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Dictionary of Quotations by Subject

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memorable sayings by the clever and famous

Dictionaries of quotations used to be about ‘Who said that?’, whereas now people want to know ‘What has been said about this?’. In this new type of dictionary from Oxford University Press, you can do both. The latest volume in their newly revamped series of dictionaries is arranged by topics – ranging from traditional categories such as Courage and Love to more recent subjects like Computers and the Internet.

Dictionary of Quotations by Subject It’s a collection of over 9,000 quotations, covering an enormous range of nearly 600 themes, from over 2,400 authors. They are arranged alphabetically, and you can check who said something about which topic via an extensive double index of names and themes.

The general approach is to split categories down into smaller and more specific topics. So, instead of The Press, there are entries listed under Journalism, News, Newspapers, and Press Photographers. Gerald Priestland observes:

Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.

The quotes themselves range from Julius Caesar and Jane Austen to Tony Blair and Madonna, and where the quotation needs a context to be appreciated, this is provided. Not that it does in the case of Lytton Strachey on his death bed:

If this is dying, then I don’t think much of it.

A book such as this is useful when racking your brains to recall where the lines quoted by an actor in a film came from. Surprisingly, many of the most famous, such as ‘Play it again, Sam’ and ‘Come up and see me some time’ turn out to be mis-quotations. And the best all seem to be propelled by deep feeling – even when it is self-mocking, as in the case of George Best:

People say I wasted my money. I say 90 percent went on women, fast cars, and booze. The rest I wasted.

The American ragtime pianist Eubie Blake struck a similar note when he commented, on becoming one hundred years old:

If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.

There are some brilliant one-liners, such as Stephen Fry’s ‘Reading newspapers is like opening a piece of used lavatory paper’ and Mae West’s ‘A hard man is good to find’. Woody Allen is also well represented – as in his bon mot on bisexuality:

It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

This type of compendium has three possible uses. It can serve as a straight work of reference if you are stuck for the source of a famous quotation; you might dip into it for bedtime relaxation; and it’s the sort of book which some people would keep in the lavatory for a few moments of light relief.

© Roy Johnson 2006

Dictionary of Quotations by Subject   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Susan Ratcliffe (ed), Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 5th edn, 2006, pp.580, ISBN: 0198614179

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Dictionary of Rhyming Slang

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rhyming slang explained and brought up to date

Would you know what to do if you were left on your Jack Jones for a day with the saucepan lids? Rhyming slang originated in early nineteenth century London. Everyone knows that apples and pears = ‘stairs’, and whistle and flute = ‘suit’. Here’s how the system works. The rhyming word is the second of a pair, and the connection is not always obvious – as in Derby Kelly = ‘stomach’ (belly). But usage is made more complicated by the fact that it is the first, non-rhyming word which is spoken – so you go up the apples to bed, not the pears. This new Dictionary of Rhyming Slang explains explains all the well-known terms, and many you will never have heard of before.

Dictionary of Rhyming SlangIf that is not complex enough, the inventive and playful strain of rhyming slang is seen in the tendency to transfer via rhyme from the original term to more and more remote associations – as in bottle and glass = ‘bottom’ (arse), which becomes bottle; but that in its turn is rhymed with Aristotle, which is shortened to arris, which then in its turn is rhymed with April in Paris. Are you still with us?

The most commonly used terms in John Ayto’s amusing collection are coined for the perennial slang topics – body parts, sex, the lavatory, crime, drink, gambling, illness, and death. But he also covers such topics as work, sport, and even household objects.

It was once thought that rhyming slang was dying out, but the recent fashion for using celebrity names has proved this not to be true – as in [the now disgraced] Garry Glitter = ‘pint of bitter’, abbreviated to a Garry of course. The alternative might be to order a couple of Britneys (Spears).

All the people whose names have been memorialised in this way are given thumbnail biographies. Thus, the cast immortalising haemorrhoids includes Michael Miles, Nobby Stiles, Valentine Dyall, and Emma Freud.

[It is interesting to see that John Ayto cites Roger’s Profanisaurus Rex amongst his sources of authentic persuasive coinings. If you follow that link, be warned – it’s much stronger stuff.]

