The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television: Increases in the Use of Swear Words in American Books, 1950-2008

Abstract

Evidence is accumulating that American culture has become more individualistic since the 1950s. In the present research, we focused on one plausible manifestation of individualism, the use of swear words in cultural products. We examined trends in the use of the seven words identified by George Carlin in 1972 as the “seven words you can never say on television” in the Google Books corpus of American English books from 1950 to 2008. We find a steady linear increase in the use of swear words, with books published in 2005-2008 twenty-eight times more likely to include swear words than books published in the early 1950s. Increases for individual swear words ranged from 4 to 678 times (ds = 6.58-45.42). These results suggest that American culture has become increasingly accepting of the expression of taboo words, consistent with higher cultural individualism.

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Article
How do cultures change over time? A burgeoning area of
research explores trends in the characteristics of individu-
als, such as in their living arrangements, baby name choices,
and self-views (Grossmann & Varnum, 2015; Twenge,
Campbell, & Gentile, 2012a; Twenge, Dawson, &
Campbell, 2016), concluding that American culture has
increased in individualism, a cultural system that favors the
self over social rules (Triandis, 1995). Another way to
examine cultural change is through trends in cultural prod-
ucts—media such as books, movies, songs, and advertise-
ments (Lamoreaux & Morling, 2012; Morling & Lamoreaux,
2008). Several studies of cultural products such as language
use in books have found increases in individualism, includ-
ing increases in the use of individualistic words and
decreases in collectivistic words (Greenfield, 2013),
declines in words referring to moral character (Kesebir &
Kesebir, 2012), and increases in first-person singular and
second-person pronouns (Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile,
2013). Another study found increases in individualistic lan-
guage in the lyrics of popular songs (DeWall, Pond,
Campbell, & Twenge, 2011).
In this article, we explore changes in another aspect of
language that may be connected to individualism: The use
of swear words. The frequency of swearing over time has
been a topic of some interest in popular culture. For exam-
ple, many suggest we now occupy a cruder culture where
bad language is more common (Gillespie, 2013). “One of
the things that upsets me about modern society is the
coarseness of manners,” the late Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia said in 2013. “You can’t go to a movie—or
watch a television show for that matter—without hearing
the constant use of the F-word” (Senior, 2013). Others
have been more sanguine about the free expression of
swear words, seeing them as a marker of freedom.
Comedian George Carlin (1937-2008) mocked the censor-
ship of profanity in his well-known 1972 routine “Seven
words you can never say on television.” As Carlin’s brother
Patrick later commented about the routine, “It was a free-
ing experience for millions and millions of people who
were young at that time. It took that restriction off people’s
shoulders and brought them down to a common level”
(Bella, 2012). These are opposing views on swearing, but
both point to the importance of individual freedom over
traditional social norms, a common conceptualization of
individualism.
723689SGOXXX10.1177/2158244017723689SAGE OpenTwenge et al.
research-article20172017
1San Diego State University, CA, USA
2University of Georgia, Athens, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jean M. Twenge, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San
Diego, CA 92182-4611, USA.
Email: jeantwenge@gmail.com
The Seven Words You Can Never Say on
Television: Increases in the Use of Swear
Words in American Books, 1950-2008
Jean M. Twenge1, Hannah VanLandingham1,
and W. Keith Campbell2
Abstract
Evidence is accumulating that American culture has become more individualistic since the 1950s. In the present research, we
focused on one plausible manifestation of individualism, the use of swear words in cultural products. We examined trends in
the use of the seven words identified by George Carlin in 1972 as the “seven words you can never say on television” in the
Google Books corpus of American English books from 1950 to 2008. We find a steady linear increase in the use of swear
words, with books published in 2005-2008 twenty-eight times more likely to include swear words than books published in
the early 1950s. Increases for individual swear words ranged from 4 to 678 times (ds = 6.58-45.42). These results suggest
that American culture has become increasingly accepting of the expression of taboo words, consistent with higher cultural
individualism.
