Cursing in America: A Psycholinguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards and on the Streets [Hardcover]

Timothy Jay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2000

An examination of American cursing from a psycholinguistic-contextual point of view. Several field studies and numerous laboratory-based experiments focus on the relationship between cursing and language acquisitions, anger expression, gender stereotypes, semantics and offensiveness. Censorship, language content of motion pictures, First-Amendment fighting words, sexual harrassment, obscene phone calls and cursing at public schools are analyzed and related to sociolinguistic data. Many tables of word-by-word data provide empirical evidence of frequency of occurence, degree of offensiveness, gender of speaker and age of speaker influences on obscene language usage in America.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 273 pages
• Publisher: John Benjamins Pub Co (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155619451X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556194511
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,752,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Gosh Darn!, January 15, 2010

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lmj "book addict" (central OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cursing in America: A Psycholinguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards and on the Streets (Hardcover)

A scholarly work written in 1993. I must have seen the author interviewed about something and thought that sounded like an interesting book. It wasn't what I expected, but was still interesting. I read it in one day. I wonder how the statistics have changed in the past 17 years.