Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

234 Forbidden Words
whisper to their physicians or assert in advance directives. The widespread call for
physician-assisted suicide is not simply the result of documented medical failures in
pain management, failures that come despite an abundance of powerful opioids that
guarantee almost no patient should die in pain. It is a logical extension of the
biomedical model. When the biomedical ‘continuous repair’ job inevitably fails, many
people reasonably (but incorrectly) suppose that doctors have nothing left to offer
except one last drug or high-tech mechanism that will quickly and painlessly dispatch
us. (Morris 2000: 16)
The argument often advanced for euthanasia is that animals in great pain are
regularly put down or put to sleep (euphemisms), and that humans should
likewise be allowed to die with dignity (euphemism). As with abortion before
legalization, a certain amount of covert euthanasia is practised and a blind eye
turned when medical treatment is withheld from severely disabled or traumatized
patients, or very infirm persons make end-of-life decisions, such as
requesting to be included on the NFR (not for resuscitation) list. Many
religious people and the right-to-life movement believe euthanasia to be
morally wrong; and many non-religious voters and medical professionals
are worried by possible abuses of the system or legal actions taken when
such abuse is perceived, so legislators will not risk legalizing it. It has been
legalized (under severe constraints) in the Netherlands, and it was very briefly
legal in the Northern Territory of Australia, but before ever being practised,
the law was overturned by Australia’s Federal Government.
Censoring the language for disease, death and killing
In this chapter, we have reviewed some of the taboos and X-phemisms that
occur from the censoring of vocabulary used when speaking about matters of
disease, death and killing. As we have seen elsewhere in this book, when
human beings use figurative language and/or verbal play in generating
X-phemisms, they are responding to their perceptions of and conceptions
about the denotata; for the most part, these involve fear or distaste.
In most societies, past and present, references to diseases are censored: they
are spoken of euphemistically. It might be because they are thought to result
from the actions of a malevolent spirit or person, or in consequence of their
connection with death, or just because of their intrinsic unpleasantness.
A mild or indirect term for a disease will generally serve to make speaking
about the harsh reality more tolerable. Politeness conventions might also
require that we censor direct reference to an indecorous and embarrassing
complaint, and instead hint. Yet, on other occasions, we may want to play
down an illness for the simple reason of not wanting to appear to complain:
talking about one’s health problems has the reputation for being boring to
others.