Gabriele Azzaro
Four-letter Films
Taboo Language in Movies
ARACNE
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I edizione: agosto 2005
To my children, who are by now immune to
such language – and usually manage to add
more than four letters to their words
Contents
1. Expletive and abusive language: historical and linguistic
background ........................................................................................... 1
1.1.
1.2.
1.3.
1.4.
2.
Linguistic analysis .................................................................. 13
2.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
2.5.
3.
Arse / Ass ...................................................................... 31
Bitch .............................................................................. 34
Cock, Cunt and Dick ..................................................... 35
Christ, God, Damn, Goddamn and Hell ........................ 40
Fuck ............................................................................... 43
Lesbian, poof, poofter.................................................... 48
Nigger ............................................................................ 52
Shag ............................................................................... 53
Shit and Piss .................................................................. 54
Slut and Whore .............................................................. 64
Frequency of lemmas in films ................................................ 67
Historical perspective ............................................................. 71
5.1.
5.2.
5.3.
5.4.
5.5.
6.
Features of the corpora .................................................. 13
Film corpus .................................................................... 14
TV corpus ...................................................................... 18
Matchlists, Wordlists, Stoplists and Lemmas................ 23
General descriptive statistics ......................................... 24
Lemma variation and semantic exploration in films .............. 31
3.1.
3.2.
3.3.
3.4.
3.5.
3.6.
3.7.
3.8.
3.9.
3.10.
4.
5.
Introduction ..................................................................... 1
Form, function and taxonomies ....................................... 2
Brief historical survey ..................................................... 7
The psychology of abuse ................................................. 9
Before the 1970es .......................................................... 72
The 1970es..................................................................... 79
The 1980es..................................................................... 95
The 1990es................................................................... 110
The new millennium.................................................... 130
Comparison of chronological subcorpora............................. 139
vii
Contents
viii
6.1.
6.2.
6.3.
At first glance...............................................................139
The statistics.................................................................143
Afterthoughts ...............................................................151
7. Action vs. Non-action films ..................................................157
8. TV taboos..............................................................................171
9. British vs. American cursing.................................................179
10.
Conclusion ........................................................................187
10.1.
10.2.
10.3.
10.4.
10.5.
10.6.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Lemma frequency and distribution ..............................187
Diachronic development ..............................................188
Action and non-action cursing .....................................190
TV and film cursing .....................................................190
British and American cursing ......................................191
Final remarks ...............................................................192
References.........................................................................195
Exercises ...........................................................................199
Author index .....................................................................211
General Index....................................................................213
Foreword
Bad language is hardly ever taught. In class or out of it.
Equally uncommon is the didactic use of bad language in
classroom settings where the linguistic analysis of English is carried
out formally or informally. I have not come across any specific corpus
or corpus analysis of taboo language explicitly modelled for didactic
purposes, particularly for language students or students of Linguistics.
Although it is an undeniable ingredient of everyday language – oral
and written – it has been only recently studied1 from a linguistic point
of view, even though several dictionaries (of varying quality) exist
worldwide of local varieties of taboo language (cf. for instance Spears
(1990)), and a journal is devoted to the subject (Maledicta). The only
experimental analysis available of swearing in the language of films is
in Jay (1992, pp.215-34).
Yet, it is one of the first linguistic abilities learnt by children, as a
separate – palpably stigmatised – code, it represents one of the main
curiosities students often dare not confess, and it is prominent in the
media (Jay, 1992, pp.17-71; and 2000, pp. 82, 92; and Winslow,
1969). Clearly, is has also been the cause of fierce legal battles (Jay,
1992, pp.195-211).
One special mention in the study of taboo language must go to a
dedicated corpus, the Lancaster Corpus of Abuse (LCA), which has
been under development at Lancaster University since 1998. The very
detailed classification of curses there implemented has not been
applied to the present corpus, due to time and funds restrictions, but it
would obviously yield remarkable results when introduced.
All in all, corpus analysis can be performed at quite an elementary
level in search for 4–letter words. Any student with some basic
1
With the exception of a few outstanding analyses on American English (Jay,
1992, 2000), Australian English (Kidman, 1993) and (Hill, 1992), and British
English (McEnery, 2005; McEnery, Baker, & Hardie, 2000; McEnery & Xiao,
2004). Other key works are those by Andersson and Trudgill (1990, from a
sociological stance), Sheidlower (1995, from a lexicographic point of view),
Stenström (1991, in a sociological and conversation analysis framework).
ix
x
Foreword
electronic tools can easily conjure up a personal corpus which can be
fruitfully analysed even without any prior tagging.