Drink does much better than food, rhyming slang is obviously largely the province of the male, and it often embeds itself so deeply into general linguistic usage that we are hardly conscious of it – as in porkies (porky pies) for ‘lies’, and loaf (loaf of bread) for ‘head’.

There’s a big index, so you can easily locate any term you hear but whose meaning you can’t guess (as I couldn’t with balaclava). This is an excellent and certainly bang up-to-date account of what is obviously still a thriving sub-set of English Language.

© Roy Johnson 2003

Dictionary of Rhyming Slang   Buy the book at Amazon UK
Dictionary of Rhyming Slang   Buy the book at Amazon US

John Ayto, Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.309, ISBN: 0198607512

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Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

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dictionary of twentieth century slang terms

This is basically a cut-down and updated version of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English which was originally published in 1937 and is now in its eighth edition. This version contains only terms known to have arisen during the twentieth century, and 1,500 new terms have been added – many from the 1980s and 1990s. A lot of the slang terms we think of as recent actually date back as far as the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Grub dates back to the time of Oliver Cromwell, and to knock off comes from the early 18C. The editor Paul Beale has maintained Partridge’s scholarly approach by citing his sources.

Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional EnglishThis gives the reader every reason to feel confident in the definitions and authenticity of what he offers. There’s quite a lot of technical slang from various occupations, and armed forces jargon here – and not a lot of the sexual and bodily function slang you get in something like Roger’s Profanisaurus. In that sense, it’s a broader and polite companion piece to the more scurrilous collections (which are more entertaining).

There’s a huge bibliography of printed sources, and a rather interesting appendix which gives notes on special sub-sets of slang, ranging from bird-watchers to tiddlywinks players, and from backslang to Spanglish and Tombola. It also includes slang from public schools, jazz idioms, and an amazing list of railwaymen’s slang and nicknames.

A typical entry gives the flavour and an idea of the scholarly approach:

floater. A mistake, a faux pas; a moment of embarrassment; university s. (circa 1910), by 1929 (Wodehouse), gen, to the upper and middle classes. Lunn, 1913; Knox, 1934, ‘It produced…in the original and highly esoteric sense of that term, a “floater”.’ Perhaps because it cannot be recalled, though perhaps suggested by faux pas slurred to föper; cf., however, float, v.,2.—2. Esp. in floaters and mash, sausages and mashed potatoes: RAF: since circa 1920.—4. A meat pie in a plate of peas or gravy: Aus.:later C.20. Wilkes.—See:-

floaters. Spots before the eyes: since circa. 1950 or a decade earlier . (Weekend 21 May, 1969.) Also known as flying flies.

Pinning down slang in print is never going to be easy, but having a cheap and accessible version of a classic resource available is very reassuring. Eric Partridge was an independent, a radical, and a one-off – and his publications are well worth keeping alive.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Paul Beale (ed), Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, London: Routledge, 1999, pp.534, ISBN: 0415063523

Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms

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lists of words, their alternatives, and their opposites

This Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms should appeal to a number of different users — editors, poets, crossword fans, and word puzzle solvers in general. It’s an easy-to-use source of over 150,000 alternative and opposite words to improve your wordpower and communication skills, and make your English more interesting and original. In fact it’s two books in one, because the dictionary is followed by a huge lexicon of what are termed ‘hard words’.

Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms These are unusual and obscure words you might wish to use in unusual circumstances, running from abattis (a defence made of felled trees with the boughs pointing outwards) to zymurgy (the branch of applied chemistry dealing with the use of fermentation in brewing). The main part of the book offers each headword entry followed by synonyms which are listed alphabetically, and antonyms are placed at the end of entries where appropriate. There are examples to show how words of less obvious senses are used, and markers such as ‘informal’, ‘derogatory’, and ‘obsolete’ highlight the usage style.