Keywords
cultural change, individualism, swear words, taboo words

2 SAGE Open
Despite the interest in trends in swearing, direct empirical
evidence for the increasing use of swear words is lacking. In
fact, studies of spoken frequencies of swear words suggest
few changes in their use between the late 1970s and mid-
2000s (Jay, 2009). It is unclear if cultural products actually
do feature more taboo words, possibly indicating that
American culture has become more accepting of crude lan-
guage. In this article, we examine changes in the use of swear
words since 1950 in written language, using the large Google
Books database of 5 million books (Michel, Kui, Presser,
et al., 2010).
Studying changes in language use in books is important
because cultural products such as books are a useful place
to observe and quantify cultural change. As Lamoreaux
and Morling (2012) argued, it is important to study cultural
products for at least three reasons. First, culture includes
the context as well as the person, and cultural products
capture culture “outside the head.” Second, cultural prod-
ucts are not subject to the biases of that plague self-report
measures, such as reference group and social desirability
effects. Third, and perhaps most important, cultural prod-
ucts shape individuals’ ideas of cultural norms and “com-
mon sense.” People’s behavior is often influenced by their
beliefs about what others in their culture believe and do,
even if these assumptions are erroneous (e.g., Zou et al.,
2009). Cultural products are likely one of the most com-
mon sources for perceptions of cultural norms. Thus, if
swear words are used more often in books, it might indi-
cate an increasing acceptance of these words in the
culture.
Cultural Shifts Relevant for Changes in
the Use of Swear Words
Why might the use of swear words increase in American
books? As noted above, individualism is a cultural system
that favors the self more highly than the collective, and a
growing body of research suggests that American culture
has become increasingly individualistic (Grossmann &
Varnum, 2015; Twenge, 2014). One key factor may be self-
expression. Swear words allow the free expression of emo-
tion, especially anger (Jay, 2009). Due to the greater
valuation of the rights of the individual self, individualistic
cultures favor more self-expression in general (Kim &
Sherman, 2007) and allow more expression of personal
anger in particular (Safdar et al., 2009). Thus, a more indi-
vidualistic culture should be one with a higher frequency of
swear word use.
In addition, swear words are also known as taboo words,
as they are “sanctioned or restricted on both institutional
and individual levels” (Jay, 2009, p. 153). Taboos, usually
defined as social rules or inhibitions, are less prominent in
individualistic cultures, which usually name fewer behav-
iors as social taboos (Triandis, 1995). Consistent with a
rise in individualism, other behaviors once considered
taboos have faded in American culture. For example, social
taboos against premarital and homosexual sex have
decreased since the 1990s (Twenge, Sherman, & Wells,
2015, 2016). Other traditional social rules, such as those
stigmatizing working mothers and atheists, have also
become less prominent (Donnelly et al., 2016; Twenge,
Carter, & Campbell, 2015). However, little research has
explored the loosening of social taboos in cultural prod-
ucts. The study on song lyrics (DeWall et al., 2011) exam-
ined antisocial words including swear words but was
limited to only 10 songs per year and did not examine
swear words separately from antisocial words such as
“kill” and “hate.”
Research suggests that swearing is linked to personality
traits such as extraversion, dominance, narcissism, and neu-
roticism (Fast & Funder, 2008; Holtzman, Vazire, & Mehl,
2010; Schwartz et al., 2013). A recent study found that
swearing was associated with high extraversion and low
agreeableness (Kennison & Messer, 2017), a personality
profile empirically linked to high individualism via an asso-
ciation with grandiose narcissism (e.g., Miller et al., 2011;
Paulhus, 2001). This profile is also linked to individualism
conceptually, as high extraversion, especially boldness and
assertiveness, and low agreeableness, especially low mod-
esty and high grandiosity, are connected to an individualistic
drive to stand outside and above the group (Triandis & Suh,
2002). Several studies also link narcissism directly to self-
reported individualism across cultures (Cai, Kwan, &
Sedikides, 2012; Konrath, Bushman, & Grove, 2009;
Meisel, Ning, Campbell, & Goodie, 2016). Average levels
of extraversion and dominance (Terracciano, 2010; Twenge,
2001), narcissism (Twenge & Foster, 2010), and neuroti-
cism (Twenge, 2015) have all increased among individuals
in the United States. Thus, the frequency of swearing may
increase as well.
The Present Study and Hypotheses
The Google Books Ngram viewer allows the examination
of language use in 5 million books (Michel et al., 2011).
