Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Bad language? Jargon, slang, swearing and insult 65
the family member, ‘Can you tell yet whether he has cancer and will he get well?’
(Cassileth and Hamilton 1979: 242)
Such obfuscating terminology unfortunately typifies exchanges between medical
professionals and the bewildered public. In this case, it reflects the
professional’s difficulty in communicating the realities of cancer to the lay
population.
There are times when bewildering jargon is quite deliberate. The linguistic
disguise of criminal jargon conceals the disreputable (see the discussion of
antilanguage below). There are Dutch fishermen who reverse syllables, and also
sometimes words, to disguise their speech so that other fishermen won’t discover
their secrets. Trade jargons like Romani can work as a secret code to conceal
information from customers or any would-be competitors on the outside. 16
Because it is founded on a common interest, the most remarkable characteristic
of a jargon is (as mentioned) its specialized vocabulary and idiom.
While jargons facilitate communication among in-groupers on the one hand,
on the other, they erect communication barriers that keep out-groupers out. It
is, of course, out-groupers who find jargon ‘abounding in uncommon or
unfamiliar words’, and therefore ‘unintelligible or meaningless talk or
writing; gibberish’. 17 If the out-grouper is sufficiently rancorous, s/he might
also conclude that the jargon is ‘debased, outlandish or barbarous’. 18
The linguistic features found in a jargon can start life with a very clear
function, but over time the original motivation becomes obscured and they
turn into self-perpetuating idiosyncrasies. Legalese avoids pronouns to ensure
clear unambiguous identification, as in The Lessor hereby leases to the Lessee
and the Lessee hereby agrees to take from the Lessor the property; but, of
course, there are many occasions where the use of a pronoun would be
completely unambiguous. With time, such features become ritual requirements
of the professional style; mere skeuomorphs. 19
Jargon is a variety of language used among people who have a common
work-related or recreational interest. Its principal function is to serve as an ingroup
language that is an essential tool in precise and economical communication,
using devices not found in other varieties of the language. This
primary function of jargon is far from dysphemistic to in-groupers. For some
jargons, such as legalese or linguisticalese, the in-group is fairly well defined.
For others, such as stock-market reports and games such as bridge, football
and cricket, there is barely an in-group at all, except among professionals. For
language dealing with death, birth notices and recipes, there is even less of a
non-professional in-group – though there is a special vocabulary, and there
are conventional patterns of expression for all of these. The facts are clear:
where in-groupers are associated with a particular trade or profession, they
constitute a well-defined group (sharing similar educational and professional