Michael Adams can pinpoint the exact moment profanity moved into the mainstream, and it’s with the launch of a 1978 gross-out movie. “Since Animal House, we’re all a little vulgar,” writes this American professor of English language and literature in his eulogy to expletives.

The John Landis frat comedy is just one of many enjoyable cultural references that pepper In Praise of Profanity, but even Adams’s jaw drops at the 7,037 cusses in 85 episodes of The Sopranos. He delves into the mobster series in minute detail to underline his point that swearing isn’t usually a literal expression – “if you prefer [to exclaim] shit, there isn’t a whiff of excrement in the air” – but the sound of anger, intimacy or even playfulness.

But Adams’s argument that profanity, far from being the preserve of the lazy or uneducated, is actually the best kind of impulsive speech, feels over-rehearsed. And though some might find the f- and c-bombs exploding all over his book amusing, thrilling or even subversive, you end up cursing this historical linguist’s rather obvious enjoyment in trying to shock with his normalisation of “bad” language.

In Praise of Profanity is published by OUP (£11.99). Click here to buy it for £9.83