Oh My Giddy Aunt

There's an older post here somewhere, where I was blibbering on about how I'd surprised myself, after embedding a plug in my foot, with my capacity for swear words .

But something else happened today. My 3-year-old is at the stage where she externally exudes a delightful innocence while at the same time seething internally with mischief. She has also realised that a wide-eyed, pink-cheeked expression of ingenuousness can pull the wool over most people's eyes and allow her, on those occasions, to get away with what she wants. My dad is a regular victim of this, but while he relaxes in Australia, she has been looking for new prey.

So. Today we went to meet a new music teacher (and before it sounds too Surrey for words - the idea of taking a 3-year-old to a music teacher - I must say there IS a story behind it but it's too involved to blog). Anyway. This lovely lady was all friendliness and enthusiasm and J responded in a similar way. Together they played some notes and clapped rhythms, we all smiled and everything was well.

And then I saw it - a slight flicker, in a very wide eye.

"Now duckie, " said Nice Music Teacher "We're going to sing your name. I shall sing "What-oh-what-is-YOUR-name? "(C, C, C, C, Eeeee, C) and YOU shall reply "My name is J - ". My 3 year old nodded her plaits very enthusiastically and was rewarded with the most indulgent of smiles. Which she returned, just a little bit too sweetly.

Off they went. Nice Teacher played an accompanying chord and sang her line. J lifted up her face, and sang, prettily, rhythmically, musically and all:

"My Name is Stink-Arse".

Stink-arse? STINK-ARSE?

Why, why, WHY and where, where, WHERE?! I can't blame her brother, he' s only 4. I won't blame me, not for that one. 'B*gger', yes; I do say that, but stink-arse?

I have never heard anyone say Stink-Arse.

So why, then? Why that? Why couldn't she have said Jelly-Head? Fizzy-Boots? Or Yum-Yum? Even Stink BUM would have been better, in comparison. But please not 'arse'.

It got me thinking though. Every language, every patois, every tiny geographical dialect has its share of curse words, and it's hardly a surprise that studies also show that verboten lexis globally is pretty much as easily categorised into the religious, the visceral (or scatological) and the social as in English. We swear for solidarity, or to offend, to shock, to release tension and show aggression, and these three areas hold enough taboo to make it possible. Logical all round.

However, what I have found out this afternoon is that swearing is not just a case of uncontrolled utterance. As far as our brains are concerned, expletives can be an amalgam of spontaneity and deliberation. Even in what may feel like an uncontrolled outburst of Naughty Words, we do apparently still make conscious decision on the choice of our language, after a split second assessment of the situation.

I also learnt this. While the left hemisphere of the brain is in charge of language, the right part runs emotional linguistic content. That I knew. However, apparently, the lower part of the brain manages swearing, along with instinctive emotion, and it is an activity which involves both the limbic system (behaviour, emotion and memory) and the basal ganglia (motor functions, impulse control). But this is where it gets interesting. It seems, from my very basic and interrupted reading (was also simultaneously doing a Meccano Robot, and making fishcakes for tea) that the brain stores swear words as complete lexical units, rather than singular, combinable phonemes. That I didn't know.

So my 3 year old is just repeating, I asked my Clever Former Colleague who can still sit in his office surrounded by books, by dint of having a wife who does the childcare.

"Young children will always remember illicit language, long before they truly comprehend the meaning" he assured me. "Curse words are more memorable, and studies consistently show that in any language, taboo words given in a list of randoms will be remembered first. If you write the word 'cat' in pink and ask someone to read the colour not the word, they will do it. Use a swear word, and it is more difficult. It's the way we are wired."

So if a Generation Game-type conveyor belt passes us full of words, some of them naughty, it's the latter we'll be taking home?

"It's not a very academic example, " he said politely, after a long pause "but, I think, yes." And for the first time, he didn't ask me if I was planning to return to work.

Thank goodness for that, then. My daughter was not conjuring horrid images in her head to verbalise in an attempt to shock. She was just repeating, probably uncomprehendingly, something she'd heard.

Which, however, still begs the question. WHERE had she heard that?

I have my suspicions and I shall be Miss Marple in my quest to find out...