罵出花兒？恭喜，說明你的詞匯量很大！

If someone's ever accused you of sounding less intelligent because you swear too much, don't worry - science has got your back. A 2015 study found that those who have a healthy repertoire of curse words at their disposal are more likely to have a richer vocabulary than those who don't.

如果有人因為你懟天懟地、出口成臟，進而判斷你智力水平不高——因為你言語貧乏，不得不用臟話填充自己的語言系統(tǒng)——不用擔心，科學站在你這頭。2015年的一項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，那些掌握了大量的禁忌性詞匯的人比很少使用臟話的人更有可能掌握更加豐富的詞匯量。

This challenges the long-held stereotype that people swear because they can't find more intelligent words with which to express themselves.

這就挑戰(zhàn)了人們長期以來的成見，因為他們找不到更聰明的詞語來表達自己。

As Stephen Fry once said, "The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just f*cking lunatic."

正如Stephen Fry曾經(jīng)說過的那樣：“認為罵街就是在任何方面都缺乏教育或言語能力的表現(xiàn)，真是他媽的傻逼透了。”

Psychologists Kristin Jay and Timothy Jay of Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (not clear if related) came up with the hypothesis that people who are well-versed in curse words are more likely to have greater overall language fluency too.

馬里斯特學院和馬薩諸塞州文理學院的心理學家Kristin Jay 和Timothy Jay(不清楚是否相關(guān))提出了一個假設(shè)，那些精通臟話的人更有可能擁有更高的整體語言流利度。

For the first experiment, they gathered 43 participants (30 women) aged between 18 and 22 years, and first asked them to rattle off as many swear or taboo words as they could in 60 seconds.

第一個實驗，他們召集了43名參與者(30名是女性)，年齡在18至22歲之間，并先讓他們在60秒內(nèi)盡可能多地說出他們能想到的所有臟話。

Next, they had to recite as many animal names as they could in 60 seconds. The researchers used animal names as an indication of a person's overall vocabulary and interest in language.

隨后，參與者又被要求在一分鐘內(nèi)盡可能多地說出他們所能想到的動物。研究人員用動物的名稱數(shù)目來計量一個人的整體詞匯水平和語言能力。

As any intelligible American English taboo word or phrase was considered fair game, the participants ended up generating a total of 533 taboo words, including the rather obscure "cum dumpster" and "ass pirate".

每個成年人都能判斷出哪些詞語是有確切意義的禁忌性詞匯，所以這個測試是公平的。參與者最終產(chǎn)生總計533個禁忌詞，包括含義相當模糊的“cum dumpster”和“ass pirate”。

The participants also submitted to so-called FAS tasks, which are standardised verbal fluency tests.

測試者還提交了所謂的FAS任務(wù)，這是標準化的口頭語言流利性測試。

In a second experiment, another 49 participants (34 women) aged between 18 and 22 were asked to perform a similar task - this time they were asked to write down as many curse words and animal names starting with the letter "a" as they could.

在第二組實驗中，另外49名年齡在18歲至22歲之間的參與者(34名女性)被要求執(zhí)行類似的任務(wù)——這次他們被要求寫下盡可能多的以字母“a”開頭的禁忌詞語和動物的名稱。

They also completed FAS tasks to assess their overall language fluency.

隨后，他們也完成了FAS任務(wù)，以評估他們的總體語言流利程度。

Publishing in the journal Language Sciences, the researchers also found that expressive curse words were generated at higher rates than slurs, and there was little difference between what the female and male participants could come up with.

研究人員將結(jié)果發(fā)表在《語言科學》期刊上，具有表現(xiàn)力的臟話的產(chǎn)生速度要快過詆毀性的詞語，女性和男性參與者所能達到的差異不大。

They found that the ability to generate curse words was not an index of overall language poverty - in fact, they found that taboo fluency is positively correlated with other measures of verbal fluency.

他們發(fā)現(xiàn)掌握臟話詞語的能力不是語言總體貧困的指標——事實上，使用社會性的禁忌詞語的流利程度與其他類型表達方式的口頭流利程度正相關(guān)。

"That is, a voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities rather than a cover for their deficiencies," the researchers concluded.

“也就是說，大量使用禁忌詞匯可能應該被視為具有更健康的言語能力，而不是掩蓋其缺陷。”研究人員總結(jié)道。

"Speakers who use taboo words understand their general expressive content as well as nuanced distinctions that must be drawn to use slurs appropriately.

“使用禁忌詞的演講者能夠更好地理解一般性的表達內(nèi)容以及必須恰當?shù)厥褂门K話技巧來表現(xiàn)的內(nèi)容的細微差別。”

"The ability to make nuanced distinctions indicates the presence of more rather than less linguistic knowledge, as implied by the POV [Poverty of Vocabulary] view."

“感受細微差別的能力表明存在更多而不是更少的語言知識，正如POV [詞匯的貧瘠]觀點所暗示的那樣。”

Now, of course, it should be said that the sample size for this study was small, but until a larger cohort can be assessed, we can look to one of the greatest living masters of the English language, Stephen Fry, for his view.

當然，現(xiàn)在應該指出，這項研究的樣本量很小，當我們找到了更多的證據(jù)，或許就能更好地體悟當代最偉大的英語使用者之一Stephen Fry(《黑爵士》等的編劇導演)的觀點了。