The mentioning of some words and / or objects is forbidden in some cultures i.e. unmentionables. Among the Akans of Ghana, for instance, the unmentionable objects include potentially destructive items like the pestle, wooden mortar and broom; and diseases such as whitlow, cancer and tuberculosis. There are other historical calamities which should not be referred to in the society. It is believed that spoken reference to any of such incidences is capable of leading to its reoccurrence. Does your culture have some of these verbal taboos? What are they and how are they managed in oral discourse? Your views will enrich our literature.
There are many examples of verbal taboos on both the colloquial and the standard levels in Arabic culture generally and Iraqi culture specifically.Do you need to know the taboos that are used colloquially or in the standard language?
Oh, yes I am interested. If the bother of profanity, find a nice way of capturing them. Thank you.
Dear Dennis,
This year in May 2014, after initial analysis of data from 180 Polish families having adult member with intellectual disability (ID) and/or dual diagnosis (DD) I noticed in studied disability culture, expression of verbal taboo associated with avoiding speaking about the future care of member with disability, after parents' death. Very interesting and verbally indicated pattern in interviews showed, that parents and non-disabled siblings avoided in many ways and stockaded with silence symbol the issues of future care. I still work on this project and still analyze the huge data.
I try to find out if we here in Germany have such verbal taboos. Haven´t found anyone, with one exception, the historical NAZI greeting. It´s forbidden.
Dear All,
There are a lot of taboos of various origin and nature. The easiest way is to mention ancient or very old taboos. In Europe and in Hungary wolves (Canis lupus) were feared animals and are protagonists of many myths: Wererwolf (Werwolf, loup-garout, vérfarkas). The Hungarian equivalent of wolf is farkas it means an animal with a tail because one must have used only a circumlocution. The wolf itself was a taboo.
In modern society, "taboo" refers to "disapproved behaviors in a society."
In India it is taboo even to talk about "Taboo words".
A good coverage of verbal taboos is given here.
Steadman, J. M. (1935). A study of verbal taboos. American Speech, 93-103.
http://www.zachbardon.com/compendium/out.php?t=academic/taboos
http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/61-4-read-taboo.pdf
In the 19th century french canadian society, mainly in Quebec, the Catholic cleargy exerted a high degree of social control and most of the governance functions which are since the 1960’s done by the provincial state were then done by the catholic organisations: hospitals, hasilum, education except the cleaning of the road and making of civil laws. In this context of religiously control social context and of a very high level of illiteracy the sacres were created in the popular culture. The sacres are words and expressions related to Catholicism and its liturgy which are used as stong profanities. Sacres are considerd stronger than the foul expressions common to standard French which center on sex and excrement.
List (not exhaustive) of common sacres:
• baptême: "baptism"
• calisse (calice): "chalice"
• calvaire: "Calvary"
• ciarge (cierge): "votive or Paschal candle"
• ciboire: "ciborium" or "pyx", receptacles in which the host is stored
• criss (Christ): "Christ"
• maudit: "damn"
• osti (hostie): "host"
• "pain de vie" ("hostie"): "host"
• sacrament (sacrement): "Sacrament"
• sacrifice: "part of Catholic mass"
• simonaque (simoniaque): from the sin of simony
• tabarnack (tabernacle): "tabernacle"
• viarge (vierge): "the Virgin Mary"
A Quebecois who slam his finger with a hammer will probably demonstrate a large capacity to say a long list of the above sacres.
Ethnologists contributed a lot to the research of taboos. The link to religious thinking seems quite obvious. Countries like Poland, Luxembourg, Québec would have a heavy tribute to pay to catholicism. As a basic reading I would look into Durkheim's Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. I can well follow Beata. As a student I was offered an opportunity to make a research on disabilities and sexuality. Idid not to it. There was obviously a taboo, an I still feel (after so many years) a kind of guilt.
