What the authors conclude from this accumulated evidence is that coprolalia, then, comes from some sort of urge to disrupt or disturb others. In fact, they say, coprolalia is a kind of linguistic aggression: “The utterance of obscenities is a form of aggressive behavior, and there may be failure in the control of these brief aggressive impulses in Tourette syndrome.” That’s an entirely different dysfunction—and, in my mind, a far more interesting one—than some twitchy vocal cords.