For instance, let’s say you wanted to avoid repeating the word hard in a piece of writing. You look up the word and choose from a list of alternatives – and they are arranged in groups according to the sense in which the word is being used:

hard adj 1 adamantine, compact, compressed, dense, firm, flinty, frozen, hardened, impenetrable, impervious, inflexible, rigid, rocky, solid, solidified, steely, stiff, stony, unbreakable, unyielding. 2 hard labour. arduous, back-breaking, exhausting, fatiguing, formidable, gruelling, harsh, heavy, laborious, onerous, rigorous, severe, stiff, strenuous, taxing, tiring, tough, uphill, wearying. 3 a hard problem. baffling, complex, complicated, confusing, difficult, enigmatic, insoluble, intricate, involved, knotty, perplexing, puzzling, tangled, inf thorny. 4 a hard heart. callous, cold, cruel inf hard-boiled, hard-hearted, harsh, heartless, hostile, inflexible, intolerant, merciless, obdurate, pitiless, ruthless, severe, stern, strict, unbending, unfeeling, unfriendly, unkind. 5 a hard blow. forceful, heavy, powerful, strong, violent. 6 hard times. austere, bad, calamitous, disagreeable, distressing, grim, intolerable, painful, unhappy, unpleasant. 7 a hard worker. assiduous, conscientious, devoted, indefatigable, industrious, keen, persistent, unflagging, untiring, zealous. Opp EASY, SOFT. hard-headed > BUSINESSLIKE. hard-hearted > CRUEL. hard up > POOR. hard-wearing > DURABLE.

It has to be said that the synonyms fare better than the antonyms, and of course there are plenty of terms for which there are no antonyms – bicycle for instance. Plenty of synonyms – bike, cycle, two-wheeler – and so on, but no anti-bicycle.

This could also be very useful for crossword addicts in solving those clues which are posed in finding one word which means the same as another – as in ‘adamantine (4)’ = hard.

© Roy Johnson 2007

Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Alan Spooner (ed), Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2007, pp.528, ISBN: 0199210659

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Eats, Shoots and Leaves

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a radical defense of traditional punctuation rules

Who would have thought it! A book on punctuation at the top of the best-seller lists. The title refers to joke about a panda who goes into a cafe, orders a sandwich, then pulls out a gun and fires it. The panda had read an encyclopedia entry on itself which contained the unnecessary comma in Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Lynn Truss’s attitude to punctuation is enthusiastic, robust, and uncompromising, as her subtitle makes clear.

Eats, Shoots and LeavesShe wants you to become angry at the misuse of apostrophes and indignant at misplaced commas. She teaches via anecdote, which is probably why the book is so popular. There are no stuffy grammar lessons here, just accounts of bad punctuation, explanations of why they are wrong, and exhortations to keep up standards.

She likens punctuation to good manners – something which should be almost invisible, but which eases the way for readers. And in fact for all her slightly tongue-in-cheek militancy, she takes a non-pedantic line where there are areas of doubt or where punctuation becomes a matter of taste and style.

She takes you on a lively and entertaining tour of the comma, the semicolon, the apostrophe, the colon, and the full stop. Then it’s on to the piquancies of the exclamation and the question mark.

There are several interesting but mercifully brief detours into the history of punctuation – and I couldn’t help smiling when she confessed that her admiration for Aldus Manutius the elder (1450-1515) ran to being prepared to have his children.

Her style is very amusing and, appropriately enough for a book on language, quite linguistically inventive. She knows how to get close to you as a reader and isn’t scared to take risks.

For all her vigilance however, I think she misunderstands one example of the apostrophe – and the point of the joke it is making. A cartoon showing a building with the sign Illiterate’s Entrance could be using the term ‘illiterate’ as a collective singular. She thinks it should read Illiterates’. But we won’t quibble.

She ends by looking at the chaos of random punctuation which now predominates much of email messaging – and feels apprehensive. But I don’t think she needs to worry. For every hyphen or ellipsis to punctuate a gap in thought and sense, there is a new word or a new linguistic invention to compensate. Language may well be a self-compensating and even self-correcting system after all.

Anyone who is unsure about the basics of punctuation will learn some valuable lessons here, and those who already care will have their feelings and understanding confirmed in a very entertaining manner.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2009

Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, London: Profile Books, 2009, pp.209, ISBN: 0007329067

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English language terms – a glossary

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terms used in the study of English language

This glossary of English Language terms contains the vocabulary and the jargon you will need in any analysis of language and its use. These terms are needed in a number of different subjects: language and linguistics, communication skills, the analysis of prose and poetry, and even certain aspects of philosophy. Click on the links for further explanations and examples.

