So let’s talk about limits. We like to be able to talk about anything we want, and we
can – we have the words to explain everything. That's what language is good at. But just
because we can express ourselves doesn't mean that we should. There are a lot of topics
we've learned to be careful of, and words we should avoid. So just a warning – we're
using a lot of them today, so if you're not in the mood for some swearing, across a lot
of different languages, this might not be the best episode for you. But for the rest
of you... I’m Moti Lieberman, and this is the Ling Space.
So like I said, in this episode, we’re going to be both saying and showing a number of
explicit swear words, in English and other languages. If that’s not something you feel
comfortable with, we’ll have a clean summary of the linguistics behind it on our Tumblr,
so check out the link in the description below! But you should probably stop watching now.
Okay, so. No matter what culture you look at, there's always some standards for how
to behave as a proper person, ways of talking with people to show you respect both them
and the society overall. And when it comes to language, that means using some words and
constructions, and keeping clear of others. We'll be talking more about the positive side
of politeness in the future, but for today, we're looking at taboos.
Taboos in language are topics and words that lie at the extreme low end of the politeness
spectrum. Slinging these terms around can make people feel embarrassed or ashamed, and
so if you're being polite, you keep them well away from your mouth. Sometimes, these taboo
words are just globally bad, never to be used. But often, the words are only supposed to
be said by certain people or in certain circumstances, and never otherwise. Like, in Hebrew, the
true name of god was only supposed to be said by priests when they were blessing people
in the temple. Any other time or place, they weren't supposed to use it, and non-priests
were never supposed to use it at all.
But outside of Judaic culture, that prohibition doesn't necessarily hold. And in fact, that's
the way it is with taboos overall: even if every human culture has taboos, they're not
always the same ones. It’s not like any of these things are actually bad - they’re
all important to be able to talk about. A word that’s terrible in one place can be
fine in another. So if the Jews felt weird about saying the name of god, the Romans sure
felt fine about naming theirs out loud. But across cultures, we tend to find the same
themes cropping up as linguistic taboos: mainly, body parts and bodily functions, like sex,
excretion, or death, and people or things that require respectful treatment, like family
terms, religion, race, and politics.
Within these categories, though, you can find variation. Like, look at religious terms.
In some cultures, like we've seen, you don't want to name any deities. And it can be like
that in English, too – many people want to avoid saying Jesus, for example. But you
can have it extend to other parts of religion, too. Say, like, in Quebec French, some of the most
taboo words are items used in Catholic religious service, like tabarnak, for “tabernacle”,
or câlisse, for “chalice”. Or it can extend to people related to religion, as well,
like how in Japan, one of the worst things you can call a woman is 尼 [ama], or “nun”.
It's really bad. Unless it’s within the religious context itself - no one is going
to feel weird about you saying Jesus or câlisse if you’re in a church to pray. The intent
behind it really matters.
In other cases, simply calling people directly by name can be really impolite. Languages
like Javanese or Japanese use systems of honorifics, to show respect for people; dropping them entirely
is very familiar and can be really rude. But if you want taboos on names themselves, take
a look at Bariai, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea. Here, using the names of your
spouse's parents is considered taboo. But in Bariai, people are often named after objects
or animals. And that gives you some problems if you want to talk about anything that matches
your in-laws' names.
So like, say your father-in-law is named Puaea, or “crocodile”, and you want to talk about
a crocodile you've seen. You can't just use the word – that's off-limits, ‘cause
it’s his name. So instead, you'd say bagale, which is a borrowed word for crocodile from
a nearby language. Which might be inconvenient, but at least you're not breaking any taboos.
Of course, cross-linguistic influences on taboos don't end with word-switching. Often,
words in one language will accidentally sound like taboo words in another language.
Look at Thai and English. If you're Thai and you know English, and you're talking in Thai
near English speakers, you might avoid words like fag or phrig, even though those just
mean “sheath” or “chili pepper” in Thai. And you may find it even harder to use
otherwise innocuous English words like yet or key, because they sound a lot like the
Thai words jed and khîi, which basically mean fuck and shit. Even if they're not bad
in English, they're still uncomfortable to say – the taboo power is strong.
