobson \u2013 argued that the unconscious has the structure of a language, and that condensation and displacement are close equivalents to the poetic functions of metaphor and metonymy. As he cautiously put it, 'in the case of Verschiebung, \"displacement\", the German term is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in metonymy, and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship'.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I wrote at the time, I'd personally be more inclined to look for Pavlovian than for Freudian mechanisms.\u00a0And there's apparently an aspect of social contagion as well. But the facts of word aversion do seem rather like a baby version of Freud's dream-interpretation theories.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Thibodeau et al., \"An Exploratory Investigation of Word Aversion\", COGSCI 2014: Why do people self-report an aversion to words like \u201cmoist\u201d? The present study represents an initial scientific exploration into the phenomenon of word aversion by investigating its prevalence and cause. We find that as many as 20% of the population equates hearing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology-of-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19648"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20489,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19648\/revisions\/20489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}