Leith on language
Sam Leith
The joy of $#*@(!^?
I was in Glasgow the other day, to talk about my book, Write to the Point, at the Aye Write literary festival. The event, roughly, was billed as “Good Language vs Bad Language.” I shared the stage with the cognitive scientist Emma Byrne, who recently published Swearing Is Good For You. Obviously, she stole the show. (The ******* ****.) Who wants to hear my thoughts about the possessive apostrophe when you can hear Emma tell you how effing and blinding like the proverbial sailor on shore leave can increase your resistance to pain?
She recounted, for instance, the story of the so-called iced-water experiment—which found that people can spend one and a half times as long with their hands immersed in freezing water if they’re allowed to swear while they’re doing it. (A televised version of this, featuring Brian Blessed and his extensive repertoire of profanity, was deemed entertaining but not scientific. You’re supposed to stick to one swear word.)