Can it be that swear­ing is a sig­nal of a ‘civilised’ soci­ety? In Seed, Steven Pinker sug­gests that it may be so.

What does [the increas­ing inci­dence of swear­ing] have to do with vio­lence? Con­trary to the pop­u­lar belief that we are liv­ing in hor­rif­i­cally vio­lent times, rates of homi­cide in the West have plum­meted ten– to a hun­dred­fold over the cen­turies. The soci­ol­o­gist Nor­bert Elias noted that this paci­fi­ca­tion process, cor­re­lated with other changes in every­day manners.