On the campaign trail, Gov. Tim Walz is having a hell of a good time—at least rhetorically speaking. In his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech in August, the vice presidential candidate said “hell” three times, including that his former students could teach Donald Trump “a hell of a lot” about leadership. And, in one of the biggest applause lines of the night, he praised Minnesotans for minding their “own damn business” about their neighbors’ reproductive choices.
Two weeks earlier, in his first speech as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz told a crowd in Philadelphia that Trump would “damn sure” take the country backward and referred to Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as “just weird as hell.” In other words, Walz likes to swear, albeit in a fairly wholesome way. As University of Memphis psychology professor Roger Kreuz wrote in the Conversation in August after uncovering dozens of uses of the word “damn” in Walz’s speaking engagements, “Clearly, this term is part of the candidate’s normal speaking style and has been for many years.”
Viewers interpreted swearing to be “more emotionally realistic than measured speech.”
Harris hasn’t shied away from swearing either. In a viral social media video from NowThis, Harris reveals her favorite swear word “starts with ‘M’ and ends with ‘ah, not ‘er’”—suggesting she meant motherf*cka. On the debate stage in mid-September, Harris pointed to Trump as “that…” before trailing off, “former president.” Some viewers speculated she intended the audience to fill in the pause with their curse word of choice.
Among those speculators is UK-based science writer Emma Byrne, author of the book, Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language. Whether or not Harris’ pause was deliberate, Byrne told me, it was effective because “there were a lot of people who put their own swear word in there.”
Of course, profanity is nothing new in presidential politics. As Rolling Stone tabulated back in 2012—after then-president Barack Obama referred to then-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a “bullshitter“—presidential swearing dates back at least as far back Abraham Lincoln, with reported pottymouths including Lyndon Johnson and Richard “[Expletive Deleted]” Nixon. In 2010, Joe Biden referred to the passing of the Affordable Care Act as “a big fucking deal” and George W. Bush, caught on a hot mic, called a New York Times reporter a “major-league asshole.” Trump, too, is a frequent swearer. (See: “shithole countries,” Sen. Ted Cruz being a “pussy,” and “I’m f*cked.”).
There’s a good chance these politicos knew what they were doing. As Byrne told me, some studies have shown that viewers interpreted swearing to be “more emotionally realistic than measured speech.” When used the right way by a politician, it can help them come across as authentic and relatable. For politicians like Walz, that’s part of the brand.
To get a better understand how swearing operates in politics, I spoke with Byrne over Zoom. You can read an edited and condensed version of our call below:
Why might a politician or public figure choose to use a swear word—or not? What does it signal to the audience?
It used to be thought that swearing showed a loss of emotional regulation, a lack of vocabulary. But actually, people with larger vocabularies also tend to have larger swearing vocabularies, and swearing is quite often used as a way of conveying everything from excitement to sympathy as well as frustration or anger. I think we’ve gotten over the idea that swearing is just rhetorically a failure.
At the time I wrote the book, there was some research that had come out from law departments, particularly in places like the Netherlands, that looked at swearing and the effect on the perceived credibility of the speaker. Particularly in legal or courtroom settings, some degree of swearing was rated as being more emotionally realistic than measured speech. So I wondered whether or not swearing would become like hand gestures in the 1990s, when politicians learned how to do body language. Some research in the late 90s suggested that certain gestures showed openness or decisiveness, and you found politicians consciously doing these gestures.
I wonder if now some of this swearing isn’t quite as spontaneously emotional as it’s played out. Or whether some of it is that just people are more relaxed about using that side of their vocabulary. But I do think it’s pretty instrumental as a way of connecting.
There is a viral clip of Kamala Harris at an [Asian American and Pacific Islander] event where she says, “Sometimes people will open the door for you…sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that f*cking door down.” Why do you think this line worked—or didn’t?
It certainly worked for me. One of the reasons why I thought it looked authentic was that it seemed like there was a degree of conflict before she said it. It didn’t come out completely fluently. It wasn’t a line that looked well rehearsed—although very good politicians are great at saying everything as if they’re saying it for the first time.
Also, this was before she was campaigning to be president. When she said it, it was to a very specific audience. The more specific your audience is, the easier it is to choose the right kind of swearing, because you know the kind of cultural references that are allowable. When you’re now speaking to an entire nation, hoping that they will elect you as president, that immediately becomes more of a gamble.
Your book would suggest that it might be more of a gamble for women than for men. How might the calculus be different for women who swear?
There is definitely a higher social risk for women to swear. There is a [2001] study, it’s a couple of decades old now, and I would love for it to be repeated. But [researchers] distributed a whole bunch of questionnaires with sentences that were allegedly quotes from people. Half of these quotes were randomly labeled as coming from women, and half as coming from men.
People were asked to rate how offensive, how upsetting, how much the swearing made them think that the person speaking dislikeable or that they wouldn’t want to spend time with them. Whenever a swearing sentence was labeled as coming from a woman, those judgments became considerably harsher. But for men, [participants tended to think] I’d work with this guy.
I hope that things are changing. I think that idea that women swearing was somehow surprising or unusual may have faded away a bit.
In your book, you point out that not all swear words are created equal. In the context of politics, it feels like there’s a difference between a politician using “damn” versus “f*ck”—I feel weird even saying that on a call in a professional setting. How are these words perceived differently and why?
One of the ways we know how intensely a swear word is experienced is by wiring people up to what’s called a Galvanic skin response monitor. Basically, it’s measuring how sweaty your palms get. You can also look at how fast your heart rate goes. The stronger swear words tend to have a stronger physiological reaction. So it’s not just a matter of taste or decorum. It’s a matter of how your brain and your body are responding to those swear words.
“You have to be incredibly aware of your audience when swearing if you’re going to do it effectively.”
There are some swear words—particularly there’s one that we used in the UK in the 90s, begins with a “c.” There was a kind of reclamation of it on this side of the Atlantic, and particularly women would call their male friends this word. But as I started to do talks about the book, I realized that younger millennials would just go, “No, that’s an atrocious word.” In the States, it never lost its misogynistic overtones. So it’s something I’ve dropped from my vocabulary because I know that for a lot of people, both older and younger than me, it doesn’t hit the way that it did with my exact contemporaries. It’s one of those things that you have to be incredibly aware of your audience when swearing if you’re going to do it effectively.
I’m thinking way back to 2016 and the time that Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman.” There’s no swear word used there, but it was clearly derogatory, and there was an awful lot of misogyny in the way that he used that. During the most recent debate, Harris’ [use of] “that…former President” left so much space for people to put in whatever swear word they felt comfortable with, if they wanted to put one in there.
You’re talking about the moment when Harris kind of pauses in referring to Trump as “that [pause] former president”—
Yeah. Yep.
So even the suggestion that she might have used the curse word there was effective?
Yes, and I’m not sure that it was deliberate. I don’t know whether she wanted to just say, “that man” or “that person.” And of course, she didn’t swear. I have no reason to believe she intended to swear, but there were a lot of people who put their own swear word in there.
As the election race tightens, how should we think about swearing in politics generally?
Swearing is emotive. Whether it’s spontaneous or deliberate, there is something emotional going on. And as with every other message from a politician, asking yourself, Does that emotion fit with my values? Does it fit with what I want from my country?
“Whether it’s spontaneous or deliberate, there is something emotional going on.”
Rather than just going, Oh, strong word, what does this emotional message say about this candidate’s values and because of their values, their likely behavior?
Don’t let that little spike in adrenaline stop you from applying the same deliberative reasoning that you’d do in deciding how to cast your ballot.
