Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

40 Forbidden Words
were to inform close family that their loved one had croaked during the night,
it would normally be inappropriate, insensitive, unprofessional and tabooed;
in short, dysphemistic. Yet, given another context with a different set of
interlocutors (e.g. among fatality inured hospital staff), the same expression
could just as well be described as cheerfully euphemistic. The flippant
connotations of these expressions distract from the sadness of the situation
and can be preferred. Flippancy toward what is feared is a means of coming to
terms with fear by downgrading it. Other examples of dysphemistic euphemisms
are terms for menstruation such as have the curse, woman’s complaint,
be feeling that way, off the roof, flying the red flag and surfing the red wave.
They are simple dysphemisms if a man is whingeing about the sexual
unreceptiveness of his female partner, or perhaps when a woman is complaining
about one or another incommoding effect of riding the red rag. 12 From
another point of view, terms like ride the red wave, have my rags and
bleeding like a stuck pig are dysphemistic to some because they are explicit
and vulgar.
The dirt on dirty words
When you speak of the anus, you call it by a name [‘ring’] that is not its own; why not
rather call it by its own [viz. culus]? If it is indecent, do not use even the substituted
name; if not, you had better call it by its own. (Cicero 1959, Epistulae ad Familiares
IX, xxii)
Who ever stubbed his toe in the dark and cried out, ‘Oh, faeces!’? (Adams 1985: 45)
The phrase taboo language commonly refers to language that is a breach of
etiquette because it contains so-called ‘dirty words’. But words are sounds
heard, sequences of symbols on a page, abstract language constituents: how
can they count as dirty? The description derives from a persistent belief that
the form of an expression somehow communicates the essential nature of
whatever is being referred to. As Frazer wrote, ‘the link between a name and
the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal
association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two’. 13 This
view persists among the wider community, despite it being generally accepted
by most scholars since Aristotle (384–322 BCE) 14 that there is no causal
relationship between the form of a word and its meaning. Otherwise, why is a
canine animal called dog in English, chien in French, Hund in German, pies in
Polish, ájá in Yoruba, kare in Hausa, mbwa in Swahili, and innumerable other
names in yet other languages? There are no rational grounds to accept that a
‘dirty word’ like shit should be treated in the same way as we treat faecal
matter. But we can admit that the connotations of taboo terms are contaminated
by the taboo topics which they denote. We conclude that the sobriquet