The Ngram database reports usage frequency by dividing
the number of instances of the word in a given year by the
total number of words in the corpus in that year, thus cor-
recting for changes in the number of published works and
their length. To avoid confounds between year and coun-
try of publication, we drew from a corpus restricted to
books published in one country (the United States, the
American English corpus). Books are also an ideal cul-
tural product in which to examine language use, as they
have stayed relatively unchanged as a medium, in contrast
to the significant changes in broadcast media, with the
movement from three main networks to cable to streaming
video.

Twenge et al. 3
In such research, a key question is which words to
examine. Two issues are of particular importance: (a) a
list of words that is somewhat objective, and (b) a list
without a strong present fashion bias (i.e., words that have
become fashionable or popular in recent years). This latter
issue is problematic because any increase seen in the data
might simply reflect fashion trends rather than broader
psychological changes. We attempted to address these
issues by analyzing a list of swear words chosen by some-
one else (to provide some objectivity vis-à-vis the investi-
gators) and chosen in a previous historical period (to
avoid present fashion bias). To that end, we used the
“seven words you can never say on television” popular-
ized by comedian George Carlin in 1972 (shit, piss, fuck,
cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits; Bella, 2012).
This is a short yet reasonably comprehensive list of swear
words considered taboo in polite society. It differs some-
what from other lists of commonly used taboo words such
as that of Jay (2009) as it focuses on swear words rather
than simply taboo words (Jay’s list is fuck, shit, hell,
damn, goddamn, Jesus Christ, ass, oh my god, bitch, and
sucks). Some of the taboo words on Jay’s list (Jesus
Christ, hell) would be problematic to examine in fre-
quency databases as indicators of cultural change as they
are also used in other contexts where they are not taboo.
Nevertheless, the two words that appear on both lists (fuck
and shit) account for up to half of the uses of taboo words
(Jay, 2009). Three of the words on Carlin’s list (cock-
sucker, cunt, and fuck) are the same as the three identified
by college students as the most taboo (Jay & Janschewitz,
2008). Carlin’s list thus identifies the most taboo words,
making it a conservative test of the hypothesis that the use
of taboo words has increased.
We began examining swear words in 1950, a common
starting point for the postwar era. Michel et al. (2011)
noted that the Google Books database is more reliable after
1900, and most research examining changes in social rules
begins with data in the 1970s or later (e.g., Baunach, 2012;
Donnelly et al., 2016; Twenge, Campbell, & Carter, 2015).
Thus, examining data after 1950 covers the decades in
which social rules began to change, plus an extra two
decades (1950-1970) in case swear words changed earlier
than other indicators. Given previous research and cultural
studies pointing toward the relaxation of social taboos in
American society, we hypothesize that the use of swear
words will increase in American books between 1950 and
2008.
Method
We examined the American English (2009)1 corpus from
the Google Books Ngram database. The Google Books cor-
pus contains 4% of books published since the 1800s. These
books were likely not truly randomly selected (Michel
et al., 2011); however, we assume these books were not
selected in a way dependent on word use frequency that
also varied systematically with year. In addition, the Ngram
database is by far the largest database available of digitized
books. As described in more detail in Michel et al. (2011),
Google used 100 sources such as university libraries and
publishers to generate a comprehensive catalog of books.
The books were digitally scanned and the corpus was win-
nowed of serial publications, multiple editions, and books
with poor print quality, unknown publication dates, or mis-
coded language (e.g., a book listed in the library catalog as
being written in English that was not actually in English).
Country of publication (in this case, the United States) was
determined by 100 bibliographic sources (Michel et al.,
2011).
Our unit of analysis was the frequency of the use of a
word in a specific year. We then tested for changes in
those frequencies over time by examining the correlation
between year and frequency, with the n in each analysis of
58 (the number of years). Our results thus refer to the
annual change in the frequency of the use of the seven
swear words (shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, mother-
fucker, and tits). We also examined two composites of the
seven words. The first adds the use frequencies together (a
composite of means); thus, it is more influenced by the
words used more frequently. The second adds the Z-scores
of each of the seven words together; thus, it counts each
word equally. The seven words formed a reliable index,
Cronbach’s alpha = .71. We did not use smoothing in our
analyses or figures as we wished to capture the exact fre-
quency in each year.
