Exploring College Students’ Emotional Responses to Instructor Swearing

Abstract

The current study sought to expand the scant literature on instructor swearing by investigating how students felt personally and toward their instructor after experiencing swearing in the classroom. Inductive analytic techniques revealed that students reported the following personal feelings after recalling a specific swearing incident: absence of emotion, pleasurable and functional, displeasure, and aroused. Students reported the following feelings toward the instructor after a swearing incident: feelings unchanged, positive change in affect (respectful and accessible), and negative change in affect (inappropriate and unprofessional). Emotional Response Theory (ERT) frames results—in particular, students’ responses illustrate the emotions outlined in ERT, including pleasure/displeasure, dominance/submissiveness, and arousal/nonarousal (Mottet, Frymier, & Beebe, 2006 Mottet, T. P., Frymier, A. B., & Beebe, S. A. (2006). Theorizing about instructional communication. In T. P. Mottet V. P. Richmond & J. C. McCroskey (Eds.), Handbook of instructional communication: Rhetorical and relational perspectives (pp. 255–282). New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Additionally, other emotional responses not originally conceptualized within ERT were found. Implications for instructional communication theory and future research directions are discussed.

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