Linguistic Taboo Revisited

Andrea Pizarro Pedraza

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110580518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Linguistic taboo has been relegated for a long time to a peripheral position within Linguistics, due to its social stigmatization and inherent linguistic complexity. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in revisiting the phenomenon, especially from cognitive frameworks. This volume is the first collection of papers dealing with linguistic taboo from that perspective.

The volume gathers 15 chapters, which provide novel insights into a broad range of taboo phenomena (euphemism, dysphemism, swearing, political correctness, coprolalia, etc.) from the fields of sexuality, diseases, death, war, ageing or religion. With a special focus on lexical semantics, the authors in the volume work within Cognitive Linguistics frameworks such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, cultural conceptualization or cognitive sociolinguistics, but also at the interface of pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, cognitive science or psychiatry.

This volume provides theoretical reflections and case studies based on new methods and data from varied languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gik?y? and Egyptian Arabic). As such, it moves towards a new generation of linguistic taboo studies.

Miguel Casas Gómez

1Lexicon, discourse and cognition: terminological delimitations in the conceptualizations of linguistic taboo

Abstract: This theoretical paper has two basic aims: 1) to make a terminological revision both of concepts such as taboo, interdiction, euphemism, dysphemism, euphemistic/dysphemistic substitute, euphemistic/dysphemistic use, generally incorrectly used in lexical research on the subject, as well as of others used in more recent works in the pragmatic-discursive and cognitive field (orthophemism, X-phemism, quasi-euphemism – quasi-dysphemism and, above all, word taboo and concept taboo or conceptual interdiction); and 2) to establish the evolution of terminological-conceptual delimitations carried out in the field of interdiction, from lexical and pragmatic-discursive perspectives to the new dimensions of the cognitivist paradigm.

Key words: lexicon, discourse, cognition, taboo, euphemism, dysphemism, euphemistic/dysphemistic substitute, euphemistic/dysphemistic use, orthophemism, X-phemism, word taboo, conceptual interdiction, quasi-euphemism, quasi-dysphemism.

1Introduction

Whenever we deal with problems pertaining to interdiction and taboo we can either ratify or reconsider some of the formulations proposed in our doctoral thesis (Casas Gómez 1986) and related publications, in the framework of a lexical and pragmatic vision of the phenomenon, such as proposing a more up-to-date perspective of interdiction in line with the communicative and cognitive sphere, as we have done in more recent works.

In the different theoretical approaches to linguistic taboo, we have discovered the existence of numerous confusions among the diverse notions encompassed by this phenomenon. Most of them, very widespread in traditional research, arise from an exclusively lexical vision of the phenomenon and, above all, from a narrow concept of euphemism, limited to the lexical sphere and to a substitutive mechanism. In fact, the euphemism, wrongly defined as a lexical substitute, is not always a substitute, nor does it function only at this linguistic level and neither should it be identified with a substitution process.

This study, of a theoretical and partly historiographical nature, has two main aims: 1) to revise those concepts arising from pragmatic-discursive and cognitivist approaches, such as orthophemism, X-phemism, quasi-euphemism – quasi-dysphemism, and, above all, the difference between word taboo and concept taboo, or, more precisely, conceptual interdiction; and 2) to account for an evolution in the development of the epistemological delimitations made in this field, from structuralist and pragmatic-discursive lexical perspectives to the recent dimensions of the cognitivist paradigm, which explain the change from the traditional concept of euphemism as a lexical substitute to euphemism as a cognitive process of the conceptualization of a forbidden reality.

2Terminological-conceptual clarifications from a lexical standpoint

In a previous paper (Casas Gómez 2005), we carried out a critical revision of the concepts and terms included in this first section. Of all these, for the purposes of this study, we would like to return both to the distinction between taboo and interdiction, as a starting point for some reflections on the subject of euphemism from a cognitivist standpoint, and to the identification between euphemism as a process and substitute as a result.