By definition, correlations represent the direction and
fit of the linear relationship between the variables of
interest—here, the frequency and year. However, it is
also important to know the simple magnitude of the
change from the first part of the time period to the last.
Thus, we include a second effect size, d, based on the dif-
ference between use in the first 4 years of the time period
(1950-1953) and use in the last 4 years of the time period
(2005-2008) divided by the standard deviation. We also
used these means to calculate how many times more com-
mon the use of the word (or words) was in the late 2000s
compared with the early 1950s.
The American English corpus does not note any
changes in the types of books (fiction vs. nonfiction). As a
substitute, we obtained the percentage of books published
in the United States each year that were fiction from the
Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Census,
2004); statistics were available only for 1960-2002. We
will use these statistics as controls in the analyses to rule
out the possibility that any changes over time are caused
by shifts in types of books. However, we have no way of
knowing if these percentages are the same as those in the
database. In addition, the 1982 edition of the Abstract

4 SAGE Open
notes that an increase in the number of books between
1980 and 1981 was “due in part to a major improvement
in the recording of paperbound books,” and more of these
paperback books are likely to be fiction. Thus, the mea-
surement differed with time, so these analyses should be
interpreted with caution. Fortunately, the percentage of
fiction books did not vary much by year, ranging from a
low of 7% to a high of 15%. As an alternative, we consid-
ered analyzing the English Fiction corpus of Google
Books; however, this corpus includes all books in English,
creating the possibility of confounding year with country
of origin (if, for example, the corpus included a higher
percentage of American books in later years).2 In addition,
our interest was not specific to either nonfiction and fic-
tion books.
We also examined whether the frequency of swearing in
books covaried with the violent crime rate, obtained from the
FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1960-2008.
Results
American books in recent years became significantly
more likely to use each of the seven swear words in the
years since 1950, with a linear change evident in most
(see Table 1, and Figures 1 and 2). Motherfucker was
used 678 times more often in the mid-2000s compared
with the early 1950s, shit 69 times more often, and fuck
168 times more often. In total, American books used the
seven taboo words 28 times more often in the mid-2000s
than the early 1950s. Effect sizes (ds) were also very
large, ranging from 6.58 to 45.83. The words vary widely
in frequency of use (see Figure 3), but all increase over
time (see Figure 1).
The results were unchanged when controlled for the per-
centage of books that were fiction, r for mean composite
with year = .98, p < .001; r for Z-score composite with
year = .97, p < .001.
Total swearing in books was positively correlated with the
violent crime rate, r for mean composite = .59, p < .001; r for
Z-score composite = .67, p < .001.
Discussion
American books contained dramatically more swear words
in the late 2000s than they did in the early 1950s. Readers of
books in the late 2000s were 28 times more likely than those
in the early 1950s to come across one of the “seven words
you can never say on television.”
These findings suggest a notable decline in social
taboos against swear words consistent with previous
research finding evidence for increasing individualism
(e.g., Greenfield, 2013). American culture increasingly
values individual self-expression and weaker social
taboos, and these trends are manifested in the increasing
use of swear words. If books reflect broader cultural
trends, it suggests that other cultural products such as
movies and TV shows may also demonstrate increases in
the use of swear words (a potential future topic for
research; that said, any increases in swear words in broad-
cast media may be confounded with the introduction of
media not regulated by the Federal Communications
Commission, such as premium cable and streaming
video). Overall, these findings are consistent with the
observation that American culture has become more
accepting of crude and coarse language.
Several studies have found that swear words are more
emotional and distracting than nonswear words (Bertels,
Kolinsky, Bernaerts, & Morals, 2011; Colbeck & Bowers,
2012). This suggests that swear words are powerful ways of
attracting attention. However, as they become more com-
mon, they may lose their power. This prediction that the
attentional power or “shock value” of swear words has
declined could not be tested in these data but is an interesting
question for future research.
