For teachers

The F-word in the classroom

The word is on the A-level English Language syllabus in all but name: language change, attitudes to language, power, gender, region and taboo are all specification topics, and this is the best example of every one of them. Here is how to use it without ending up in the local paper.

Before you start

Tell the head of department and, ideally, parents. A short note ("we will be studying the history and sociolinguistics of taboo language, including the strongest words") prevents the complaint that ends the unit.
Sixth form only for the word in full. Key Stage 3 and 4 can do minced oaths, the history of "swearing" as oath-taking, and Ofcom's mild and medium categories without the word itself.
Set the ground rule that the word is being studied, not used: it appears in quoted data, not in classroom talk. Students find this restriction clarifying rather than frustrating.
Do not use slurs, and say why: they are not swear words but attacks on people, and they are outside the unit.

Activities that work

Kill the acronym. Ask the class where the word comes from; collect the "Fornication Under Consent of the King" stories; then show them the 1310 court roll and the 1475 cipher on the History page. Discuss why folk etymologies spread. Pairs well with "posh", "golf" and "news", which have the same problem.
The infix test. Give students Massachusetts, fantastic, Cinderella, kangaroo and Tottenham, and ask where the expletive goes. They will all agree, and none will know why. Then give them McCarthy's rule from the Grammar page. It is the fastest demonstration of unconscious linguistic knowledge there is.
Corpus work. The spoken British National Corpus is free online. Have students search the word by speaker age, sex and class and compare their predictions with Robbie Love's findings on the Statistics page. This is directly examinable.
Ofcom's scale. Give students the list of words from the 2016 research (without categories) and ask them to sort it. Compare with Ofcom's ordering and with their own; discuss age and region effects. Then look at what the Broadcasting Code actually says.
The 1960 trial. The prosecution's opening at the Lady Chatterley trial ("is it a book you would wish your wife or your servants to read?") is a gift for a lesson on attitudes, class and change. The transcript is in print.
Press style guides. Compare how the Guardian, The Times, the BBC and the New York Times handle the same quotation. See The press.
Prescriptive or descriptive? Set the site's own Why we shouldn't page against its Why we use it page and ask which is which, and whether a linguist is allowed to have an opinion.

Specification links

AQA English Language (7702) Paper 2: language diversity and change, language discourses, and the directed writing task on attitudes to language. OCR (H470) Component 2: language change and, in Section B, the "language in the media" question, for which the press treatment of the word is ideal. Media Studies specifications cover regulation (Ofcom, the BBFC) directly. Sociology and Psychology A-levels can use the Keele pain research as an example of experimental design and replication.

Reading for students

Melissa Mohr, Holy Sh*t: readable, historical, ideal for a sixth-form library.
Emma Byrne, Swearing Is Good for You: the science, in short chapters.
Benjamin Bergen, What the F: the linguistics, with the best chapter on the infix.
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, chapter 7.
This site's Sources page for the primary research.

Reading for teachers

Jesse Sheidlower's The F-Word is the reference dictionary and the source for almost every date on this site. Timothy Jay's papers are the best account of children's acquisition. Ofcom's research reports are public and short. The BBFC's classification guidelines and Ofcom's Broadcasting Code are the primary documents for regulation questions and are worth having in the classroom in printed form.