Download or read book Country Matters: A Personal History of Swear Words written by Richard Crasta and published by Invisible Man Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this humorous and playful short book arguing against censorship of language and recounting his own growth from repressed prude to libertarian, freewheeling slinger of juicy-Lucy words, the author suggests that sexual words, slang, and wordplay are “to be celebrated as joyous, vital, funny, juicy, the very essence of life. Man is a neutered animal without them; polite language is effete, artificial, and an unspoken admission of one’s total and abject submission to the System." Still, in the large and growing-ever-larger vocabulary of naughty words, there is a hierarchy, which is explained with humor and wordplay in the book's central essay, "What Do You Call It? A Gentleman's Opinionated Guide to the Basic Words." The only truly “bad” words, the author says, are monstrosities like “birthing,” “interfacing,” and “modalities.” Around 8,000 words. (This has two short chapters extra compared to the edition of the book under a different title at a different store.) Keywords: linguistics, sociology, language, sexual terms, sexual slang, sexual humor, wordplay and double entendres; censorship; political correctness.