Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

212 Forbidden Words
the Kwaio, an Austronesian people, but the attitudes revealed there are similar
to those of early Europe. The superstition attached to disease was great and
extremely primitive in nature. Simply uttering the name of a disease could
summon it; hence, the most dreaded of diseases went by a number of different
names. Many were auspicious, obviously aimed at placating unseen malevolent
powers.
Beliefs in verbal sorcery might have waned, but there is plenty of evidence
for the powerful magic of names in contemporary society, particularly when it
comes to the vocabulary of disease. Few today would allow that our gut
reactions have any scientific basis; yet expressions such as scared to death or
worried sick are commonplace in our everyday vocabulary. Even those who
acknowledge hocus-pocus or make-believe in such ritual observances may
avoid tempting fate by walking under ladders, sleeping in hotel rooms
numbered 13, 25 or naming deadly diseases.
Attaching a diagnostic label to someone’s suffering is a two-edged sword.
There is an enormous sense of relief when an ailment is identified: its name
legitimizes one’s status as a patient 26 and puts one back in control by allowing
for a plan of treatment and a prognosis. The label itself can hasten the rate of
recovery. On the negative side, there is plenty of evidence that naming a
disease can be enough to induce the apposite physical symptoms. 27 For
example, after RSI (repetitive strain injury, tenosynovitis) received a lot of
media attention in Australia during the 1980s, the number of cases appeared
to mushroom, and astonishingly large numbers of people were suddenly
suffering from an affliction which almost no member of the lay public had
heard of ten years before. We assume that the overwhelming majority of those
who took sick leave and early retirement did have a genuine complaint, given
prevailing beliefs; but what is puzzling is why one had not heard of RSI
before, and why it did not have such a large incidence in countries where it
was given little or no media attention. The conclusion must be that when the
condition was virtually unknown, people suffering from what would later be
known as RSI attributed it to arthritis, or dismissed it as a non-specific ache or
pain. Once the condition is known, people are found to have it. 28 It used to be
said that, in so-called ‘primitive’ societies, people would become ill and die
from spells and curses, or if the witch-doctor pointed the bone at them: a lot of
baloney, you say? It looks to us as though you can persuade some people that
they have a disease simply by talking about it. The nocebo (Latin ‘I will
harm’) phenomenon is the power of suggestion or belief to cause the symptoms
of ill health; and words, it seems, can be potent nocebos. Medical
students are notorious for discovering in themselves the symptoms of whatever
disease they happen to be studying. Conversely, words can have a
curative force; the medical profession admits that the placebo effect can be
powerful; many cited cancer cures, for instance, have no rational explanation.