Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter ePub Download

October 2, 2022 admin admin Novels

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Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter eBook read online or download for free. ” Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter ” is an impressive book that is now available in various format including Kindle, ePub, and PDF. If you need this book in any specific format, you can request us.

Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter Book Review

“Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter” is a good book that you can read online or download to read it later. Before starting the reading or downloading, here is the summary of the book that you can read. Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech–the urgency with which we say “f&*k!” is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger. Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.

Brief Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter

As a devout listener of “Lexicon Valley,” I could easily hear the author’s words in my mind, even though I read the Kindle edition. Part of that was because a decent amount of the book had already been covered on the podcast in the past year, or as content directly linked to the book. He just loves this stuff, and it shows. I appreciated that he did not duck from the literal words themselves, and that he has what to me seems like an open mind of when things are ok (e.g., variations on the n-word in certain circumstances), and when current standards say no. A key thread through the book is how standards have changed, sometimes quickly, and how the words themselves have changed. On his podcast, he often traces the evolution of a word from its roots and through way stations over the centuries. He does that quite a bit here, too. A simple example that appears multiple times is how some terms that were at one point tagged to women or non-entities (think of that bundle of sticks) became associated with weakness in men and then gay men. Modest scholarship such as that adds greatly to understanding.