It is not fun, though. The study of English swearwords and insults
should be open-minded but scientific – besides being able to cope
with moments of nauseating rejection.
The aim of this book is twofold. To analyse and describe as
precisely as possible the forms of ‘questionable’ language in some
English films and, in doing so, show students of English Linguistics
what wonderful tools Computational Linguistics and Corpus Analysis
have to offer along the way.
The book presupposes some basic notion of both topics. As
preliminary reading the following manuals are a plus:
Biber, Douglas. 1998b. Corpus linguistics: investigating language
structure and use: (Series: Cambridge approaches to
linguistics.). Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge
University Press.
McEnery, Tony, and Wilson, Andrew. 1996. Corpus linguistics:
(Series: Edinburgh textbooks in empirical linguistics.).
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hatch, Evelyn, and Lazaraton, Anne. 1991. The Research Manual.
Design and Statistics for Applied Linguistics. Boston, Mass.:
Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena. 2001. Corpus linguistics at work: (Series:
Studies in corpus linguistics, v. 6.). Amsterdam; Philadelphia:
J. Benjamins.
Interesting notes on corpora and language teaching are in Aston
(2001a), particularly in Aston (2001b), Partington (2001) and Zanettin
(2001). Further useful information on corpus design (besides the texts
quoted above) is in Zanettin (2000). Relevant past work in bad
language is quoted throughout the text.
The analysis is quantitative and qualitative as much as a non-tagged
corpus allows. In describing the frequency and distribution of the
various lemmas considered, abundant examples have been quoted
from the films themselves in order to give the reader first-hand
impressions of the contextualised meaning and function of each
expression. Tables and statistics are fairly detailed since some of them
will be useful to carry out the exercises at the end of the book
Foreword
xi
(Chapter 12, pp.199-209). In order to complete some of the tasks it is
necessary to use a concordancing program like WordSmith and have
access to the corpus itself, which is being updated and will be
available on www.gazzaro.it/films, in untagged form, on request to the
author (email: [email protected]).
Most importantly: the thorough, meticulous, painstaking work of
hundreds of young transcribers must be acknowledged at the outset of
this work. Very little would have been written if it wasn’t for the
hordes of movie enthusiasts who continuously transcribe and offer on
the net their favourite film scripts. All the source sites have been cited
(cf. note 5 on p.14) but there remains a handful of individuals whose
transcription work has gone unrecognised due to various faults of
mine (computer mishaps, breakages, loss of data, etc.). Should anyone
recognise their own work here in unacknowledged form, I will gladly
add personal names to the list.
1. Expletive and abusive language: historical and
linguistic background
Language taboos are a social as well as a psychological
phenomenon, and it has often been remarked in the media how
unchaste the spread of taboo words has become to wider contexts than
the shipyard. Television is often blamed for the circulation of once
forbidden expressions, and films in particular get the blame. This kind
of language is not secondary in our society, rather it is prominent but
at the same time marginalised, consciously or unconsciously. In fact it
is a central feature of human communication, right from language
acquisition to old age (Jay, 2000). And the language of swearwords
and insults in film scripts has not been extensively studied yet, the
most notable exception being Jay (1992). The present study aims at
analysing the forms rather than the motivation, psychology and social
make-up of taboo language in modern film scripts, using some of the
methodology and statistical tools offered by Computational
Linguistics and Corpus Analysis2.
1.1. Introduction
There are three basic questions we can ask regarding so-called ‘bad
language’. How do we use it? Where do we use it? Why do we use it?
The focus is respectively on content, context and motivation. At the
outset of this analysis, is useful to cast a cursory look at the history of
some relevant expressions and to sketch a few brief comments on the
relationship between cursing and emotional language.
2
In the present study, to indicate the kind of language in question, I will use
interchangeably expressions like “bad/foul/taboo language” as synonyms for
swearwords, cursing and insults, simply to avoid repetitions. Therefore I will not
define common sense expressions like “bad/foul/taboo language”. As an umbrella
term I will adopt curses/cursing as the hyperonym subsuming all the expressions
quoted above.