Abbreviations
letter(s) or shortened word used instead of a full word or phrase

Accent
the features of pronunciation which indicate the regional or the social identity of a speaker

Acquisition
the process by which language skills are developed – particularly in infancy

Adjectives
a word which modifies a noun or a pronoun

Adverbs
a word which modifies a verb, an adverb, or an adjective

Agreement
the grammatical logic and coherence between parts of a sentence

Alliteration
the repetition of consonant sounds – usually at the beginning of words

Apostrophes
a raised comma used to denote either possession or contraction

Articles
a word that specifies whether a noun is definite or indefinite

Assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds

Audience
the person or persons receiving a speech or piece of writing

Brackets
Curved or square punctuation marks enclosing words inserted into a text

Capitals
Upper-case letters used to indicate names, titles, and important words

Clauses
a structural unit of language which is smaller than the sentence but larger than phrases or words, and which contains a finite verb

Cliché
an over-used phrase or expression

Colons
a punctuation mark indicating a pause ranking between a semicolon and a full stop

Commas
a punctuation mark indicating a short pause in a sentence

Conjunction
a word which connects words or other constructions

Consonant
an alphabetic element other than a vowel

Dialect
a form of speech peculiar to a district, class, or person

Figure of speech
expressive use language in non-literal form to produce striking effect

Form
the outward appearance or structure of language, as opposed to its function, meaning, or social use

Full stop
a punctuation mark indicating the end of a sentence

Function
the role language plays to express ideas or attitudes

Grammar
the study of sentence structure, especially with reference to syntax and semantics

Graphology
the study of writing systems

Homonyms
words with the same spelling but with different meanings

Hyphen
a short horizontal mark used to connect words or syllables, or to divide words into parts

Idiom
a sequence of words which forms a whole unit of meaning

Irony
saying [or writing] one thing, whilst meaning the opposite

Jargon
the technical language of an occupation or group

Language change
the development and changes in a language

Lexis
the vocabulary of a language, especially in dictionary form

Metaphor
a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another

Metonymy
a figure of speech in which an attribute is substituted for the whole

Morphology
a branch of grammar which studies the structure of words

Noun
a word which names an object

Onomatopoeia
a word that sounds like the thing it describes

Oxymoron
a figure of speech which yokes two contradictory terms

Paradox
a figure of speech in which an apparent contradiction contains a truth

Paragraph
a distinct passage of writing which is unified by an idea or a topic

Participle
a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective or a noun

Phonetics
the study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds

Phrase
a group of words, smaller than a clause, which forms a grammatical unit

Point of view
a term from literary studies which describes the perspective or source of a piece of writing

Preposition
a word which governs and typically precedes a noun or a pronoun

Pronoun
a word that can substitute for a noun or a noun phrase

Punctuation
a system of marks used to introduce pauses and interruption into writing

Received pronunciation
the regionally neutral, prestige accent of British English

Semantics
the study of linguistic meaning

Semicolon
a punctuation mark which indicates a pause longer than a comma, but shorter than a colon

Sentence
a set of words which form a grammatically complete statement, usually containing a subject, verb, and object

Simile
a figure of speech in which one thing is directly likened to another

Slang
informal, non-standard vocabulary

Speech
the oral medium of transmission for language

Spelling
the convention governing the representation of words by letters in writing systems

Standard English
a dialect representing English speech and writing comprehensible to most users

Structure
the arrangement of parts or ideas in a piece of writing

Style
aspects of writing (or speech) which have an identifiable character generally used in a positive sense to indicate ‘pleasing effects’

Stylistic analysis
the study of stylistic effects in writing

Symbol
an object which represents something other than its self

Synonym
a word which means (almost) the same as another

Syntax
the arrangement of words to show relationships of meaning within a sentence

Tense
the form taken by a verb to indicate time (as in past-present-future)

Text
any piece of writing or object being studied

Tone
an author’s or speaker’s attitude, as revealed in ‘quality of voice’ or ‘selection of language’

Verb
a term expressing an action or a state of being

Vocabulary
the particular selection or types of words chosen in speech or writing

Writing
the use of visual symbols to represent words which act as a code for communication

© Roy Johnson 2004

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English Slang

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the inventiveness of everyday language

In this fairly hefty study of English slang (‘the people’s poetry’ as he calls it) Michael Adams is trying to bridge the gap between an academic study of linguistics and a populist approach to slang that merely lists recent coinages and their explanations or folk etymologies. He’s trying to make clear distinctions between slang, jargon, colloquial, cant, argot, and merely informal expressions – all of which tend to overlap and bleed into each other.

