CULTURAL ANALYSIS

CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times science writer Natalie Angier is the author of four critically acclaimed books, including the best seller Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999). Her most recent, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (2008), provides a guide to the major theories of science. The following article, published in 2005 in the New York Times, uses linguistic and psychological research to try to explain a very common phenomenon: swearing.

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Reading the Genre

Question

1. How does Angier manage to write an article about swearing with so little swearing in it? What effect does this have on you as a reader? Does it increase your “urge to speak the unspeakable”? If so, why?

Question

2. At its simplest, a causal analysis asks why something happens. What claims does Angier make about why we swear? How does she support her claims?

Question

3. Angier uses a range of sources to explore why people swear. List all her sources; then make notes about where each source gets his or her authority and how each source explains the predominance of swearing. Are some sources more persuasive? (See “Find reliable sources” ; Chapter 21, “Critical Thinking,” Chapter 40, “Evaluating Sources,” and Chapter 41, “Annotating Sources”.)

Question

4. In response to Angier’s article, consider a causal analysis of an opposite inclination: Why do people refrain from swearing? What are some of the social, cultural, professional, familial, and personal forces that require people to speak politely? What are some good reasons for clean language? (See Chapter 21, “Critical Thinking”, and Chapter 32, “High, Middle, and Low Style”.)

Question

5. WRITING: Do the media mold the way people speak? Watch a popular television show or listen to a song. Analyze the language of the television characters or that of the song lyrics. Can you make inferences about how these texts might influence audiences to speak similarly — using the same terms, dialects, and styles? Write a short causal analysis.

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