Swear words are just like "please" and "try" in this respect; only, instead of softening the edges of a request or statement, these make it sound rougher and more aggressive. If I say, "Someone stole my red guitar," all I'm saying is that someone stole my guitar, and that the guitar was red. But if I say "Someone stole my damn guitar," I am not saying that my guitar was stolen and that it was damned (even if I'm in a death-metal band). Instead, I'm saying that someone stole my guitar and that I'm pissed off about it.

There are many ways that we can express our identities. We can alter the way we look, the things we're interested in, the way we dress. But one thing we're pretty much stuck with is our voice. Sure the words coming from our mouths can be tailored to a situation or a desired persona, but the actual sound of our voice is difficult to change. For writer David Thorpe, the sound of his own voice always had him contemplating the same question: "Do I sound gay?" However, his wasn't simply an inquisitive statement; it was an expression of dissatisfaction that he had a gay voice, even though he was openly gay. Using his own struggle with his identity as the common thread, he consults linguists who illuminate the mechanical traits of gay speech and attribute this common characteristic to a strong feminine influence in the early lives of gay men.

Parents face a variety of choices when choosing how to rear their child, and for bilingual parents choosing a language can be a daunting but worthwhile task with myriad benefits. The traditional belief was that learning a second language would hinder the human brain, but more recently researchers believe that the bilingual ability will strengthen the brain and improve focus,

It has been nearly 20 years since a landmark education study found that by age 3, children from low-income families have heard 30 million fewer words than more affluent children, putting them at an educational disadvantage before they even began school. Now, a growing body of research is challenging the notion that merely exposing poor children to more language is enough to overcome the deficits they face. The quality of the communication between children and their parents and caregivers, the researchers say, is of much greater importance than the number of words a child hears.