English SlangIt’s not easy, because a word can belong to more than one category, depending on who is using it and the context in which it is being used. People often use both slang and jargon at the same time – and make little distinction between the two linguistic categories. Moreover the meaning of a slang expression may change over time (like any other item of language) and whilst a great deal of slang has a short lifespan, it does not necessarily disappear entirely.

His most serious argument is that slang is not a ‘low vulgar, unmeaning language’ – as it is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Adams claims it is a form of poetry that adds vivacity and pungency to our communication – hence his observation that it is ‘the poetry of everyday life’.

After questions of definition he moves on to consider how it is actually used – in other words, a socio-linguistic approach to the subject. He puts an enormous amount of emphasis on African American slang, almost giving the impression that other groups do not generate slang of their own.

I was interested to note that he skirts round the contentious issue of ‘Ebonics’, but he looks in some detail at the issue of slang and gender. Yes, women do use slang as much as men – particularly if you take into account the use of conversational tags such as innit and thingy.

I’m afraid that this also leads into an extended consideration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television shows, where he talks about Buffy and Homer Simpson as if they were real living Americans. He doesn’t seem to take into account that much of the linguistic inventiveness of these characters is the product of largely white middle-class script writers – though it has to be said for their inventiveness that some of the terms they create do pass into everyday use by ordinary human beings.

There’s a whole chapter devoted to the aesthetics of slang, including a scholarly analysis of rhetorical devices such as tmesis (infixing, as in absofuckinglutely) and diacope (as in shut the fuck up) But the problem is that he unpicks his illustrative examples in exhausting detail and then repeats his explanations and bon mots until they are drained of value.

Michael Adams is obviously very knowledgeable on the subject, but I suspect that his approach might be too scholarly for the average reader and not scholarly enough for specialists. But the book got rave reviews when it first appeared in America, so so there’s no reason it won’t do well in the UK.

English Slang Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2012

Michael Adams, Slang: The People’s Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.238, ISBN: 0199913773

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Figures of speech – understanding them

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free pages from our English Language software program

Figures of speech – definition

figures of speech ‘Figures of speech’ is a term used to describe the devices employed to add colour, decoration, and imaginative expression to linguistic use.

redbtn They distinguish figurative or imaginative language from its use in a literal manner.

redbtn Common figures of speech include the following:

alliteration, assonance, cliché, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, simile, synecdoche

redbtn These are also known as ‘rhetorical devices’.

Examples

Literal – He ran quickly down the street.

Simile – He ran like a hare down the street.

Metaphor – He hared down the street.

Use

redbtn Many people use these devices quite unconsciously as part of everyday communication.

redbtn For instance, a statement such as ‘His plan was given the thumbs down’ uses a figurative term, not a description of people waggling their thumbs. [It dates back to a Roman emperor’s decision on a gladiator’s fate.]

redbtn If we say ‘I’ve told him a thousand times!’ this is not literally true. We are using a figure of speech [hyperbole, or exaggeration] to make a point.

redbtn NB! Don’t try too hard to use figures of speech. They’ll come naturally.

redbtn Figures of speech or rhetorical devices are present in all cultures. It seems that it is in the very nature of linguistic discourse for speakers to act creatively. Indeed, it is that creativity in language use which ultimately divides language use in humans and animals.

redbtn A child begins to be creative by using various figures of speech at the very beginning of the acquisition process. Words such as ‘bang’, ‘smack’, ‘moo’, and ‘baa’ are all onomatopoeic figures of speech common to a child’s early vocabulary.

redbtn It is useful to contemplate a continuum of which the two opposites are literal and non-literal in terms of linguistic expression. We could envisage a statement of fact towards one extreme and a metaphor towards the other.

redbtn The statement of fact might be This is a wooden door.

redbtn An example of a metaphor might be The sunshine of your smile.

redbtn These two utterances comprise five words each, yet the metaphor says much more than the factual statement. Not only does it say more but it speaks of vast and abstract elements such as love, the sun, gesture, happiness, human warmth, pleasure and possibly more.