And we really mean it – it’s strong. The power of taboos can go really deep into our
psyches. And we can show this using the Stroop test. So here's the basics of the test: you
show people a series of words in different colours, and you ask them to just name the
colour the word is printed in. So you don't actually need to read the word – you just
say the colour the word is in. So try it here. Let's put up some words, and all you need
to do is tell me what colour you’re seeing. All right?
Not bad, yeah? But let's see what happens now…
Much harder, right? So this is usually
used to show just how automatic reading is – the presence of a different colour word
interferes with you saying what the colour you’re seeing is. You can't help reading,
and that gets you confused, so you slow down.
So what does that have to do with taboo words? Well… a psycholinguist wanted to look at
something similar. So let's try the test again – remember, all you need to do is say the colour.
So these aren’t colour words, but it isn't hard, right? How about with these?
Way worse, right? Our minds can't help but read those words and process them, and then
we get shocked. We get forced into having these reactions, and they slow us down from our task.
Because they’re so strong, when we learn a new language, we often want to learn these
words first, either because they’re fun, or to avoid insulting people. We know they’re
bad, and so we’re interested in them. But even if bad words are bad, sometimes we still
need to talk about all this stuff, right? So how can we do that? Well, one option that's
got a lot of history behind it is euphemisms.
A euphemism is a way to make use of indirect or prettier language to make a taboo or unpleasant
topic easier to handle. And we have a whole bunch of linguistic approaches to this, too.
One method is just to straight-up change the word. Like, we can just clip off part of the
end, so instead of, say, Jesus, we get jeez. Or we can abbreviate things: so we can get
POS for “piece of shit”, or “the f-word” instead of “fuck”.
Or we can just mispronounce things, and swap in a different, but similar sounding word.
Sometimes, like “gosh” instead of “god”, or “tabarnouche” instead of “tabarnak”,
it gives you something new. But other times, they match other words in the language, like
“shoot” instead of “shit”, or “fudge” or “fluff” instead of “fuck”. So with
these, the context tells you which it is - “Oh fudge” is probably the euphemism; “I made
you some delicious maple fudge” is actual fudge.
We can also bring in other vocabulary that’s more accurate rather than a weird substitution.
Like, you can use a medical term, like “sexual intercourse”, or “gluteus maximus” instead of "butt".
Or you can use just a pronoun and rely on people to know what you mean. Like if I say
“Miles and Lara are doing it”, you probably know what that “it” is. Or in Japanese,
if you say 彼のあそこ [kaɾe no asoko], or “his… there”, what’s meant by there is pretty obvious.
Another option is to use figures of speech instead. So let’s look at the ones around
death. We don’t like talking about death much, and you seem blunt if you’re just
like “Grandpa died.” So instead, we use understatements, like “We put our cat to
sleep”, or metaphors, like “we lost her to a car accident”. Or we try being ambiguous,
like “She’s gone to the other side”. These all feel better and nicer than the straight-up dead option.
Of course, the thing about euphemisms is that once they get associated with something bad,
it’s not really okay to use that euphemism anymore, either. This is known as the euphemism
treadmill. Like… let’s look at personal hygiene. We don’t like talking about where
we go to relieve ourselves. So that place cycles through names: water closet turns to
toilet, and then to bathroom, and then to restroom, because no matter what word you
use, the shine eventually comes off it if you relate it to pooping.
And that’s just one of our taboo topics. Across languages, there are lots of things that
we don’t feel like we can say. And these taboos evolve over time, as we’ll talk about
back on our website. But don’t worry - now that we’ve talked about it here today, in
the future, we’ll stay within our polite limits.
So we’ve reached the end of the Ling Space for this week. If you weren’t thrown off
by the colourful language, you learned that all languages have taboo words, even if the
actual taboos differ from place to place; that there are themes that we can find in
the kinds of words that get ruled out; and that to get around these restrictions, we
use euphemisms, even if we need to change them up over time.
The Ling Space is produced by me, Moti Lieberman. It’s directed by Adèle-Elise Prévost,
and it’s written by both of us. Our editor is Georges Coulombe, our production assistant
is Stephan Hurtubise, our music is by Shane Turner, and our graphics team is atelierMUSE.
We’re down in the comments below, or you can bring the discussion back over to our
website, where we have some extra material on this topic.
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And we’ll see you next Wednesday. A pli tard!