http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20071008&s=pinker100807
Steven Pinker: Linguistic, historial and sociological aspects of swearing. Many good points in here, e.g. “To hear nigger is to try on, however briefly, the thought that there is something contemptible about African Americans and thus to be complicit in a community that standardized that judgment into a word.”