1
2
Chapter 1
1.2. Form, function and taxonomies
Which are the forms and functions of bad language? Can we define
a taxonomy of these expressions? We find a simple taxonomy in
Andersson and Hirsch (1985), where the general term “bad language”
is distinguished from the term “swearing”, which in turn includes
phenomena such as “cursing”, “profanity”, “vulgarity” (obscene and
dirty language), “abusiveness” and “expletives”. This classification is
explicitly defined by the authors as “folk taxonomy”, and in order to
achieve a more detailed definition we have to consider the content, the
form and the function of each individual expression at stake.
As far as the content of bad language is concerned, we can easily
note that the main feature of the contextual meaning of swearwords
and insults is to release mental tension, to assert power or to make an
impression on the listener. This is achieved most often by referencing
semantic, social, psychological areas of meaning connected with
cultural taboos (Jay, 1992, 2000).
The most common areas of cultural taboos refer to religion,
(im)morality, scatological functions, physical features, sex and illness.
Contrary to Andersson’s (1985) above mentioned taxonomy, the term
cursing is often interpreted as a more general term, a term which
includes both swearing and insults (cf. Jay (1992)), and I will follow
here this tendency. Jay (op. cit.) further distinguishes between two
kinds of religious taboo, namely profanity and blasphemy, the latter
being a conscious, stronger attack to religious respect. This tentative
classification can be exemplified as in Table 1 below.
Swearing is often characterised by the generating emotion of anger
or frustration resulting from a particular situation, void of specific
addressee. It is not plausible to suppose that everyday swearwords are
intentionally addressed to a deity, or fate. Four ingredients seem to
define cursing: it is reflexive (automatic, like an unconscious reflex),
untargeted (not addressed to a particular entity), non-reciprocal (it
does not require an answer) and neurologically motivated (it works as
an emotional outlet). Reflexive means that the expressions used are
not novel but belong to a set of ready-made utterances, often whole
phrases made up of several words, defined as propositional language.
Introductory Background
3
Propositional utterances are not construed consciously by the same
mental processes activated in producing novel sentences, but are
stored in our mind as idiom-like blocks and accessed via mechanical
operations of the brain. For this reason, some linguists understandably
exclude cursing from the study of language ‘proper’ (Pinker, 1994),
whereas it is clear that, for function and pragmatic value, it has its
own grammar. As for its emotional value, a very extensive study is
Jay (2000).
Insults on the other hand are targeted and reciprocal – they do have
a specific addressee, and presuppose an emotional reaction both on the
part of the speaker and the hearer. Like swearing, they often belong to
propositional rather than creative language, even though we’ll see that
film scripts offer copious exceptions to this tendency.
Swearing
Religious
Profanity
Blasphemy
Christ! Jesus! Gee!
Goddamn!
Screw the Pope!
Sexual
Scatological
Fuck!
Shit!
Insulting
Mental
Sexual
Scatological
Physical
Fool!
Idiot!
Moron!
Jerk! Bitch! Bastard!
Shitbrains! Fart!
Pisshead!
Fatso!
Pigso!
Midget!
Table 1
A distinction has to be made between vulgarity (or vulgar
language) and proper cursing. Whereas vulgarity is almost
exclusively a matter of social class and relative linguistic tastes, curses
and insults systematically involve a certain degree of taboo breaking.
Vulgar language is defined by the judgement of one class over
another, usually considered degraded, and therefore it is not
necessarily taboo. Cursing is not a matter of tastes, in that the same
expressions can appear across different classes.
Chapter 1
4
We will touch further on the significance of content later, and move
on now to comment on the forms of taboo language and their relation
to formality. It must be stressed how the linguistic form of any
expression is never implicitly linked to its denotative content. Except
for onomatopoeic expressions, form is quite independent from
content, as we see for example from the word Bitch!, which is totally
context-dependent: it can be an extremely strong insult, but in
veterinary circles it has no denigratory implications and it certainly is
not a taboo. It is the context which defines the psychological and
social connotations assigned to words by the shared conventions of
language, and connotation rather than denotation determines the
content and function of words in any specific interaction. It makes no
sense to view a term as ‘sounding’ intrinsically bad, or violent, or
insulting. If a word does sound irreverent or violent it is due to its
social and psychological connotations given by its context, not to its
phonetic make-up or grammatical form.
