Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language

Though the topic should have been interesting the tone and pace of the book was not engaging. There wasn't much flow in this book; topics seem to pop up and then go on for much longer than the chapter warranted.

By raising an unconscious behavior to the conscious, _Expletive Deleted_ shines a light on taboos, pragmatics, and social interactions. I enjoyed the "peel back the covers" revelations and read many excerpts out loud to my husband. I find there is a continuum of writers about linguistics. On one end, there are scholarly researchers like Noam Chomsky and Stephen Pinker. On the other, popular-press columnists like William Safire and Richard Lederer. This book tends towards the latter, while I was looking for the former. Because of that mismatch, I was disappointed by the lack of field research (It is not difficult to find native speakers of other languages; the world is full of them.), and I sometimes tripped over the style. The pop-press side of the continuum revels in clever writing, distractingly at times.

I've been reading Expletive Deleted ($&#@*!) by Ruth Wajnryb for a long time. It's not a long book, but it's taken me months to get through it. It bears the subtitle: "A good look at bad language." This is more or less true, if by "good" we really mean "comprehensive beyond belief." However, I have to give Ruth an "A" for effort. She's taken an exhaustive look at something I've wanted clarity on for a long time, and though she hasn't exactly delivered what I needed, she gave me a lot to think about.

If you read this book, you may not emerge smarter or even more informed, but you'll get a sense of how much thinking Ruth's given to bad language: how it begins, how it evolves, how it derives its power from taboo, how that power shrinks from over-use. What fascinates me is how bad words are only bad as long as people think they are.

Since I didn't love this book, I don't recommend anybody read it. (I only recommend books that I love. There are far too many wonderful books out there to waste your time with those that are only okay.) It can be dry at points (mostly just between the two covers) and a little dull. Some fun facts clearly got cut in the editing process.

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