Learning To Swear In America

Brimming with humor and one-of-a-kind characters, this end-of-the-world debut novel will grab hold of Andrew Smith and Rainbow Rowell fans. An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Maybe not kill-all-the-dinosaurs bad, but at least kill-everyone-in-California-and-wipe-out-Japan-with-a-tsunami bad. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been recruited to aid NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster. The good news is Yuri knows how to stop the asteroid--his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize if there's ever another Nobel prize awarded. But the trouble is, even though NASA asked for his help, no one there will listen to him. He's seventeen, and they've been studying physics longer than he's been alive. Then he meets (pretty, wild, unpredictable) Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he's not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and live a life worth saving. Also by Katie Kennedy: What Goes Up

An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Maybe not kill-all-the-dinosaurs bad, but at least kill-everyone-in-California-and-wipe-out-Japan-with-a-tsunami bad. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been recruited to aid NASA as they

Brimming with humor and one-of-a-kind characters, this end-of-the-world debut novel will grab hold of Andrew Smith and Rainbow Rowell fans.

In the English language, swearing is essential to effective communication. In this hilarious and illuminating guide, you will learn just how to do it - no f*cking problem. Whether you want to succeed in business, school, or social circles, a strong command of vocabulary is absolutely necessary. Just imagine a stranger to our shores, trying to comprehend the following conversation: John: Mary, would you like to attend the opera this evening? Mary: F*cking-A. should I wear my black dress? John: Why the f*ck not? Mary: F*cked if I know-Oh, f*ck! I just remembered. It got f*cked up in the wash. John: Well, f*ck the opera. Let's stay home and f*ck. Mary: Good f*cking idea. English as a Second F*cking Language (ESF*L) is the perfect way for nonnative speakers to learn the basics of swearing. At the same time, it also offers native speakers a wide variety of twists and new refinements. Page after page, ESF*L provides a smorgasbord of swearing synonyms designed to boost your vocabulary-everything from the conventional d*mn and sh*t to a host of more inventive terms that would make any truck driver blush. And when you're finished reading, our Final F*cking Exam is the perfect test of your swearing skills. You'll be surprised by how much you've learned! “Great f*cking book!” —Stephen King

Rosa and Eddie are among hundreds of teens applying to NASA's mysterious Interworlds Agency. They're not exactly sure what the top-secret program entails, but they know they want in. Rosa has her brilliant parents' legacies to live up to, and Eddie has nowhere else to go--he's certainly not going to stick around and wait for his violent father to get out of jail. Even if they are selected, they have no idea what lies in store. But first they have to make it through round after round of crazy-competitive testing. And then something happens that even NASA's scientists couldn't predict . . . From the author of the acclaimed Learning to Swear in America comes another high-stakes adventure that's absolutely out of this world. Praise for Learning to Swear in America A Summer/Fall 2016 Indies Introduce selection An Indie Next Pick

Who's Swearing Now? represents an investigation of how people actually swear, illustrated by a collection of over 500 spontaneous swearing utterances along with their social and linguistic contexts. The book features a focus on the use of eight swear words: ass, bitch, cunt, damn, dick, fuck, hell, shit and their possible inflections or derivations, e.g., asshole or motherfucker, offering a solution to the controversial issue of defining swear words and swearing by limiting the investigation to the core set of words most common to previous swearing studies. The specific focus results in accurate depictions of contextualized swearing utterances. Precise frequency counts are thus enabled which, along with offensiveness ratings of contextualized and non-contextualized swearing, enable a clarification of The Swearing Paradox, referring to the phenomenon of frequently used swear words also being those which traditionally are judged to be the most offensive. The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who's Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants' individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others' allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who's Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety.

A humorous, trenchant and fascinating examination of how Western culture's taboo words have evolved over the millennia

A New York Times bestseller One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much. Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger. Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.