redbtn Figures of speech are often used to express abstract emotional or philosophical concepts. The figure of speech attaches the abstract concept to a material object and thus is instrumental in creating powerful and dynamic communication.

redbtn Original figures of speech are valued in both speech and in writing. We respect the ability to generate these. Politicians for instance often use figures of speech, and are variously successful with this practice.

redbtn Churchill’s image of ‘the iron curtain’ has stayed with us for over fifty years, although the phenomenon it described no longer exists. ‘The cold war’ superseded it, during which it was the threat of someone ‘pressing the button’ which was on everyone’s mind.

redbtn The ‘rhetorical question’ is a figure of speech favoured by politician and lay person alike. It is a powerful device because, although it has the appearance of being a question, it often acts as a form of persuasion or criticism.

redbtn ‘Is our country in danger of becoming a hot-bed of sleaze?’ we might hear a politician ask. ‘Are we going to stand by and let these atrocities continue?’ Listening to our car radio we might mentally frame an answer to this kind of question – or at least we might be drawn into contemplating the issue.

redbtn At a more domestic level we might be asked ‘What time do you call this?’ or ‘How many times have I told you …?’ These are questions which actively discourage any answer. They are a form of rebuke which is an established ritual. As competent language users, we know them and participate in the ritual – by not answering, or responding to the ‘real’ (unstated) criticism.

redbtn Another figure of speech which spans the social spectrum is the cliché. These are often derided, and the word itself has become a pejorative term. However, the cliché is very much ‘alive and kicking’, especially in the context of football. ‘Over the moon’ about a result and ‘gutted’ to hear the news, are just two such figures of speech heard almost daily over the popular media.

redbtn The cliché proves its function by its prolific use. Perhaps it is its over-use, or its application in inappropriate contexts which may cause distaste.

redbtn Figures of speech are also known as images. This indicates their function well. The outcome of using them is that the listener or the reader receives a multi-dimensional communication. Lewis Carroll coined the term ‘portmanteau’ for words which are packed with layers of meaning. Although Carroll’s usage is slightly different from that of figures of speech, it does illustrate that we have a strong drive as language users to convey meaning colourfully and economically.

Self-assessment quiz follows >>>

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Filthy English

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The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing

Dictionaries of slang and obscenity are often disappointing, because they define terms but shy away from discussing exactly how they are used in everyday life. Filthy English does the opposite. Peter Silverton not only tells you what swear words mean, but he illustrates and analyses their use in the very places for which they are designed – the street, the pub, the argument, the curse, and the insult. His analysis of swearing is delivered via an account of his own relation to language in 1950s UK and beyond.

Filthy English The story goes down endless numbers of digressions – but fortunately he has an amusing and lively style, full of witty asides and one-liners. (“People from Maidenhead never laugh when telling you where they live”) This personal history spreads out into a very well-informed history of the words he is considering. But the humour is underpinned by a very scholarly sense of etymology.

He follows the well-worn tradition of presenting his observations in cod-serious, satirically po-faced categories: Chapter One – ‘Sexual intercourse and Masturbation’; Chapter Two – ‘Anuses, Faeces, Urine, and Other Excreta’. This makes what he has to say all the funnier.

He has a finely attuned ear for the subtleties of language, and spends a number of pages discussing the fine distinctions between calling someone a wanker or a tosser – despite the fact that the words appear to mean the same thing. He brings a sociological as well as an etymological knowledge to his analysis

What also makes this approach so attractive is that he is steeped in the popular culture of the last forty or fifty years in Britain. He recaptures some of its pivotal linguistic moments in vividly entertaining anecdotes from the world of television, sport, pop music, and political life.

He also considers very carefully the shock value or taboo-quotient on well known swear words (or swears as he calls them) as well as pointing to absurdities such as the fact that many people would find “Bugger that!” (anal intercourse) far less offensive than “Fuck that!” (normal sexual intercourse). This is matched by his intelligent sense of the history of language change and development:

Once we were a religious society and ‘damn’ was the word that could tear into our social and emotional fabric. As the Enlightenment edged religion aside, so sexuality became the locus of swear-power – fuck starting its rise in the nineteenth century, followed by cunt in the second half of the twentieth. Now it’s the nouns and epithets of group identity that are taking over – race words mostly, but also ones about religion and class.

