�������޹�����Ʒ

Rena Zito, associate professor of sociology, presented her research at the Eastern Sociological Society annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 7, 2025. Her talk, “‘Good Tourette’s’ and ‘Bad Tourette’s:’ Coprolalia, Stereotypes, and Resisting Marginalization in an Online Discussion Forum,” was part of a session focused on chronic health conditions and technology.

Zito’s research applies sociologist Erving Goffman’s theories on identity and stigma management to explore how people with Tourette Syndrome (TS) navigate the widespread stereotype of TS as “the swearing disease.” Specifically, she examines how individuals with TS work to distance themselves and their condition from this stigma, as well as the unintended consequences for those who experience coprolalia, the involuntary use of obscene or socially inappropriate language.

The presented research addressed two central questions: (1) How do people with Tourette Syndrome respond to the “swearing disease” stereotype? and (2) What are the consequences of that response for people with coprolalia?

The research included a thematic content analysis of qualitative data sourced from the subreddit r/Tourettes using the Python Reddit application programming interface wrapper (PRAW 7.7.1). Zito found that people with Tourette Syndrome construct the “other” by using statistical folk facts to minimize coprolalia’s prevalence and by engaging in rhetorical distancing and relabeling. In turn, people with coprolalia perceive that distancing is motivated by courtesy stigma: Coprolalia must be minimized and those with it othered because their very existence is the source of Tourette’s stigma. Even well-intentioned attempts to counter courtesy stigma inadvertently legitimize the idea that those whose tics are profane or socially inappropriate – group that already experiences heightened social rejection – constitute the undesirable “other.”