In accordance with the second aim of this work, different authors have observed that euphemism is frequently identified with euphemistic substitute and that this consists simply of using the former to indicate the term that is used to replace the forbidden word and not the substitution itself, or, more exactly, the linguistic expression itself. This misunderstanding is seen clearly in traditional linguistic definitions or those within the framework of semantic structuralism, such as those by Ullmann (1964: 205), who described it as a “harmless substitute”; Baldinger (1970: 223), who considered that “a través del eufemismo se hace abstracción de la función de síntoma o de señal implicada por la palabra que es reemplazada por el eufemismo” [through euphemism an abstraction is made of the symptom or the signal implied by the word that is replaced by it]; Lamíquiz (1974: 415), who regarded euphemism as the “sustituto léxico que siempre ge‑ neraliza quitando semas o dando sólo el género próximo” [lexical substitute that always generalises, eliminating semes or giving only the generic term]; or Senabre (1971), who, at the time, went deeper and determined the linguistic concept of euphemism (Casas Gómez 1993 and 1995). Starting from the notion of syncretism, which he clearly confuses with the concept of neutralization, this author defines it as “sincretismo léxico resoluble, producido en el plano del contenido y al nivel del emisor y del que sólo se manifiesta el término extensivo o no marcado” [re‑ soluble lexical syncretism, produced at the level of the content by the speaker in which only the extensive or unmarked term is manifested] (Senabre 1971: 185).

Euphemism and dysphemism are two linguistic processes whose function, with different motivations and purposes, is the substitution or linguistic expression of the abhorrent term or the forbidden reality. However, they are frequently used to indicate, not the linguistic process itself, but rather, the substitute that replaces the forbidden object, which, for the sake of greater precision, we will refer to as euphemistic or dysphemistic substitute. In this way, in the linguistic norm, for each conceptual area covered by the interdiction, we have lexicalized substitutes, which can be either euphemistic or dysphemistic. However, it is ne‑ cessary to emphasize that this can be defined only as a speech act or discursive phenomenon, which explains the existence of an unlimited number of euphemistic and dysphemistic uses, created spontaneously and sporadically by users in certain situational contexts, and it is these that really acquire value in this process as situational uses and contextual products of the speech act. In fact, given the general instability1 and the particular relativity of the phenomenon, euphemism or dysphemism should be, first, understood and, subsequently, re‑ cognised as this type of (euphemistic or dysphemistic) use both by the speaker and the hearer. This is a more acceptable interpretation, given the pragmatic and discursive nature of euphemism. Hence, it is impossible to make a categorical affirmation of the existence of euphemisms or euphemism-words, or even of substitutes, euphemistic or dysphemistic forms or expressions, but, rather, of euphemistic or dysphemistic uses in a particular context and situational background, depending on their functions in affective and evocative speech, their intention and their true function as a communicative value.

The linguistic opposite of euphemism is dysphemism, historically ignored by semanticists and not clearly differentiated from its antonym, although it has recently received greater scholarly attention.2 Its basis is identical to that of euphemism as regards the “substitution” or, rather, manifestation and the mechanisms that produce it in the sense that there are no actual euphemistic and dysphemistic resources, although some are appropriate to one attitude or another. However, the motivation and purpose are different, since dysphemism does not seek to break the associations with the forbidden word or reality, but, on the contrary, to intensify them. This means that, although both euphemism and dysphemism are based on the same principle and use the same linguistic devices, the aim of dysphemism is not to attenuate or soften, but to have the opposite effect, the motivation or reinforcement of the forbidden sign or concept.

3Terminological-conceptual clarifications from a pragmatic-discursive and cognitivist standpoint

To the terms and concepts revised in the previous section, it is necessary to add other, more up-to-date distinctions, such as orthophemism as opposed to euphemism/dysphemism and X-phemism, within the framework of the proliferation of definitions that highlight the pragmatic perspective of the phenomenon3 and which emphasize its discursive nature and the elements intervening in the euphemistic communicative process. Thus, Allan and Burridge (2006: 31–33) define euphemism in relation to dysphemism and orthophemism. In this sense, a dysphemism is “a word or phrase with connotations that are offensive either about the denotatum and/or to people addressed or overhearing the utterance”, whereas “orthophemisms and euphemisms are words or phrases used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression. They avoid possible loss of face by the speaker, and also the hearer or some third party”. In this way, they establish a difference between both terms: “An orthophemism is typically more formal and more direct (or literal) than the corresponding euphemism” and “a euphemism is typically more colloquial and figurative (or indirect) than the corresponding orthophemism”.

