Sentence firstBook spine poem #52: Swearing Is Good for You
A new book spine poem, on a linguistic (and mildly sweary) theme, with some notes on its contents below the photograph.
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Swearing Is Good for You
The F-word – spell it out:
Swearing is good for you.
Um . . . holy shit. Says who?
The man who lost his language swearing
*gestures* because internet
(What the F);
The woman who talked to herself
in praise of profanity
(Just my type).
Shady characters,
Role models.
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Thank you to the authors: Jesse Sheidlower, David Crystal, Emma Byrne, Michael Erard, Melissa Mohr, Anne Curzan, Sheila Hale, Geoffrey Hughes, Desmond Morris, Gretchen McCulloch, Benjamin Bergen, A. L. Barker, Michael Adams, Simon Garfield, Keith Houston, and John Waters.
I did some work on the mighty 4th edition of The F-Word last year, copy-editing and contributing to its substantial Introduction. Strong Language, a group blog about the culture and linguistics of swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck, reviewed the book and interviewed Sheidlower.
David Crystal has featured here several times, including in previous language-themed book spine poems ‘Broken Words’ and ‘Language, Language!’. Anne Curzan was the subject of a post about types of linguistic prescriptivism. Geoffrey Hughes’s book inspired a brief post about the surprising etymology of answer.
Desmond Morris’s book featured in a previous book spine poem, ‘Ambient Gestures’. Here on Sentence first I reviewed Gretchen McCulloch’s book, and on Strong Language I reviewed Benjamin Bergen’s and Michael Adams’s books. (Adams now also contributes to Strong Language.)
A. L. Barker’s books have shown up in a couple of previous book spine poems and in a post about an unusual use of without. Keith Houston’s book I reviewed here. The spine’s fading red suggests I should have kept its characters in the shade.
This is book spine poem no. 52. They’re not usually this long, but I guess they’re as long as they need to be. Let me know if you join in the game.
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Stan Carey
