The Lexicographer's Rules

The publication of Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature means he’s been showing up all over the place as the author of popular articles on language. The latest one to come across my inbox (and I see them all, every one, as long as they’re online) is What the F***? from the New Republic. It’s a light overview of cursing, swearing, and obscenity. Most of its major points are familiar, many of is quotes are well-used, and the end result is a big “Huh. How about that?” Still, I recommend it as an introduction to the subjecct.

Then, if you really want to sink your teeth into something substantial, you’ll take a gander at Geoffrey Hughes’s Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, And Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World. I know it’s expensive, but I’ve been reading it in pieces over the last couple of weeks and find its synthesis of what we know about all facets of the darker side of language to be exceedingly thorough. I believe it would be very palatable to the layperson.

As an alternative, you could try Hughes’s Swearing, a paperback published in 1998. I have not read it but if the scholarship there is anything like that in his encyclopedia, then it’s sure to be a winner. I see it going for as little as $7.50 at Amazon.

Full disclosure: I am thanked in the front of Hughes’s encyclopedia and he gave me a copy for free.

Elizabeth Hand reviews David Plante’s book ABC for the Washington Post. She describes it as an eccentric contemporary folk tale about a grief-bound pack of new acquaintances compulsively in search of the origins of the alphabet. “What is an alphabet, really, but a means of expressing what is inexpressible: the sum of all human history and experience and longing? ‘They were aware of this, aware of every single object as an icon of some greater meaning than each object had in itself.’”

On the web site for our radio show A Way with Words, my co-host and I are giving away a copy of Jeff Prucher’s book, The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. All you have to do is invent three collective nouns. Make them wow!

In New West, Jenny Shank has a thorough and compelling review of How I Learned English/Como aprendí inglés, a collection of stories by well-known American Latinos who learned English as a second language.

A friend’s email reminds me that her husband, Jim Gorant, has a new book out: Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die. Jim’s a senior editor for Sports Illustrated and a funny guy who seems to me to be well poised to capture that sliver of the Venn diagram where readers and sports freaks overlap.

Jim will be one of several people reading from his work at the Varsity Letters reading series July 5 at the bar Happy Ending, 302 Broome St., New York City.

Gelf Magazine has an interview with Jim, there’s a nice review of the book in the Rocky Mountain News, and Jim’s also blogging about the book.

Check out his powers of observation as he writes about the Kentucky Derby.

And look how close he and David Sabino are to coming up with sabrmetrics for golf.