The form of particularly strong curses and insults is often mitigated
by the use of euphemisms. The lexical choice between the raw form
and its mitigated version is relative to the degree of formality the
speaker wishes to achieve. Formality is a determining factor of the
lexical choice and the levels of mitigation obtained through
euphemisms. A euphemism is generally based on phonetic similarity,
or syllabic identity of parts of the original expression. See for instance
1.
2.
3.
4.
Bastard Æ basket
Christ Æ crumbs, cripes
Jesus Æ Gee
Shit Æ sugar
The greater the perceived closeness to the original, the higher the
degree of informality attained.
Coming to linguistic function, we must consider each expression in
its communicative context. Montagu (1967) was one of the first
scholars to list a number of specific functions relative to curses, such
as abusive, ejaculatory, exclamatory, execratory, expletive, etc.
Andersson and Hirsch (1985) simplify the scene by advocating just
Introductory Background
5
two primary functions of curses, namely expletive and abusive
(Andersson & Hirsch, 1985, p.53). An expletive expression is
basically emotive, reactive and exclamatory (hell! God!, damn); as we
have seen, it is non-reciprocal and has no particular addressee;
abusive expressions are tantamount to conscious insults (you bastard!
Shitbrain!) to others or even to oneself. Self-directed abuse though, is
virtually undistinguishable from swearing.
Besides these two primary functions we can recognise other
secondary ones, intimately dependent on the context. For instance we
could utter an expression normally used as an insult to express
approval or admiration, so that You son of a bitch! might actually
express endorsement, appreciation or intimacy. In such contexts, the
function of the expression is metaphorical (or praise-centred, cf.
Andersson and Hirsch (1985)) rather than literal. Some phrases end up
with a positive function despite their clear denigratory origin: You
lucky bastard! is one such example.
Another non-primary function is exemplified in phrases like You’re
fucking right! or It’s damn good!, where the taboo function is
irrelevant, and the utterance has a binding force between the
interactants. This function may be called interaction-centred (ibid.).
Another function quoted in the literature is habitual: the speaker uses
the taboo expression mechanically, without any conscious reference to
the context or intention to shock, simply as a rhythmical filler.
Speakers often use insults and curses with non-aggressive intentions,
simply to ingratiate an audience (for instance to obtain peersolidarity). This function may be called aggregating. Finally
euphemisms have a non-primary function, which we could call
mitigating.
Andersson and Trudgill (1990) refer back to Bühler’s (1934)
language theory to rediscover his three functions of words:
expressions function as symbols, symptoms and signals. Andersson
et al. (op. cit.) imply that this also applies to items of bad language.
An insult which is metaphorical (being for instance praise-centred)
may have the function of a symbol; many insults derive from
metaphors, and have a similar function: bastard, dickhead, pimp are a
few examples. Even though historically most taboo terms have taken
on a symbolic value, synchronically they are nowadays employed
Chapter 1
6
without explicit reference to their semantic content. They often
become fixed, de-sematicised3 expressions, whose function cannot be
primarily metaphorical, in its strict rhetorical sense. Whenever the
denotative subsides under the connotative value of an expression, we
cannot really talk about symbolic function.
Curses and insults are rather distinguished by their symptomatic
function. They are almost invariably symptoms of the speaker’s
mood, psychology, assumed role, status or intention. Their
symptomatic value is often carried out by segmental and
suprasegmental features of their pronunciation. The same expression,
with varying intonation or rhythm, may convey hatred or admiration,
obtaining either an abusive or a praise-centred function. The
gemination of initial consonants may also change the communicative
function of expressions (cf. for instance the fairly common spelling
fffuck!, or the phrase you son of a bitch uttered with a compressed
rhythm and a strong final stress vs. a slower pronunciation with
central rather than final stress). Intonation is vital in this respect.
These expressions may also function as signals. Words signal the
participation of the interlocutor. This is particularly true of insults,
where expressions addressed to a listener trigger off his/her response;
participation in the interaction is less regulated by curses and
swearwords.
What’s clear in the discussion of all these functions is the centrality
of the context in defining what happens in terms of relation between
content, form and function.
