What The F

"Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive, whether after a few cocktails, a st... (more)

"Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive, whether after a few cocktails, a stubbed toe, or in flagrante delicto. And yet at the same time, we all accept all limits on swearing--tacitly, through censorship, and actively, as we hold our tongues around children in the vain effort to shield them. We even punish children for uttering, in passing, the very same words that we use to release tension, express pain, or inflame passions. Swearing is the part of us that we selectively deny. We rely on it to express emotions and cement social relations while at the same time we act as though it didn't exist. In What the F, language and cognition expert Benjamin Bergen reveals new insights into how the brain computes language, how people avoid making speech errors ("Freudian slips"), and what determines a child's first word. The study of swearing reveals that the brain has more than one way to produce language, enabling, for example, people with aphasia from strokes, who are typically unable to communicate, to nevertheless still say "fuck" when upset--but not when they are asked to say it. In turn, other types of brain damage leave people unable to swear when upset even as they can still speak normally. Clearly there's a lot we can learn by sifting through some shit. Don't know dick? It's time you became acquainted. In this groundbreaking book, Bergen shows us how and why we swear, and reveals to us the wondrous workings of the brain in the process"-- (less)