"Swearing in English uses the spoken section of the British National Corpus to establish how swearing is used, and to explore the associations between bad language and gender, social class and age. The book goes on to consider why bad language is a major locus of variation in English and investigates the historical origins of modern attitudes to bad language. The effects that centuries of censorious attitudes to swearing have had on bad language are examined, as are the social processes that have brought about the associations between swearing and a number of sociolinguistic variables." "Drawing on a variety of methodologies, including historical research and corpus linguistics, and a range of data such as corpora, dramatic texts, early modern newsbooks and television programmes, Tony McEnery takes a socio-historical approach to discourses about bad language in English. Moral panic theory and Bourdieu's theory of distinction are also utilised to show how attitudes to bad language have been established over time by groups seeking to use an absence of swearing in their speech as a token of moral, economic and political power. This book provides an explanation, not simply a description, of how modern attitudes to bad language have come about."--BOOK JACKET.