FlySammyJ
riadse96
Are we talking about Swearing or the Black Magic or cursing/hexing?
sweatdrop
CalledTheRaven
Now for the magical kind there's a lot of other fun things to get into.
Referring to the OP,
CuAnnan
I'm not going to do what Hobo did, and cross compare some religious views on cursing/hexing/malediction/illwishing/whatever-term-your-system-of-belief-uses-here. Quite frankly I'm not sure I could do justice to anything other than the Roman Catholic Church, which would involve a copy-pasta from the Catechism.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to culturally ingrained linguistic curses, regardless of whether they are perceived to have any sort of metaphysical force behind them.
:: Edited for unintentional bitchiness. I shouldn't post before I have coffee. >.< ::
Yes. I am.
Whether there is actually any observable imperical effect, curses are pervasive and are therefore worthy of discussing for the sake of discussing.
Or there wouldn't be journal papers on the topic.
In fact, there are journal papers on "the curses of <culture X>", in particular in the various fields of anthropology.