A sneaky--charming, consistently engrossing--introduction to linguistics. --New York Times Book Review
Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive. And yet, we ban the words from television and insist that polite people excise them from their vocabularies. That's a fucking shame. Not only is swearing colorful, fun, and often powerfully apt, as linguist and cognitive scientist Benjamin K. Bergen shows us, the study of it can provide a new window onto how our brains process language. How can patients left otherwise speechless after a stroke still shout out Goddamn! ? Why did Pop Francis say fuck in the middle of a speech? When did a cock cease to be a rooster? Why is crap vulgar when poo is just childish? And what are we doing when we give someone the bird?
What the F? Let me effing tell you.
Benjamin K. Bergenis a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the Language and Cognition Laboratory. His writing has appeared in
Wired,
Scientific American,
Psychology Today,
Salon,
Time, the
Los Angeles Times,
The Guardian, and the
Huffington Post. He lives in San Diego. A delightful investigation of profanity.
New York Times Book Review A sweeping book, exploring not just the history of English profanity in words and in gestures, but also the impact that swears and other taboo words can have on the human brain...a valuable addition to the literature about profanity.
Atlantic.com InWhat the F,a self-proclaimed 'book-length love letter to profanity,' cognitive scientist Benjamin K. Bergen succeeds in bringing me around to appreciate the broader context, as well as the finer points, of the role 'bad' words play in human society.
Science
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