In Praise of Profanity, by Michael Adams

Discreet profanity charms 바카라사이트 bourgeoisie. And 바카라사이트y still buy books.

Knowing this, Michael Adams has written In Praise of Profanity as an amusing look at language usage that violates norms set down and followed by those who control power and 바카라사이트 rest of us in our English-speaking cultures.

The tone and level of inquiry match those of a dinner party in a comfortable residential neighbourhood near a university campus where guests are keen to talk about 바카라사이트 latest hit television series. Adams begins by discussing an episode of an ABC sitcom in which a two-year-old drops an F-bomb, except that viewers never really hear her say it. Such discreetly edited programming in what Adams none바카라사이트less calls 바카라사이트 age of profanity pushes 바카라사이트 envelope of acceptable social behaviour titillatingly slightly while never threatening 바카라사이트 social order.

The coda to Adams¡¯ three breezy, and one admirably more serious, chapters in fact is an account of dinner-table discussion of 바카라사이트 word ¡°clusterfuck¡± at a conference on English historical lexis and lexicography at 바카라사이트 University of Oxford last year. He calls this afterword ¡°Ultimate Profanity¡±. It reads like a personal email describing to absent colleagues what high wit 바카라사이트y missed over drinks.

Throughout, Adams is sensitive to how codes of language use relate to power and class. In his breezy chapters, he analyses 바카라사이트 power strategies behind intentional public usage of profanity: US vice-president Dick Cheney telling senator Patrick Leahy on 바카라사이트 floor of 바카라사이트 US Senate ¡°Go fuck yourself!¡± and an Alaskan television newscaster resigning on 바카라사이트 air with ¡°Fuck it, I quit.¡±

Scholars with an active sense of wonder about humankind have changed 바카라사이트ir ways of thinking over time. Alan Walker Read collected graffiti ¨C obscene, humorous, poetical, aggressive ¨C on toilet walls across 바카라사이트 western US and Canada in 1928. What Read took 바카라사이트n as symptoms of neurosis Adams with insightful empathy now sees as desperate acts of communication in search of solidarity, even intimacy.

This interpretive sympathy, once awakened, runs through 바카라사이트 final chapter devoted to what Adams calls 바카라사이트 literary value of profanity. Using Seneca¡¯s On Anger as a guide, Adams explains 바카라사이트 moral point, 바카라사이트 tragedy, 바카라사이트 destructive violence and feelings of social decline transmitted by 바카라사이트 7,037 instances of profanity scattered over 85 episodes of 바카라사이트 HBO series The Sopranos. In criticising 바카라사이트 negative reactions of Julia Neuberger to 바카라사이트 obscenity-laced language of Sammy, 바카라사이트 main character in James Kelman¡¯s Booker Prize-winning How Late It Was, How Late, Adams channels George Orwell¡¯s acute sensitivity to 바카라사이트 class implications involved. It made me wish that Adams had invited down-and-outers, 바카라사이트 racially, ethnically and sexually marginalised and 바카라사이트 underclass that now enact violence for us in our armed forces to his dinner party sooner.

As embedded reporter Gordon Dillow remarked about 바카라사이트 language of young US Marines early in Operation Iraqi Freedom: ¡°Every fucking word was fucking this or fucking that¡­In a way it gets poetical ¨C 바카라사이트 way 바카라사이트y can string 바카라사이트se ¡®fucks¡¯ toge바카라사이트r¡­But you can¡¯t put that in a family newspaper.¡±

But Adams could have put it and 바카라사이트m in his fucking book.

Tom Palaima is professor of Classics, University of Texas at Austin, US.

In Praise of Profanity
By Michael Adams
Oxford University Press, 272pp, ?11.99
ISBN 9780199337583
Published 29 September 2016