Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

34 Forbidden Words
Figure 2.1. Distinguishing X-phemisms.
In the following extract from the sixteenth-century writer Aretino, Antonia
is objecting that Nanna is using too many euphemisms when comparing the
lifestyles of a nun, a wife and a courtesan; it is an appeal against the use of
euphemism, but is it a call for orthophemism?
I meant to tell you and then I forgot: speak plainly and say ‘ass’ [cul(o)], ‘prick’
[cazzo], ‘cunt’ [potta] and ‘fuck’ [fottere] if you want anyone other than scholars from
the Sapienza Capranica to understand you. You with your ‘rope in the ring’, ‘obelisk in
the Colosseum’, ‘leek in the garden’, ‘key in the lock’, ‘bolt in the door’, ‘pestle in the
mortar’, ‘nightingale in the nest’, ‘tree in the ditch’, ‘syringe in the flap-valve’, ‘sword
in the scabbard’; not to mention ‘the stake’, ‘the crozier’, ‘the parsnip’, ‘the little
monkey’, ‘her thing’, ‘his thing’, ‘the apples’, ‘leaves of the missal’, ‘the fact’, ‘the
thanks-be-to-God’, ‘that thing’, ‘that affair’, ‘that big news’, ‘the handle’, ‘the arrow’,
‘the carrot’, ‘the root’ and the shit that you don’t want to say straight out, so you go
tiptoeing round it. So say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no;
otherwise, keep it to yourself. (Pietro Aretino, ‘Ragionamento della Nanna e della
Antonia’, 1534; quoted in Frantz 1989: 74f)
It depends on the context of use whether terms such as arse/ass, prick, cunt
and fuck are orthophemistic or dysphemistic. A few people find the appearance
of such terms in a scholarly piece of work to be dysphemistic; most do
not. What is unspeakable for one is not necessarily inexcusable for another.
The middle-class politeness criterion (MCPC)
Despite the implication that particular expressions are not necessarily euphemistic
or dysphemistic in all contexts, it would ignore reality to pretend that
ordinary people do not treat them that way – for instance, as terms for a toilet,
loo and bathroom are widely judged euphemistic, whereas shithouse is not.
What seems to be in operation is a middle-class politeness criterion (MCPC):