What the F

June 20, 2016
In a lively study with the potential to offend just about anyone, Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, examines all aspects of profanity: how it evolved, how we use it, why we use it, and why exactly some words and phrases are considered vulgar or taboo. By breaking down swearing into four categories—praying, fornicating, excreting, and slurring—Bergen is able to look at how these words evoke certain primal responses and how they relate to the most basic human needs and instincts. “Profanity has a lot to teach us about language—not only how it’s realized in the brain and how it changes over time but what happens when children learn it, how it hooks into our emotions, and why it occasionally trips us up,” he explains. From a linguistic and sociological viewpoint, the book is illuminating, even playful, as he uses charts and scientific studies to fully explore the material. His frequent use of vulgarity, contrasted against the seriousness of the topic, further shows how words have power, and how we enjoy a complicated relationship with them. The result is an entertaining, if sometimes overly technical, look at an essential component of language and society. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman.

July 1, 2016
An examination of the sub rosa language that sets us all atwitter--and athwart.What is it about the F-word, the N-word, and the C-word (supply your own, as long as it's got four letters) that provokes rage, disgust, and embarrassed laughter? Bergen (Director, Language and Cognition Laboratory/Univ. of California, San Diego) observes that they fire up parts of the brain that other words don't excite in quite the same way; profanity, he writes, "gets encoded differently in the brain." That makes the study of vulgar language a topic of special interest for neuroscientists, who can connect those bad words to responses along the neural pathway. A word is sounded, Bergen schematizes, and then converted into electrical signals, whereupon "different parts of the temporal lobe then extract information about the speech sounds that make up the word and then send modified signals to a region called Wernicke's area, which is believed to associate the sequence of sounds that you've heard with their meaning," and so forth. Something unusual happens in that area when bad language is heard. Bergen doesn't sort out nature and nurture quite neatly enough: it's sometimes less that children have potty mouths, he writes, than that adults have "potty ears." A little more reference to the anthropological literature might have helped, but all the same, it's clear that elements of both are involved in parsing how to interpret "give a fuck," to say nothing of the more fiery, more dangerous iterations of terms surrounding race, incest, and other taboo or sensitive areas. What is certain, as the author notes, is that such words are indeed capable of harm, and, therefore, we as social and legal beings have some interest in regulating them. Using them, he observes memorably, "is the linguistic analog of closing your eyes and swinging in full knowledge that there's a nose within arm's reach." It's no match for Jesse Sheidlower's fluent, fun The F Word (1995), but Bergen's study is still a winner for the psycholinguistics nerd in the house.

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June 15, 2016

What's in a word? A lot, of course, particularly in the case of profanity. In this erudite and entertaining work, Bergen (cognitive science, Univ. of California, San Diego) offers a thorough examination of what swearing reveals about language, the brain, and society. Swear words are taboo; what makes them so? The topics of conversation in which they are often used, including religion, sexual intercourse, and bodily functions. But what really marks this language as forbidden is the prohibition of its use, particularly for children; adults pass down unmentionable words by teaching children that these terms are "bad." Interestingly, such words are not fixed but change over time. Moreover, they are treated differently in the brain, having their own, more emotionally connected pathways that are preserved even when other aspects of language processing are damaged by illness or injury. Bergen's tour of the profane is fascinating, educational, humorous, and sorely needed. Sometimes the points feel belabored and repetitive, and occasionally the narrative jarringly switches from colloquial to professorial. Nonetheless, this is a worthy project that is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. VERDICT Recommended for readers of popular social science and social awareness topics.--Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016
How did swearwords become dirty words? How are they different from any other set of letters strung together, and where do they get their impact? Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, takes a look at 11 different dimensions of swearing in this microhistory. It's all herename your favorite b-word, c-word, and n-wordand Bergen uses lots of humor to make some of the more scholarly parts go down easier, as graphs, statistics, and academic writing abound here. It's fascinating to realize that while the 7,000 languages of the world all have swearwords aplenty, there are few universal exclamations. Readers will also be amused to learn the science of why some words for sexual organs are crass while others make one giggle. Why do some words just sound aggressive while others are silly? Bergen also covers the development of language, leading into whether or not profanity is harmful to children. There's something here guaranteed to offend everyone (the book wouldn't be doing its job otherwise), but microhistories are hot, and lovers of language will savor every word.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)