Table 1. Changes in the Use of Swear Words in American Books, 1950-2008.
r with
year
Beta for year
squared 1950-1953 vs. 2005-2008 (SD)d
Times (×)
more frequent
Shit .97 .18 .00002-.001500 (.000092) 16.78 69×
Piss .96 .18 .000018-.000196 (.000012) 14.83 11×
Fuck .96 .21 .0000049-.0008218 (.000066) 12.33 168×
Cunt .89 −.17 .0000037-.0000827 (.000012) 6.58 22×
Cocksucker .89 −.22 .0000001-.0000110 (.00000024) 45.42 110×
Motherfucker .93 .11 .0000001-.0000678 (.0000033) 20.52 678×
Tits .96 .06 .000017-.000088 (.0000038) 18.68 5×
All seven swear words (composite of means) .97 .17 .0001-.0028 (.00018) 15.00 28×
All seven swear words (composite of Z-scores) .98 .05 −8.78-11.44 (1.20) 16.82 —
Note. All rs and betas over .10 have 95% confidence intervals that do not include zero. Beta for year squared tests for quadratic (curvilinear) effects.

Twenge et al. 5
These data also suggest two more historical points. First,
the trend toward the use of swear words in books began before
George Carlin’s 1972 comedy routine. His work therefore
captured and possibly amplified an emerging cultural trend.
Second, this massive shift in the use of swear words in books
occurred despite the U.S. federal government’s efforts to
reduce profanity on television. In this case, it seems the gov-
ernment was unable to constrain free expression broadly,
such as in books (although they almost certainly have been
able to on network TV). We have not examined other media
in this research, but it is plausible that the cultural push for
individual expression has in part resulted in the boom of less
regulated media such as satellite radio and cable television.
In summary, the use of swear words was significantly
more common in American books in the late 2000s com-
pared with the early 1950s, increasing in a primarily linear
fashion over this time period. The size of this effect,
expressed as a d, is massive. This change is consistent with a
cultural shift from more collective or communal values to
more individualistic, self-expressive values.
Figure 1. Changes in the use of seven swear words in American books, 1950-2008.
Note. The y axis reflects a Z-score.
0
0.0005
0.001
0.0015
0.002
0.0025
0.003
0.0035
Use of 7 swear words
Year
Figure 2. Changes in use of the seven swear words, composite
of means, American books, 1950-2008.
Note. The y axis reflects the actual frequency of the words as a percentage
of words in books in that year.

6 SAGE Open
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. Currently, the Google Books database contains two versions
of each corpora: the original 2009 version (e.g., “American
English (2009)” and an unlabeled version updated in 2012
(e.g., “American English.”) The Google Books information
page states, “Compared to the 2009 versions, the 2012 ver-
sions have more books, improved OCR [optical character
recognition], improved library and publisher metadata.” We
relied on the “American English (2009)” database instead of
the 2012 “American English” database of Google Books to
remain consistent with previous studies of changes in indi-
vidualistic language over time, all of which used the 2009
database (e.g., Greenfield, 2013; Kesebir & Kesebir, 2012;
Twenge et al., 2012b, 2013). In addition, the 2012 “American
English” database contains a sharp, anomalous downturn in
several swear words around 2005 inconsistent with the general
trend. We could not determine whether this downturn was due
to an error in this database or to some other cause, so we con-
tinued to rely on the 2009 database. Nevertheless, both data-
bases showed dramatic increases in the use of swear words.
For example, the use of the word “shit” increased 57 times
between 1950-1953 and 2005-2008 in the “American English”
database and 69 times in the “American English (2009)” data-
base we used in the primary analyses.
2. Nevertheless, results were similar, though somewhat smaller
in magnitude, in the “English Fiction (2009)” and “English
Fiction” databases, which include only fiction books. For
example, the use of the word “shit” increased 52 times
between 1950-1953 and 2005-2008 in the “English Fiction
(2009)” database and 38 times in the “English Fiction”
database, compared with 69 times in the “American English
(2009)” database we used in the primary analyses. These
two databases also show the downturn after 2005 observed
in the “American English” database. Thus, all four data-
bases show a dramatic increase in the use of swear words,
but the increase may have been attenuated during the
mid-2000s.
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Author Biographies
Jean M. Twenge is professor of Psychology at San Diego State
University and the author of iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected
Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy
– and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood as well as three other
books. Her research examines cultural and generational change.
Hannah VanLandingham is a graduate student at San Diego State
University.
W. Keith Campbell is professor of Psychology at the University of
Georgia and the author of When You Love a Man Who Loves
Himself and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic. His research
focuses primarily on narcissism.