Moving from taboos in society to verbal taboos is indeed a good move. I would like to go a step further, moving to tabooing verbal behaviors. Can interactive strategies in interview data be identified which aim at avoiding a topic. How can they be classified and described.
Charles,
I do not understand you last post.
Certain words that used to be socially acceptable become not acceptable into a new social context. For example, we used to use the word ''man'' for a human and ''mankind'' for humanity. Implicitly excluding women, or at least not explicitly acknowledging them. Now we try to balance the ''he'' and the ''she''.
The social acceptation of homosexuality in western countries has also trigger a change of the way it is now acceptable to speak on the topic. In the sixties and Quebec when I was four or five years old, before I even knew the basics of sexuality, we had all kind of scary stories about being attacked by maniac sexual, homosexual. I did not have a clue what it was but it sound so horrific that I did not want to know. We used the word ''homosexual'' as insults towards each other and if a boy would not be like all the other little bullies, we would beat him up. Coming out of the closet would mean suicidal in such context. Nowadays we are seeing normal homosexual person in fiction in movies that are acting like normal human being and gradually find this more and more normal. I am not as confortable as my kids are with this reality, for example I am not so thrill as they are to go see the pride day parade but maybe I will go one day. Given the horror stories that I heard on this topic in my youth, I made quite a lot of progress.
Dear Louis,
I do not think that the words you listed were taboo but to curse and swear with using those words. Unfortunately, my mother tongue is very rich in curses touching Christian fate. I am sure not the normal use of words used in church were taboo but the cursing.
Dear Louis, the sense of my answer was drawing the focus away from taboos as kind of real objects "existing in a society" and instead looking into social processes which generate tabooing in a specific context. The approach will be more relativist, more process oriented, more interaction, and more communication based. Understanding the construction and functioning of tabooing and the kind of grammar behind it seems to me more relevant than talking about taboos as if they existed out there. This change would also lead to strategies of interview data analysis which could be more productive than the general question about taboos. Founding an insight on data analysis makes it more than just an opinion. Charles
András ,
The above post of Charles provides me with the word I was searching for answering you last post: ''specific context''. Among infants, later on among families, while speaking with teachers or authority figures, these sacres were really taboo. But not among teenagers friend. The sacres would come out in a family context on in very exceptional circumstances such as kikking you toe on a piece of furniture.
Charles,
I agree that what is most interesting with taboos is not their specific forms but the multiple mechanisms of tabooing and untabooing that are used in social life.
Dear Dennis Sokupls
pls check the links.
https://global.duke.edu/sites/default/files/images/NancyAdlerCrossCultComm..pdf
http://www.udel.edu/PT/current/PHYT600/2012/Lecture4Handouts/CES_25_CulturalCompetence_012003%5B1%5D.pdf
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/16512/Chidiebere_Ogbonna.pdf?sequence=1
Dear Dennis Sokupls
pls check the links.
https://global.duke.edu/sites/default/files/images/NancyAdlerCrossCultComm..pdf
http://www.udel.edu/PT/current/PHYT600/2012/Lecture4Handouts/CES_25_CulturalCompetence_012003%5B1%5D.pdf
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/16512/Chidiebere_Ogbonna.pdf?sequence=1
Dear Dennis Sokupls
pls check the links.
https://global.duke.edu/sites/default/files/images/NancyAdlerCrossCultComm..pdf
http://www.udel.edu/PT/current/PHYT600/2012/Lecture4Handouts/CES_25_CulturalCompetence_012003%5B1%5D.pdf
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/16512/Chidiebere_Ogbonna.pdf?sequence=1
Dear Dennis Sokupls
pls check the links.
https://global.duke.edu/sites/default/files/images/NancyAdlerCrossCultComm..pdf
http://www.udel.edu/PT/current/PHYT600/2012/Lecture4Handouts/CES_25_CulturalCompetence_012003%5B1%5D.pdf
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/16512/Chidiebere_Ogbonna.pdf?sequence=1
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