Hell yeah

There’s more to profanity than shock value and offensiveness, argues Indiana University professor Michael Adams. His latest, In Praise of Profanity (Oxford University Press, $17.95), offers a whole shitload of good reasons to curse, and from his perspective, our taboos on profanity are a massive oversimplification. Profanity serves as more than just a style or class marker, he argues, although it does both of those things very damn well. But profanity also serves as a marker of tribes and attitudes—and we all know someone who can’t curse to save their freaking life, while at the same time, there’s that friend who is so creative that any attempt to match it is doomed to permanent failure. The way that swearing builds relationships and adds emotional emphasis, he writes, is crucial to community building. For example, we all know exactly what is meant by “Donald fucking Trump,” right?