Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language

Written by Emma Byrne

Narrated by Henrietta Meire

In a sparkling debut in the entertaining pop science vein of Mary Roach, scientist Emma Byrne examines the latest research to show how swearing can be good for you. She reveals how swearing has been around since the earliest humans began to communicate, and has been shown to reduce physical pain, to lower anxiety, to prevent physical violence, to help trauma victims recover language, and to promote human cooperation. Packed with the results of unlikely and often hilarious scientific studies? from the "ice bucket test" for coping with pain, to the connection between Tourette's and swearing, to a chimpanzee who curses at her handler in sign language-Swearing Is Good for You presents a lighthearted but convincing case for the foulmouthed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jan 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781681689937

Emma Byrne

Emma Byrne is a graphic designer and artist. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. She has won numerous awards for her design including The IDI (Irish Design Institute) Graduate Designer of the Year, the IDI Promotional Literature Award for her work on Brown Morning, and a Children’s Books Ireland Bisto Merit Award for her work on Something Beginning With P: New Poems from Irish Poets. She has illustrated many books, including Best-Loved Oscar Wilde, Best Loved Yeats, The Most Beautiful Letter in the World by Karl O’Neill, a special edition of Ulysses by James Joyce, and A Terrible Beauty by Mairéad Ashe Fitzgerald. She lives in a thatched house in Co. Wexford.

Reviews for Swearing Is Good for You

[murderbydeath · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been waiting months for this to come out; I swear like a sailor and my love of etymology and words in general draw me to books like these. This one was excellent. In the introduction Byrne sets the expectations for the reader; not all the chapters are focused on swearing specifically - or how swearing is good for you, but all the topics she discusses are topical to swearing, and all of them contribute to our understanding of why swearing can be fun, powerful, and offensive - often all at once! There is a lot of science here, written by a woman who is a scientist first and a writer second, and a lot of studies make up a good portion of the narrative, with humor to keep the reading easy. Even when the chapters aren't geared directly at the benefits of swearing, they are fascinating. In a slim volume of under 200 pages, she covers the interrelationship of pain and swearing, Tourette's Syndrome (a tragic, eye-opening chapter that she describes as 'the chapter that should not be in this book'), swearing in the workplace, other primates that swear (so good!), gender and swearing, and finally, swearing for the multi-lingual. All fully cited and fascinating. With citations/notes, a bibliography, and an index in the back. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and should have saved it as a suggestion for The Flat Book Society, dammit! Though I was never going to be able to wait that long to start reading it; luckily it was good enough to re-read someday soon, so perhaps it will find it's way to the voting list anyway.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a lively, funny, informative book about foul language.Emma Byrne, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence, has always loved a good swear. In this book, she lays out, using peer-reviewed science, why swearing and foul language is really good for you, for work teams, and society as a whole.A key "news you can use" bit is that swearing is a very effective pain reliever. Whether you've hit your thumb with a hammer, or are sticking your hand in a bucket of ice (part of a real study to test this effect), or being treated for cancer, swearing really, measurably, helps your ability to handle the pain. The bad news? If you're a woman, even if you're being treated for cancer, even your female friends will judge you for this, and may drift away.Swearing also figures prominently in building and maintaining good teams in a work environment. It's used as banter, as a a form of in-group bonding, in expressing frustrations and irritations in a form that, despite conventional ideas about swearing, in actual use is often not seen as hostile or aggressive.Gender differences show up in how women swear compared to men, what swear words they use, and in how people react to their swearing, but not really in how much women vs. men swear. Byrne also discusses swearing in other languages, changes in swearing over time, and, most fascinatingly, at least to me, swearing in chimpanzees, our closest relatives.Chimpanzees, of course, don't use language on their own, but some chimpanzees, including Washoe and others raised among humans as part of the same project, have learned sign language. They learn it, they use it, they create new words, and they teach sign to younger chimps.But to be raised with humans, they have to be potty trained. In the process of potty training, they learn that feces anywhere else is taboo--and the word they use for feces, in Washoe's case "dirty," comes to function for the chimpanzees the way a much larger variety of taboo-based swear words function for humans. This suggests, among other things, that swearing may go back to the origins of human language.This is, unquestionably, a book that is better to read or listen to, than to just read my review. My account of it is not nearly as good.Recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This short (about 200 pages) look at naughty words covers a lot of ground: how swear words do or don't differ from other kinds of vocabulary in the way our brains handle them, the different functions of swearing in society, how men and women use bad language differently, even how apes who are taught to communicate with signs do something that looks a lot like spontaneous swearing.Mostly it's not terribly in-depth, and some of it covered ground I was familiar with already, but it was fairly interesting on the whole. Byrne's writing is casual, earthy, interestingly opinionated, and laced with humor. Although some of her sense of humor works better for me than others. Early on, there's a bit too much of the feel of "Hey, I'm writing a book about swearing! Look, I'm going to say 'fuck' every couple of paragraphs, isn't that entertaining?" Which can get old pretty fast, even from someone who claims to be pretty foul-mouthed normally.Still, it was mostly a fun read, but I did have one major problem with it, and it was a bit of a frustrating one at times. The author is British, but the copy of the book I have is an American edition. It seems pretty clear that it was edited a bit for the American audience -- with a few British terms and customs explained, and references to "soccer" instead of "football" for instance -- but Byrne is still very clearly writing throughout from a British perspective for a British audience. And as she herself points out, swearing is something that varies hugely from place to place and culture to culture, and a lot of the examples she uses and analogies she draws are very, very specific to the UK and hard to relate to for American readers. Or even hard to understand. I mean, if it weren't for Monty Python having given me at least a vague idea of what a blancmange is, there's a whole extended food analogy she uses in here that I doubt I'd have been able to make heads or tails of. Now, it isn't that British swearing isn't interesting, even to us famously parochial Americans. And I certainly do not remotely fault a British writer for writing a British book for British audiences. But I am looking a bit askance at her editors. Honestly, the less-than-half-assed attempt to translate this into something accessible for Americans just made the whole thing more confusing, as my brain kept trying to leap back and forth across the Pond while I was reading, unable to ever settle into either processing things from my own American POV or making an imaginative leap into pretending to be British for the duration.

