| A press release promoting the book chimes in, "It's easy to imagine. The jovial Australian calls his new friend, the South American student, a 'bastard'. He means it as a sign of friendship. The South American only understands the literal meaning, which is a grave insult in his language. |
| A knife appears from nowhere and soon someone is lying bleeding on the floor. All because of a simple everyday verbal misunderstanding." This unnecessarily earnest attempt to establish a "need" for the book is comical. |
| Why this fictitious South American""who cannot make out from tone and inflection, or, no doubt, the wide, goofy grin and hearty slap on the back, that his foul-mouthed Australian friend comes in peace""would wish to answer this "grave insult" by thrusting a knife into his friend's gut, instead of treating him to a few choice words of his own, or perhaps punching him in the jaw, is another matter. |
| Chamberlain spends a lot of time in his Foreword elaborating on the sociological, philosophical, even practical (citing the Japanese student who got shot because he didn't know what "Freeze" meant; this, apart from other obvious concerns, is not really a linguistic issue, the protocol of standing very, very still and trying not to make any sudden movements when someone pulls a gun on you is not predicated upon a close understanding of the subtleties of the word "freeze") uses of this book. |
| "Vulgarity won't go away if we ignore it. It is here to stay whether we like it or not. This is why this book on Vulgar English and Sex Slang is needed," he reasons, demonstrating in passing and perhaps unintentionally the need for a book on the merits of cliche-free prose. |
| He talks of Nixon's gutter-mouth, of Clinton's escapades in the Oval Office, he even quotes from Money Train and Cosmopolitan, and the risque advertising of French Connection UK as FCUK is paraded as proof that vulgar slang has seeped through to our lives in such a way that it would be folly, nay, madness to not acquaint yourself with every facet of it. |
| The treatment of this book as a textbook, kind of like Algebra for Dummies or What's really inside your Lymphatic System? is misleading and misguided. Chamberlain would have done far better to introduce this book as what it is: a wholly frivolous entertainment, that is, unless you're an eleven-year-old boy who wants to show off to his friends at school. |
| It starts off simply enough, with a section on "Taking the Lord's Name in Vain", with pieces on alternative uses of the word "God", namely, "My God!", "Oh God!", "Oh my God!", "God almighty!", "Good God!", "Honest to God", "As God is my witness", "By God!", "For God's sake", "God help us!", "God knows", and so on. |
| Now that you have an idea of exactly how much free time this man has on his hands, you can guess how the rest of the book reads. |
| Chamberlain has somehow managed to find synonyms for every bodily secretion you can think of; for parts of the body that six-year-old girls giggle about in playgrounds; and devotes a whole chapter to the various uses of the F-word, in its incarnations as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, a verb, a gruff reprimand, an anguished howl, a cheery felicitation, and a puzzled query. |
| To his credit, Chamberlain has really put himself out to define phrases that mean exactly the same thing in different ways, for example, "Oh my God!: We use this phrase to express many different types of emotion. |
| It expresses very strong emotion." This, of course, is wholly different from "My God!", which we apparently only use when we feel "awed by something", or to "express a kind of agony". |
| If you have vast amounts of spare time though, this book can inform in various ways, not just about the kind of words kids are using nowadays, but also in its helpful explanations of phrases used by your ageing grandmother ("Lordy! Lordy me!", "Jiminy Cricket!"), slang from across the British Isles ("Begorrah!", "eejit" and "bejazus" being the more polite Irish ones) and even from across the Atlantic (none of which I can quote in a respectable financial daily). |
| One of the most interesting parts of the book""it is a pity Chamberlain didn't concentrate on more""is the history of some of the more popular words, when they first started to be used in the vernacular, and theories about their origin (again, examples are impossible to give here). |
| All in all, if you take this book for what it is""fun, if completely pointless""you won't be disappointed. If, however, you take it as a serious commentary on contemporary linguistics, you're in for a let-down. |
| And as for foreign speakers, a book about some of the more baffling idioms in the English language (such as when someone says that he has been pounding the pavement looking for a job, or that he has inadvertently put his foot in his mouth) would probably be more helpful than a tutorial in how to respond when cheerily called a bastard. |
| Vulgar English & Sex Slang |
| Jonathan Chamberlain Long Island Press Price: $24.50, Pages: 352 |
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