Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

54 Forbidden Words
are wedded to context, time and place. They are therefore necessarily variable
and malleable, such that no two groups, and perhaps no two individuals and
even no single individual acting on different occasions or under dissimilar
circumstances, will be certain to make the same judgments as to the offensiveness,
politeness, or the X-phemism of a given language expression. The
picture is further complicated by the existence of euphemistic dysphemisms
and dysphemistic euphemisms, even though these occur in quite small
numbers.
Although the X-phemistic value of language expressions is determined by
the particular context in which they are uttered, many are perceived as (and
marked in dictionaries as) intrinsically orthophemistic (faeces), euphemistic
(poo) or dysphemistic (shit). Such default evaluations are motivated by the
middle-class politeness criterion. The MCPC is determined by what would be
considered the polite form when addressing a casual acquaintance of the
opposite sex, in a formal situation, in a middle-class environment. Etiquette
demands that a speaker addressing a public audience should automatically
assume the MCPC; in other words, the language is carefully and consciously
selected, with a respectable mixed-gender middle-class audience in mind.
We explained the meaning of the phrase dirty words and drew attention to
the saliency of obscene terms – and of dysphemism more generally. This
salience demonstrates the suitability of the descriptive euphemism strong
language. We saw examples of pejorization; it usually results from society’s
perception of a word’s tainted denotatum contaminating the word itself. The
degree of contamination perceived in the denotatum ranges on a scale which
has fear, abhorrence, loathing and contempt at one end, and nothing worse
than low social esteem at the other. We reviewed many examples of taboo
terms smothering non-taboo homonyms. This looks like a triumph of the
offensive over the inoffensive, of dysphemism over euphemism, of impoliteness
over politeness; but in fact the tabooed, the offensive, the dysphemistic
and the impolite only seem more powerful forces because each of them
identifies the marked behaviour. By default we are polite, euphemistic,
orthophemistic and inoffensive; and we censor our language use to eschew
tabooed topics. They are censored out as we pursue well-being for ourselves
and for others.
Finally, we saw that one person’s euphemism is another’s dysphemism.
There are alternative points of view in different communities and at different
times; and perhaps occasionally within the mind of a single individual on
different occasions.