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Glasgow, swearing and inference
A press release claims to find the UK cities swearing most online.
A Scottish Sun headline states “Glasgow is UK’s most foul-mouthed city”. LADbible writes: “Glasgow Is The UK’s Most Potty-Mouthed City”.
The “recent study” was a press release from a digital marketing company. As stated in their methods note, the analysis looked at Reddit. Cities can have dedicated websites on Reddit (called subreddits).
Analysts took ten swear words from Ipsos MORI’s research on offensive language in 2016. Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, commissioned that work.
That report does not include a prescribed list of ten words that the company searched for. There is a table of “general swear words”, ordered in broad tiers of severity. The table itself reflects considerations of broadcasting.
The Reboot list features two of the strongest words (“c***”, “f***”), but not the third (“m*****f*****”). Their list includes “b****” and “b***s***”, which were “medium words”. The selection criteria for their list is unclear. Those choices could influence the results.
