Member Review
Review by
penny s, Reviewer
In What the F, a book length love letter to profanity, Bergen shows with psycholinguistic detail how the brain processes language in general and swear words specifically. While written and approachable by the lay reader, for those with some knowledge of cognition and linguistics this is a shortcut to better understand -- by using colorful profanity to make topics memorable -- the current state (as of 2016) to linguistic and cognitive science research into language and the brain. Inside Bergen shares his four groups of swear words and explores what happens when these words are spoken (or signed). Did your heart speed up, are you now more biased toward a certain choice? Bergen shows why these often censored and banned words are so appealing.
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