1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910163945303321

Autore

Bergen Benjamin K.

Titolo

What the f : what swearing reveals about our language, our brains, and ourselves / / Benjamin K. Bergen

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Basic Books, , [2016]

ISBN

1-5416-9874-6

0-465-09648-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (239 pages)

Classificazione

SCI034000LAN009000PSY031000

Disciplina

401/.9

Soggetti

Obscene words - Psychological aspects

Swearing - Psychological aspects

Blessing and cursing - Psychological aspects

Languages, Modern - Obscene words - Psychological aspects

Psychoanalytic interpretation

Psycholinguistics

SCIENCE / History

LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General

PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Machine generated contents note: 1. Holy, Fucking, Shit, Nigger -- 2. What Makes a Four-Letter Word? -- 3. One Finger Is Worth a Thousand Words -- 4. The Holy Priest with the Vulgar Tongue -- 5. The Day the Pope Dropped the C-Bomb -- 6. Fucking Grammar -- 7. How Cock Lost Its Feather -- 8. Little Samoan Potty Mouths -- 9. Fragile Little Minds -- 10. The $100,000 Word -- 11. The Paradox of Profanity.

Sommario/riassunto

"Smart as hell and funny as fuck, this book explains why we can't stop swearing and what it tells us about our language and brains.  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 Pope 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 shooting when we give someone the bird?  What the F? Let me effing tell you"--