Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

244 Forbidden Words
Raising gooseflesh: extra-linguistic evidence
Obscenities . . . are fighting words, gross words, dirty words, words charged with
power; they are hurled like insults, heaped up to contaminate and defile, to incite or
inflame, or just to let off steam. They leap out before we can stop them. They
draw attention, they get us into trouble. The emotion and the obscenity proceed
together, as if fused, overriding cortical inhibitions in a quick, involuntary burst.
(Morris 2000: 174)
We have presented plenty of linguistic evidence for the emotional quality of
taboo expressions. Even across languages they can contaminate other words,
bringing down innocent expressions that just happen to sound similar. Moreover,
taboo senses seem to have a saliency that will dominate and suppress
other senses of a language expression recruited as a euphemism. In this next
section, we examine the psychological, physiological and neurological studies
that all corroborate the fact that forbidden words are more arousing, more
shocking, more memorable and more evocative than all other language
stimuli. 14
In 1957, Charles Osgood and his colleagues outlined a technique, the
‘semantic differential’, for systematically (though subjectively) quantifying
connotative meaning; and the results provide psycholinguistic evidence for
the Allan–Burridge Law of Semantic Change and the X-phemism mill. 15
People were asked to evaluate words and phrases on a series of seven-point
bipolar rating scales, intended to locate a concept in semantic space within
three dimensions of attitude: evaluation (is the word good or bad?); activity
(is the word active or passive?); potency (is the word strong or weak?). The
research confirms what we know from the behaviour of words over time: that
there is a general tendency for any derogatory or unfavourable denotation or
connotation within a language expression to dominate, whatever the context.
A number of experiments measure the emotional impact of words using
techniques such as electrodermal monitoring, which records skin conductance
responses (galvanic skin responses). Research overwhelmingly supports what
every native speaker knows: compared to other words, ‘dirty’ words cause
bigger goosebumps; that is, they evoke stronger skin conductance responses.
16 There has been a lot of research into the effects of arousal on
memory. The findings are always the same: taboo words, are more stimulating
than non-taboo words and we appear to store them differently in our
memory. 17 Using natural conversation, researchers found excellent recognition
memory for the surface structure and content of profane and sexually
suggestive language.
The results showed that those 12 high interactional content sentences with profane and
sexually suggestive language elicited responses quite different from those elicited by
the remaining 44 high interactional content sentences . . . Sentences with off-color