Overview

• The study analyzed over 1.7 billion online words across 20 English-speaking countries, focusing on 597 vulgar terms.
• The United States ranked highest in online profanity usage, followed by the United Kingdom, with Australia in third place.
• Researchers suggest Australians may reserve swearing for face-to-face interactions, contributing to lower online usage.
• Swearing is deeply embedded in Australian culture, as seen in campaigns like the 2006 Tourism Australia ad censored abroad.
• This is the first large-scale computational linguistics study of offensive language, published in the journal Lingua.