Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

106 Forbidden Words
viruses, global warming, intrusive surveillance by employers and governments,
diminishing sperm counts, etc. Globalization, rationalization, privatization,
and reorganization go on around us, typically for the benefit of a
handful of the rich and powerful. These activities have left people resentful,
hurting and looking for someone to blame. French linguist Appignanesi gives
an interesting illustration. In an anti-racism demonstration in France in the
early 1990s, one placard read, Un raciste c’est quelqu’un qui se trompe de
colère. The slogan contains a pun that derives from the closeness of the
French words colère ‘anger’ and couleur ‘colour’ – ‘a racist is someone
who has found a mistaken object for anger’ versus ‘a racist is someone who’s
made a mistake about colour’. 40 In Australia, the years during which rightwing
politician Pauline Hanson enjoyed her greatest popularity provide a
glimpse of the horrible consequences of society’s free-floating anxieties
coming to rest on negative feelings towards migrants and Aborigines: ‘they’
displace ‘us’ from jobs; ‘they’ pervert ‘our’ culture; ‘they’ bring in vice,
immorality and terrorism. Disgust with this sort of bigotry produces the need
for a euphemistic vocabulary to create a kind of working tolerance, so that we
can engage each other and discuss sensitive topics.
A large segment of contemporary western society is riven with guilt and
shame for subjugating, enslaving, marginalizing and, in some cases, extinguishing
other peoples. In Australia, as in other countries where aboriginal
peoples were displaced by European immigrants, there is each year a semiofficial
‘National Sorry Day’ where nationals 41 apologize for the treatment of
Aboriginal people, in particular the forced removal of thousands of children
from their families between the 1880s and 1960s. There are no conventionalized
strategies for repentance; no twenty-first-century cutty stools for contrition,
no hairshirts, no armies of chanting flagellants. Instead, we adopt
politically correct attitudes to negotiate the linguistic minefield.
Evidence of evolving taboos
[I]f you were driving in your car, somebody cuts you up in your car, if they shout and
call you a f-ing idiot, or a bloody idiot or whatever, fair enough. If they start putting
your racial background into that, it’s unacceptable. (Interview in Millwood-Hargrave
2000: 20)
The changing nature of taboo will always be reflected in shifts among
preferred terms of opprobrium. The history of foul language in English, for
example, has seen the sweeping transition from religious to secular swearing.
Blasphemy, religious profanity and religious insults have lost their punch; and
the potency of profanity relating to sexual and bodily functions has more
recently diminished. 42 Television programmes frequently include the words
fuck, fuck off and fucking, as well as cunt (although always with a warning).