It’s quite surprising how rapidly the meaning of a word can change. Spunk was originally the name for touch-wood, the stuff people carried round for starting fires. Then from the eighteenth century onwards it meant courage or bravery:

It was only in the late nineteenth century that the possession of those qualities came to be transferred to the quintessentially liquid expression of masculinity. It’s an intriguing psychological correlation: heroism and the vector of male DNA transmission. Jamaicans call it man juice.

He’s amazingly well informed on swearing in a number of languages from all over the world – which serves well to demonstrate the universality of the phenomenon. And he includes ‘hidden’ languages such as ‘mother-in-law languages’ (a form of avoidance speech) and the Russian unofficial language Mat (older than Russian language itself) which is based upon only four or five words and their infinite variations.

I was also glad to see that he’s smack up to date. In his discussion of the term ‘gay’ he notes that it’s rapidly becoming a general term of gentle teasing, in addition to its conventional use as a synonym for homosexual. One man invites his male friend out for a drink, only to be told he’s tired and wants to stay in. “Don’t be so gay” might be the response.

He finishes with a bravura excursion into psycho-analysis, where with an examination of what Freud and Ferenczi had to say about forbidden language adds up to the fact that these swear words are deeply attached to the most important parts of our bodies. People with Tourette’s Syndrome don’t shout out “Ankles! Shoulders! Opposite sex!”. They shout “Cock! Cunt! Fuck!”

For anyone interested in demotic language, this is a must. Silverton is entertaining from first page to last – and his apercus are backed up with erudition, scholarship, but more importantly with a healthy engagement with the language of everyday life on the streets of the UK and the rest of the world today.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2011

Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing, London: Portobello Books, 2010, pp.314, ISBN: 184627169X

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Form – how to understand it

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Form – definition

form Form is a term which refers to the recognisable shape of a text or a speech act.

redbtn This shape may be either physical or abstract.

Examples
Spoken Written
Conversation Menu
Sermon Letter
Announcement Novel
Anecdote Article
Joke Poster

Use

redbtn The term ‘form’ is used in linguistics and in literary criticism as a technical term.

redbtn It is used when considering the shape, the construction, or the type of speech or writing.

redbtn An awareness of form can help to produce more efficient communication.

redbtn Keeping the ‘shape’ of writing in mind helps to clarify the type of end product required.

redbtn NB! An appreciation of form is developed via practice and experience.

redbtn Form is an important part of stylistic analysis – together with audience and function.

redbtn When studying a text we first try to identify its form. What type of writing is it? (Is it a letter, an advertisement, a timetable, or a novel?)

redbtn Then we might ask ‘To whom is it addressed?’ [audience] and ‘What is it doing?’ [function].

redbtn When thinking of linguistic or literary form, it’s sometimes useful to think in terms of material shape. For instance, a table is usually a rectangular horizontal surface supported by legs at each corner. That is the form of a table.

redbtn Similarly, a piece of writing which begins with a postal address and the words ‘Dear Sir’, then ends with ‘Yours sincerely’ – is likely to be a letter. This is the form taken by most letters.

redbtn It is possible for one form to contain another or several other forms. For example, a novel may contain a letter or a poem. A sermon may contain an anecdote.

redbtn Most poems have a form, but this varies a great deal. The sonnet is in part defined by its form which is the number of lines and the rhyme scheme.

redbtn Form in speech may be signaled by recognizable phrases, tone of voice, or choice of vocabulary.

redbtn For instance, ‘The train now standing in platform ten…’ would be recognised by most people as the start of a railway announcement.

redbtn Similarly, ‘O Lord, we beseech thee to …’ would easily be identified as the start of a prayer.

redbtn If someone says ‘My grandfather always told me that …’ we know that they are probably going to offer moral advice – a piece of homespun wisdom.

redbtn Beware! The term ‘formal’ has widened in its application to mean ‘serious’ — just as ‘informal’ has also extended its meaning to encompass notions of friendliness.

redbtn For instance, the greeting ‘Hi there!’ might be described by most people as informal. However, because it is part of a recognised verbal ritual, in linguistic terms [strictly speaking] it is ‘formal’ because it has a fixed shape.

redbtn The two terms, ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ therefore need to be used accurately when applied to linguistic or literary analysis.

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© Roy Johnson 2003

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