Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Sweet talking and offensive language 47
My dear Reggie:
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from
Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the
light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish
about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I proposed to
share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that
God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called
Mustapha Kunt.
We all feel that Reggie, now and then, especially when spring is upon us, but few
of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.
Cross-varietal synonyms and X-phemisms
I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now . . . It’s stone
dead . . .’E’s bleedin’ demised! . . .’E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has
ceased to be! ’E’s expired and gone to meet ’is maker! ’E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ’e
rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ’im to the perch ’e’d be pushing up the daisies! ’Is
metabolic processes are now ’istory! ’E’s off the twig! ’E’s kicked the bucket, ’e’s
shuffled off ’is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir
invisible!! He’s fuckin’ snuffed it! . . . THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!! (Monty Python)
The notion that different varieties of a language use different terms, with the
same or substantially the same denotation, has been called cross-varietal
synonymy.
Therefore you clown, abandon – which is in the vulgar ‘leave’ – the society – which in
the boorish is ‘company’ – of this female – which in the common is ‘woman’. Which
together is: abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest! Or, to thy
better understanding, diest! Or, to wit, I kill thee! Make thee away! Translate thy life
into death! (Touchstone in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, V.i.52)
X-phemisms are cross-varietal synonyms because an X-phemism, such as
shit, means the same as another expression, in this case the orthophemism
faeces and the euphemism poo; the three are typically used in different
contexts, perhaps in different varieties or dialects of the language. Crossvarietal
synonyms share the same denotation but differ in connotation. The
connotations arise from encyclopaedic knowledge about the denotation and
also from experience, beliefs and prejudices about the contexts in which the
expression is typically used.
For instance, the name Bob Dylan identifies the same person that bears the
name Robert Zimmerman, but the names are used differently. To say Robert
Zimmerman wrote ‘Blowin’ in the wind’ is misleading because Robert