Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

198 Forbidden Words
production of adrenalin, getting the heart beating, the blood pressure rising
and the sweat pouring. The German language has a name for it – Angstgeruch
‘fear-smell’. Not least is the smell of sex. In early times, adulterers were
punished by amputation of the nose; it was, of course, a very public advertisement
of the sin, and the nose is symbolic of the penis (and perhaps by
extension, the clitoris); but it also attests to the importance of smell in sexual
arousal. Nowadays, we are preoccupied with washing, douching, depilating
and deodorizing our bodies. We certainly don’t tend to think of the nose as a
sex organ (though, in some people, sexual arousal is accompanied by an itchy
nose). Modern science confirms that smell is one of the most sexy and
provocative of the senses. Sexual arousal in most species is triggered by
olfactory experiences, and humans are no exception. Even when we try to
conceal our natural body odour with fragrant disguises, these serve to enhance
sexual attraction. (Did the marketing gurus deliberately chose the brand name
Viagra because the word supposedly has its roots in a verb meaning ‘to
smell’?) Research shows that women linger longer inside telephone booths
that have been treated with a musky smelling androgen, and favour seats in a
dentist’s waiting room that have been sprayed with male hormones. There is
even a possibility that incest taboos are closely linked with smells. From
puberty on, we are programmed to disregard the sexual attractions of those
who we have grown up with (and therefore those who are most likely to be
related to us). If sexual attraction has partly to do with odour then, suggest the
experts, the block must also have to do with smelling. 49
Science confirms (1) that we prefer the smells of our friends over
strangers; (2) different diets cause people to smell differently; (3) it is a
biological fact that different races have different smells (partly this has to
do with the varying sizes of axillary glands; people of Asian origin, for
example, have smaller or no armpit glands at all and therefore little or
no detectable underarm odour). It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find
that words for disagreeable smells feature prominently in our dysphemistic
repertoires. In these expressions, we refer explicitly to the unpleasant odour,
real or imagined, of those human beings or objects we disapprove of,
despise, dislike or plain hate. They might be described as smelly, rotten,
stinking, foul and so on. All language groups have derogatory expressions
available for other groups that they come in contact with, and
olfactory xenophobia provides the basis for such linguistic taunts. Often,
the expressions invoke the food and diet stereotypically associated with the
groups. For example, in the nineteenth century, the Japanese described
the European traders they came in contact with as bata-kusai (literally
‘stinks of butter’). During the First World War, English soldiers claimed
that the German soldiers lived on and smelled of Sauerkraut (hence the