"I #$%!@* love my life!"

In Response to "John's observation about happiness and political parties." 

I have one criticism with the comparison of the happiest states (according to Twitter) and the outcome of the presidential election of democrat or conservative states. This criticism mostly comes from how the happiest states were identified through "negative" and "positive" words. It did not focus on the context in which the words were used. The study used the Mechanical Turk Language Assessment word list for the research purpose. They placed words such as "mad, hate, no, boo, earthquake, smoke and jail" as well as swear words onto the negative scale. They placed words such as "LOL and haha, as well as good, nice, rainbow, sleep and wine, and food or beach" onto the positive scale. Although some of these words are primarily used either negatively or positively, many of them could be used in the opposite sense, which could only be clarified through looking at context. Primarily, I have a problem with how they placed all swear words onto the negative scale! As the CNN article states, "Again, researchers found liberal use of swear words to be a key factor in a city's overall happiness score." Although swear words can be used negatively, a lot of people swear when they are really excited or enthusiastic about certain events or thoughts. Timothy Jay, a psychologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts has studied profanities for 35 years. He stated, "It allows us to vent or express anger, joy, surprise, [or] happiness" (Joelving). Obviously the context in which we talk plays an important role in what we mean. Swearing absolutely was a critical component in attesting happiness scores for states, even though Twitter is usually used by younger audiences (whom have a tendency to swear more...about anything!). This definitely would have skewed the results.

Joelving, Frederik. "Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief." Scientific American. Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc., 12 July 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-swear>.