Full Description
This volume brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines to define and describe tabooed words and language and to investigate the reasons and beliefs behind them. In general, taboo is defined as a proscription of behaviour for a specific community, time, and context. In terms of language, taboo applies to instances of language behaviour: the use of certain words in certain contexts. The existence of linguistic taboos and their management lead to the censoring of behaviour and, as a consequence, to language change and development.
Chapters in this volume explore the multiple types of tabooed language from a variety of perspectives, such as sociolinguistics, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, historical linguistics, and neurolinguistics, and with reference to fields such as law, publishing, politics, and advertising. Topics covered include impoliteness, swearing, censorship, taboo in deaf communities, translation of tabooed words, and the use of taboo in banter and comedy.
Contents
1: Keith Allan: Taboo words and language: An overview
2: Jonathan Culpeper: Taboo language and impoliteness
3: Eliecer Crespo Fernández: Taboos in speaking of sex and sexuality
4: Réka Benczes and Kate Burridge: Speaking of disease and death
5: Timothy B. Jay: The psychology of expressing and interpreting linguistic taboos
6: Timothy B. Jay: Taboo language awareness in early childhood
7: Shlomit Ritz Finkelstein: Swearing and the brain
8: Jami N. Fisher, Gene Mirus, and Donna Jo Napoli: sticky: Taboo topics in deaf communities
9: Jack Hoeksema: Taboo terms and their grammar
10: Kate Burridge and Réka Benczes: Taboo as a driver of language change
11: Pedro J. Chamizo Domínguez: Problems translating tabooed words from source to target language
12: Jean-Marc Dewaele: Linguistic taboos in a second or foreign language
13: Luvell Anderson: Philosophical investigations of the taboo of insult
14: Keith Allan: Religious and ideologically motivated taboos
15: Christopher Hutton: Speech or conduct? Law, censorship, and taboo language
16: Gabriele Azzaro: Taboo language in books, films, and the media
17: Toby Ralph and Barnaby Ralph: Taboos and bad language in the mouths of politicians and in advertising
18: Elijah Wald: Taboo language used as banter
19: Barry J. Blake: Taboo language as source of comedy
20: Stanley H. Brandes: An anthropological approach to taboo words and language
