Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

188 Forbidden Words
folklore, literature and racist jokes. Cartoons of painted natives stewing their
victims (missionaries or big game hunters with pith helmets intact) in large
pots over open fires persisted into the 1960s. Accounts of cannibalism are
generally believed to be bogus, with the exception of desperate survival
stories such as the Andes air crash of 1972, or extreme cases of individual
cannibal killers like Dahmer and more recently Amin Meiwes (who killed and
ate parts of Bernd Jürgen Brandes after posting an advertisement on the
Internet for a well-built man for slaughter). But perhaps the behaviour is also
so repellent to us as to be unimaginable – to such an extent, in fact, that in
places like Britain and Australia, acts of cannibalism are not technically
illegal. (The Meiwes case was particularly problematic for German law since
Brandes had actually volunteered himself to be killed and butchered for the
dinner table.) It is certainly striking that, despite abhorrence of this practice,
English lacks euphemisms for ‘people eaters’.
From anthropological and archaeological evidence, it is clear that cannibalism
comes in a wide variety of different forms and is just one of the many
kinds of behaviour that may or may not be practised by human groups. Most
of us would presumably baulk at placenta-eating; but in 1998, UK Channel
4’s cooking series TV Dinners did feature placenta paté on one of its
programmes. 31 Yet if we think about it, there are a lot of aspects to modern
life that smack of cannibalism. Human tissue (including placenta) is used in
prescription medicines. Organ transplants and blood transfusions are now
standard medical practice. Moreover, many of us chew our finger nails and
surrounding skin (onychophagia), plunge cut fingers into our mouths, and
swallow nasal mucus. Some people regularly drink their own urine and a very
few eat their own stools. The Christian doctrine of transubstantiation is a type
of ritual cannibalism whereby the wine and bread consumed is believed to
become the blood and flesh of Christ. Certainly, as we will later explore, the
resemblances between our sexual activities and eating are striking and, not
surprisingly, metaphorical cannibalism features large in the language of sex.
Cannibalism in some form or other is more commonplace than we like to
think.
Gastronomic xenophobia
Given the symbolic values we attach to foodstuffs and foodways, it is not
surprising to find that these have a significant role to play in the language of
nationalism and race. Names of foods are often flavoured with old and new
prejudices. Indeed, a number of the gastronomic red herrings mentioned
earlier are derogatory to other races. The cheese dish called Welsh rabbit is
a nice example of linguistic xenophobia. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, Welsh was used for anything of an inferior grade: a Welsh