Pinker’s book provides an illuminating discussion of swearing, and how and why we do it. As he explains, it is not an accident that swear words in English and many other languages deal with aspects of life we prefer not to dwell upon: diseases and the bodily effluvia that carry them, sexual depravity, and fears of threatening supernatural forces. (Stuff of Thought, pp. 339-348). Swear words are meant to create such feelings of unpleasantness. And they are so effective at producing an emotional charge, that people sometimes use them not to evoke images or thoughts of their scatological or sexual meaning (for example) but simply to “ping people’s emotion buttons” and “arouse the listener’s attention". Some evidence of this effectiveness can be found not only in how many of us feel upon hearing them, but also in brain scans, which show that when people hear a taboo word, there is an increase in metabolic activity within the amygdala, (p. 332), which is associated with the generation of anxiety, anger, and other emotions.