Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Bad language? Jargon, slang, swearing and insult 59
claim that ordinary non-specialist language cannot adequately capture all the
precision that ‘linguisticalese’ (the jargon of linguistics) can. Outside the
discipline of linguistics, there already exists an extensive non-technical
vocabulary used by the lay public when talking about language; unfortunately,
the terminology is often too imprecise to be of real use within the
discipline of linguistics. Linguists are therefore faced with having to narrow
and redefine everyday terms like sentence, word, syllable and grammar, as
well as add a number of new terms to overcome imprecision and to
distinguish things that non-linguists ignore and that, in consequence, ordinary
language lacks terms for. For example, linguists find the term word
insufficiently precise for all their purposes, and so occasionally need to
distinguish between grammatical, orthographic and phonological words, as
well as introducing new terms like lex, lexeme, morph and morpheme to
capture additional distinctions. Because one mark of a linguist is control of
linguisticalese, to achieve its purpose, the following quote has to use jargon
(bolded):
Syntagmatic relations are characteristically based on the co-occurrence of elements
in the speech chain, while paradigmatic oppositions only obtain within the total
system, all elements of each network of relations but one being absent from the
actual string of phonemes or words through which langue manifests itself in parole.
(Atkinson et al. 1988: 106)
The text (which is rendered incomprehensible to many readers by being taken
out of context) can only be paraphrased for a non-specialist by extensive and
discombobulating circumlocution involving a partial account of Saussure’s
linguistic theory. 5 If this were quantum mechanics and not linguistics, no one
would question the right to furnish the discipline with a technical vocabulary
all of its own. But to the non-linguist the jargon of linguistics is perceived as
intellectual hocus-pocus, and all the more dysphemistic precisely because it
seems to deal with a familiar domain.
Here is an early complaint about (French) legalese:
Why is it that our tongue, so simple for other purposes, becomes obscure and unintelligible
in wills and contracts. (Montaigne 1948 [1580])
There are many distinguishing aspects of legal vocabulary. One is the preponderance
of borrowings from Latin and French; e.g. de novo ‘from the
beginning, anew’; ex aequo et bono ‘on the basis of what is fair and good’;
mens rea ‘guilty mind’; chose in action ‘incorporeal personal property right
enforceable in court of law’; voir dire ‘to say truly’. Another is the practice of
stringing together two or three synonyms as doublets or triplets: act and deed;
goods and chattels; in my stead and place; cease and desist; remise, release
and forever discharge; rest, residue and remainder.