Book Review
Title: What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves by Benjamin K. Bergen
Genre: Non-Fiction, Language, Society
Rating: 4.5 Stars
So, What the F is a book that looks at the science and psychology behind swearing. The introduction introduces us to the author’s view on these things and the type of things he is going to be diving into throughout the book. Honestly this book was so funny from the get-go since some of these curse words I’ve never heard of. The author also explains that most of these curse words come from English since what people consider profane or taboo change from language to language.
The opening chapter looks at the categories of curse words and how these are broken down. Curse words typically fall into one of four categories, holy, bodily functions, procreation and slurs. These categories seem simple but there is much more to them. For example, slurs might seem simple to understand but words that are considered slurs change from country to country and they change over time. The holy category was one that I didn’t consider cursing but it is in many countries especially those that are especially religious, in some countries, using words like these can even get you killed.
The next chapter looks at why curse words have the impact they do, from their meaning to their length. Obviously meaning and interpretation are the most important thing in what makes a curse word, but their length, spelling and mouth feel also play an important role that most people don’t even consider. Most curse words in English, or most of them fall into the four-letter category which makes them simple and punchy to say. However, most of these words also end in a closed consonant which means the word ends with finality and often end with a harder consonant like k or t which means the word has a weight to it.
Following on from breakdown down the curse words, we begin looking at profane gestures which don’t have the language barrier that spoken or spelt words do. We look at how signed languages have the advantage of being understood even when the person being “spoken” to doesn’t know sign as some signs can have their meaning worked out from the physical actions of the signs. However, much like spoken languages, signed languages have their own rules and structures meaning if someone uses BSL, British Sign Language then they won’t be able to understand JSL, the same way in spoken languages someone who speaks English won’t understand Japanese if they don’t have any prior knowledge of the language. This is linked back to the science in the previous chapter because it shows how different types and modes of language are stored in different parts of the brain than those typically associated with language.
We then turn to looking at slips of the tongue and what causes them using an example from Pope Francis where he accidentally said the Italian word for fuck instead of the word he was intending. These errors are typically made because you are predicting and preparing the next word you want to say before you’ve finished saying your current one as this is the only way we can talk at speed without pausing after each word. Several studies have been done of several different kinds of errors, but all seem to suggest that we possess an internal editor who is screening and monitoring our speech constantly and because it isn’t perfect we have these slips. Thought processes can also lead to slips as proven in one study where the person greeting them, either the scientist or an attractive assistant, lead to slips of the tongue.
The next chapter looks at grammar, and here we can see that profanity as we know and use it currently defies a lot of essential grammar rules yet doesn’t cause an issue with usage. Despite hating grammar and linguistics while I was studying, this chapter is one of the most interesting so far, since it is exploring how profanity defies grammar rules, reasons for why this might and how there is currently no way to correct the usage of profanity. This is tied in with the following chapter on how words change their meanings over time. The most well-known of these words would be cock, bitch and dick which all meant something else in times gone by. Dick was used as a nickname for people named Richard before taking on the connotations we know today. Similarly, cock was replaced by rooster and bitch by female dog but were used widely and frequently to refer to these animals. Profane words come and go with the times and while these words meant something different in the past, it is likely that the swear words we know now will mean something completely different in the future.
The final trio of chapters looks at whether profanity affects children, the jury is out on this one. While there is some evidence that profanity influences children, the effect that violence and sex have on children is a lot bigger. There is more evidence that slurs are more harmful especially when targeted as a specific group. However, in recent years, evidence has been shown that marginalised groups are reclaiming and reinventing words that had been considered slurs in the past. The final chapter looks at some ways that we can change the way we view profanity because words change over time. The evidence shows that the impact we give profane word is arbitrary and can change with enough time and support behind it. Overall, I found the book to be insanely interesting especially how these words evolved over time. If you are interested in the history of words and language, how language evolves over time, cultures and places then definitely pick this one up.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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