[deeehmm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Listened to the audiobook, narrated by a sweet-voiced British reader to amusing effect. Portrays the positive side of swearing in a convincing series of arguments, often not always) substantiated by interesting research.

[antao-3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Clucking hell. I cannot stand “fowl” language!When I finished the book, I was tempted to swearily start off to make a point but then I thought, fuck that shite for a load of old bollocks. There is no rule against profanities. There is however a request to "Please respect other people’s views and beliefs". I find this most peculiar. I am quite prepared to respect other people, but "views and beliefs"? Some "views and beliefs" are simply not respectable. For example I cannot respect the view that women are inferior, or the belief that the moon is made of green cheese.Swearing is a resource to relieve a person from accumulated stress. It takes a considerable amount of stress to behave in a society full of chores and rules. As such, any sudden mental breakthroughs from that constraint, for example by breaking Chinese ceramic or by swearing - especially with words considered "taboo"- can be regarding, and even healthy. I guess in sports it would be silly to associate swearing to increased physical performance, but rather aimed at preventing a mental discouragement or breakdown while attempting at excessively difficult tasks.In one of my previous teams at work we had a "competition" each week to think up a new swear phrase by combining a swear word with a theme of the week (kitchen implement, garden equipment, farmyard animal, etc.). Inventive and expressive. Best teams always swear together. It’s very bonding. We were discussing the best swear word every other day for impact and ‘special’ occasions. The “E” word (“enconados” – cunts) always got top marks.Nothing is more appropriate than a well-placed bit of ‘bad’ language. The world would be a much messed up place without it. Just think if we weren’t allowed to drop the odd F-bomb and the like. After I stopped playing football I use to miss a good old rendition of ("vamos rebentar com o caralho das vossas cabeças' - You're gonna get your fucking heads kicked in' down the footy on a Saturday. Don't like the aggression. Prefer the assertive "come and 'ave a go if you think you're hard enough".Here's one more to add to Ms. Byrne's interesting research: Swearing is a great way to learn a foreign language quickly. Not university type courses, of course, but the day-to-day way of acquainting with a new language. No swear, no good. It's an absolute must to first pick up all the swear words. This helps to, hum, lubricate the learning process, and creates camaraderie, and you just sail straight on from there. It's like you've breached the holy of holies. I've found that the English language is suitable like no other to swearing. A "fucking" here, a "shit" there, rolls nicely of the tongue and you can still sound clever and funny while doing it. Try the same in German or Portuguese and you just come across as a vulgar chav. Coming to think of it, using the four-letter fornicative or conjugations and declinations thereof doesn't make you sound "clever" and "funny" at all. That word should be reserved for the most extreme of situations, such as accidentally chopping your foot off, or someone causing irreparable damage to your favourite “belovèd” automobile. On top of that, swearing at the traffic while I cycle or “e-scoot” to work gets me there much, much quicker. And I can crush a packet of biscuits much more easily while mouthing off.Poo.Bum.Willies.Jobbies. I feel stronger already!

[tatoosh-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Swearing is like mustard; a great ingredient but a lousy meal.”Emma Byrne coverage of the function and benefits of swearing is a brief but multi-faceted and comprehensive ot the topic. “Swearing is Good For You,” is a comprehensively researched and cogently argued exploration of the function of swearing in ameliorating human suffering and creating and maintaining social connections. Far from being bad, makes a convincing case that swearing is an essential tool of civilization.The common view, preached in the home and from the pulpit, is that swearing is bad. The well-educated often regard it as a sign of an inadequate vocabulary and an inferior childhood education. Pish-posh.In this slim 200-page overview of swearing Byrne reviews the research evidence demonstrating that swearing reduces pain and helps to create and maintain social groups. She reviews the neurological brain mechanisms associated with swearing and provides an extensive review of Tourette’s Syndrome. Although the syndrome is often thought to involve uncontrollable swearing, that is true of only about 25% of individuals suffering from Tourette’s.Three of the more interesting chapters deal with swearing in chimpanzees, gender differences in swearing, and swearing by multilingual individuals. Studies have shown that chimpanzees that have been taught sign language spontaneous create swearing by pairing words such as “bad” with other words. They also teach their acquired vocabulary of swear words to the younger generation. Byrne provides a convincing review of gender differences in swearing. Women do not swear quite a much as men but they are catching up, a development applauded by Byrne. There are differences in the swear words men and women use and in the social objectives of their swearing.I was also interested to learn that multi-lingual individuals swear far more skillfully in their original language than in any language learned subsequently and that swearing in their original language carries far more emotional nuance, regardless of their fluency in the alternative languages.I recommend “Swearing Is Good For You” without reservation: both the book and the practice.