Along with orthophemism, these authors have coined the term X-phemism, with reference to the whole group of euphemisms, orthophemisms and dysphemisms and related to the concept of “cross-varietal synonymy”, that is “words that have the same meaning as other words used in different contexts. For instance, the X-phemisms poo, shit and faeces are cross-varietal synonyms because they denote the same thing but have different connotations, which mark different styles used in different circumstances” (Allan and Burridge 2006: 29). Therefore, this is a concept which, due to its inclusive character, encompasses the phenomena of orthophemism, euphemism and dysphemism in a kind of “x-phemistic continuum”.

This concept of orthophemism has recently been incorporated from a cognitive sociolinguistic perspective into the study of taboo and euphemism in the sexual concepts of the city of Madrid carried out by Pizarro Pedraza (2013: 81). This author refers to “formas neutras o directas de nombrar las realidades tabuizadas, que no sean ni eufemísticas ni disfemísticas” [neutral or direct ways of naming tabooed realities, that are neither euphemistic nor dysphemistic], as a phenomenon which is “más estable, al tratarse de la expresión directa o literal del concepto tabuizado, en algún sentido, la expresión formal estandarizada” [more stable, since it is the direct or literal expression of the tabooed concept, in a sense, the standardized formal expression]. And, in the line of the above-mentioned researchers, Cestero Mancera (2015a: 303, no. 28 and 2015b: 80, no. 19) characterizes orthophemism as a form of expression consisting in the use of “unidades lingüísticas directas, neutras, literales, formales o estandarizadas, que se utilizan para nombrar conceptos o realidades tabuizadas y que resultan no marcadas” [direct, neutral, literal, formal or standardized linguistic units, which are used to name tabooed concepts or realities and that are unmarked], in her essentially methodological and practical sociolinguistic analyses on taboo, also in the speech of Madrid, albeit in the framework of PRESEEA (“Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América” [Project for the sociolinguistic study of the Spanish language of Spain and South America]).

As mixed processes for the manipulation of the referent, Crespo Fernández (2007: 211–235) incorporates two axiological types of reference to taboo which combine the affective tendencies of euphemism and dysphemism: the distinction between quasi-euphemism “cuando la intención del hablante es de signo eufemístico, pese a materializarse por medio de una locución disfemística” [when the intention of the speaker is of a euphemistic nature, in spite of being manifested in a dysphemistic expression] and quasi-dysphemism “cuando la expresión formal eufemística responde a un propósito peyorativo” [when the formal expression of the euphemism responds to a pejorative intention] (2007: 214). This author offers a comprehensive study of these processes as regards their pragmatic nature, formative resources and contextual variants. Even though his terminology, and, above all, his pragmatic characterization appears innovative, his concepts are not, since several authors (Silva Correia 1927: 778–779; Grimes 1978: 17 and 22; Montero Cartelle 1981: 89–90; Casas Gómez 1986: 93–96, and Allan and Burridge 1991: 30–31 and 149–150 and 2006: 39–40, among others) had previously referred to dysphemisms with positive effects, pejorative or damning euphemisms, formal dysphemisms, or euphemistic dysphemisms/dysphemistic euphemisms, in allusion to the fact that “ambas tendencias afectivas, la eufemística y la disfemística, se combinan mutuamente hasta el punto de aparecer eufemismos por su estructura formal con valor peyorativo y disfemismos formales con función eufemística (…) de acuerdo con la intención o el énfasis del que se sirve el hablante a la hora de emitir el vocablo” [both ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Table of contents
• List of contributing Authors
• Introduction
• 1 Lexicon, discourse and cognition: terminological delimitations in the conceptualizations of linguistic taboo
• Part I: Construal
• Part II: Cultural Conceptualization
• Part III: Cognitive Sociolinguistics
• Part IV: Interdisciplinary Approaches
• Index