the English language have only recently found their way into standard dictionaries. But Ruth Wajnrb approaches the subject head on, challenging her readers to set shocks and sniggers aside and to examine it like any other kind of communication. The result is a fascinating, and often very funny, book that will quickly persuade her readers that bad language is possibly even more interesting than good. We use swear-words in a whole range of contexts, not just to abuse others, but to express irritation, surprise, even affection, or simply to intensify an otherwise commonplace observation. Historically, as one expression has lost its taboo quality it has been replaced by others and this is a continuing process; blasphemy, for example, has largely lost its power to shock over the past century, and the lexicon of swearing is now reduced to core of about a dozen 'taboo' words of which two, 'fuck' and 'shit', have proved to be almost infinitely adaptable, both grammatically and semantically. Ruth Wajnryb shows us that swearing is common to every time and every language - even those, like Japanese, which officially have no lexicon of bad language. It is, however, notoriously difficult to translate, foreign oaths often appear more comic than offensive when rendered into English. By the same token, as she points out, non-native speakers are well advised to keep their language clean until they fully understand the subtle social conventions and the complex, but unwritten, grammatical rules that govern our use of swear words.

Dr Ruth Wajnrb is a first-generation Australian, born of Polish-Jewish parents, who has a degree in English Literature and a Masters in Applied Linguistics. She has written over 300 articles and nine previous books. She is the director of a consultancy providing advice on language and communications