When adverbs aren't adverbs, and swearing isn't language
WHY do we say "fuck you", and not "fuck
yourself"? What exactly makes certain excretions more linguistically
taboo (shit) than others (snot)? Is "fucking" really an adverb
in the phrase "fucking brilliant"? Steven Pinker, a linguist
and cognitive scientist and one of the most masterful popularisers of science
writing today, answers all in a long article
on profanity in the New Republic. read more »COMMENTS: 1 |
- JENNIFER EGAN'S BITE-SIZED STORY8,500 words in ten days of tweets
- TALKING OF MENTAL DISORDERSMore terms bring more pitfalls
- THE WHETHER REPORTTeachers can't predict your future
Popular Threads
Comment of the moment
quote It's often seemed to me that Shakespeare might well have been a simply brilliant editor as well as a beyond-extraordinary writerBooks and Arts
Intelligent Life | Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2012 | All rights reserved | Disclaimer | Terms and conditions | Intelligent Life magazine FAQs
