Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

48 Forbidden Words
Zimmerman’s name does not appear on the credits – Bob Dylan’s does; to
make the clause felicitous, it needs qualifying: Robert Zimmerman wrote
‘Blowin’ in the wind’ under his stage name of Bob Dylan. In Britain or
Australia one might say I’ll ring you tomorrow evening, whereas in the
USA one would say I’ll call you tomorrow evening; the verb ring in two
English dialects denotes the same as the verb call does in a third dialect,
namely ‘telephone’. The nouns dandelion and Taraxacum densleonis are also
cross-varietal synonyms: they denote exactly the same species of plant, but
because they have different connotations, they are typically used in different
circumstances. It is one thing to like dandelion wine, but only a pedant or a
comic could claim to drink Taraxacum densleonis wine. In medieval medical
texts the dandelion is orthophemistically referred to as pissabed because of its
diuretic effect. This term continued to be used until modern times, but as early
as 1822 was described in a medical text as the dandelion’s ‘vulgar name’
(OED). How many of us would seriously say These flowers have passed away
rather than These flowers have died? People and pets may pass away but not
flowers. The same female human being could be referred to using any of the
nouns girl, woman, lady, lass, broad, chick, sheila, hen (and many more
cross-varietal synonyms); the connotations of these words differ, and there
are contexts in which one is appropriate while others would be dispreferred
and even offensive, and therefore dysphemistic. Essentially, the reason that
cross-varietal synonyms exist is to cover this kind of range of possibilities
across varieties of the language. Because we define X-phemism in terms of
choices between alternative expressions, we presuppose that each such expression
has at least one synonym.
Normally, the choice between alternatives depends entirely on context. Take
the choice between menstruation and period: in this book, we discuss the
‘menstruation taboo’; to refer to this as the ‘period taboo’ seems inappropriate.
The choice is not always so clear: in an article on the victims of bank hold-ups
and the like in Time Australia (12 September 1988: 24) was the following:
‘A lot of stress starts to happen for those who have been lying on the floor with a gun at
their head,’ says Michelle Mulvihill, a Sydney psychologist. ‘Women lose their
periods; people develop migraines, backaches and symptoms of real anxiety.’
In this context, Mulvihill could just as well have said Women stop menstruating,
although it would have been marginally more formal than ‘Women lose
their periods.’ The comparative informality of the latter is consistent with
Mulvihill’s style of spontaneous speech (as quoted). Furthermore, period
seems to be the most commonly used noun among contemporary British,
Australian and American women: 29 note, however, that this does not, in our
view, make menstruate the dispreferred term. Menstruation is an abstract
noun, whereas period is a concrete noun; hence one can more readily say