Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

The language of political correctness 105
with fuck, but that did not save them. And although country shows no sign of
falling to the power of the C-word, coney ‘rabbit’ has bitten the dust.
A response to taboo?
Societies differ with respect to the degree of tolerance shown towards any sort
of taboo-defying behaviour. Tolerance depends on their current values and
belief systems. The topics placed under taboo will change over the centuries,
too. Contemporary English-speaking society has evolved new taboos on
gender, sexuality, disability, religion, race and ethnicity. No longer is the
race or ethnicity of criminals reported in the press. When this taboo was
recently violated in reporting the ‘Sydney gang rapes’, there was an uproar.
There is a new apprehensiveness and shunning of anything that may be
interpreted as discriminatory or pejorative. The push for equal opportunity
has given rise to legally enforceable rights to fairness, sensitivity and tolerance.
Laws against profanity, blasphemy and (sexual) obscenity have relaxed
and been replaced in heinousness by sanctions against -IST language.
Robert Hughes described PC language as a ‘linguistic Lourdes, where evil
and misfortune are dispelled by a dip in the waters of euphemism’. 37 Is that all
it is? Political correctness gets us to focus on the claims of different groups; it
prescribes and proscribes public language for ethnicity, race, gender, sexual
preference, appearance, religion, (dis)ability and so on. It supposedly ensures
a fair go for all; but mixed in with it is a twist of fear and anxiety. The
practical problems of maintaining dialogue in today’s diverse democratic
societies have given language a new volatility. One of the most dramatic
outcomes of globalization is the massive flow of business travellers, tourists,
refugees and migrants. This has produced an intermingling of people and
cultures on an unprecedented scale that exposes us to other people’s parochialisms
and expectations of civility and religion, which can differ strikingly
from our own. How do you engage everyone equally in discussion when you
don’t have a clue about their culture or their views on life? Especially when
we are not entitled to expect that the people we insult and demean will pretend
not to be insulted and demeaned. 38 Social commentator Phillip Adams is right
when he says we live in times of increasing need for niceness. 39 In the west,
diversity is sacrosanct, but often at odds with our responses to difference and
non-conformity. Sometimes, difference is distasteful; it makes us angry,
fearful, insecure and vulnerable. What most people want, it seems, is the
comfort of the familiar.
Difference is also a scapegoat when polity and economics go wrong. There
is no doubt, we are living in times of high anxiety and there is a lot for people
to be frightened about. There is a compendium of scientific and technological
horrors: weapons of mass destruction, holes in the ozone layer, vicious