- Neurological condition characterized by involuntary motor and vocal tics
- Only ~10-15% have coprolalia
- Dysfunction in basal ganglia, causing disinhibition of impulsive behaviors
coprolalia in TS
- Both like and unlike speech/language
- Non-linguistic traits
- Disrupt normal speech patterns
- Timbre of voice different from normal speech
- Tend to occur during grammatical pauses
- Linguistic traits
- Taboo tics are language and culture-specific
- Modality-specific (e.g. deaf touretters)
- Contextual component
- At airport: there’s a bomb on the plane
- Saying ex’s name while with current partner
- Racial slurs
- Tics not wholly uncontrolled
- Can be anticipated and suppressed for short periods, but usually return with greater force
- Some can transform taboo tics into non-taboo forms (e.g. kuh for cunt, mother for motherfucker), but many say it does not satisfy the urge