Still commenting on the functions of taboo language, it is obvious
that, beyond the above mentioned expletive and abusive functions, we
also encounter an overall function that cuts across all other possible
3
When using the term desemantised a caveat is in order. Strictly speaking,
nothing in human languages is completely void of meaning. Even the interjections
and fillers edited out of the corpus (the various ah!, oh! ouch! etc.) have pragmatic
functions and therefore some meaning. By referring to a “desemanticised” element I
will indicate here cases of semantic loss or shift of such relevance that the item in
question has lost its known semantic denotations and connotations to become a mere
reflex, a propositional element totally void of creativity, conscious usage. A certain
amount o subjectivity is unavoidable whenever we decide which elements attain
such status.
Introductory Background
7
functions: it is the sociolinguistic function (Giraud, 1975). Vulgar
expression can be a clear mark of social status, both in their expletive
and abusive uses.
In a manner of summary, I’d like to quote a synoptic table from
Malavolti (2003, 56) in Table 2 below, which summarises the
preceding discussion.
Expression
Typology
Main Function
–Emotive-expressive
(symptom)
–Hostile:
offense centered –Conative-derogatory
(signal)
Insult
–Instrumental:
praise centred
/interactioncentred
–Emotive-expressive
(symptom)
–Phatic
(signal)
Features
–Intentionality
–Directionality
–Interpretation:
literal/metaphoric
–Intentionality
–Directionality
interactional –Interpretation:
context-bound
–Automatic
Cursing/Swearing –Self talk
–Emotive-expressive
(symptom)
–Phatic-interactional
(signal)
–Self-oriented
–Interpretation:
convenzional expression,
propositional
language
Table 2
1.3. Brief historical survey
Different ages have made and unmade different taboos. To feel the
taste of contemporary language always means to sip it filtered by the
awareness of past language.
It is not the main aim of this essay to write about the history of
swearwords, but a few landmarks can be useful in understanding the
8
Chapter 1
analysis that follows. Two works are particularly valuable in this
context, namely Montagu (1967) and Hughes (1991), to which I refer
in the present paragraph.
Swearing is attested in the Middle Ages as a form of crying out to
God for help, subsequently shifting to the function of swearing at or
against, which led to the modern use. In the Middle Ages linguistic
taboos concerned mainly the words of religion. The Elizabethan age,
with the great explorers and conquests, developed a sense of religious
difference and ethnic superiority of the British, whose language had to
be a model of terseness and refinement. “Good” and “bad”
expressions were identified, “bad” language frowned upon, to say the
least. Explicit bans on questionable language in plays appeared, and
the Puritan era added value to this prohibition by introducing physical
or pecuniary punishment. Latin curses were introduced to compensate
for the absence of native ones and euphemisms bloomed lavishly on
the literary and dramatic scene. ‘Sblood, ‘Snails, Zounds, Sbody,
Odbobs, Gadzooks and the like are such examples. With Charles II
and the Restoration, taboo language struck back and went somewhat
haywire, with the first testimonials to sexual taboo appearing in this
period. Cock reappeared (after being first created around 1400), and
fuck, prick and penis emerged during the course of the 1600s. Bad
language suffered a formal relapse in the Augustan and Victorian eras,
even though the latter was a time of linguistic contrasts; upper class
language was certainly sedated to a comatose state, but the lower
classes knew nothing about polite conversation and kept spicing up
their utterances with foul expressions. On the one hand we find new
euphemisms for words such as fuck: footer (attested from 1753), footy
(1785), frig (1785), frigging (1785), effing (1929), eff (1950). On the
other hand, rude language is for ever explicit among the masses of
illiterate folks. This may actually have always being the case, even
during the preceding historical periods of apparent literary cleanliness,
but whereas previously there were not many literary commentaries on
the language of commoners, during and after the Victorian age these
start to appear, so that we are now more conscious of the disparity
between upper and lower class language. Even though we have a
dictionary of ‘low’ English as early as 1604, during the Victorian
period several new ‘lists’ and dictionaries appeared.
Introductory Background
9
In short, from Medieval to modern English we notice a shift from
infringing taboos on religious terms towards breaking those on sexual,
ethnic and scatological terms. Some terms relating to sexual
intercourse are fully acceptable, others are still strong taboos – see for
instance the last four in the following list of terms for sexual
intercourse: reproduction, intercourse, congress, intimacy, carnal
knowledge, coupling, pairing, mating, shagging, banging, bonking,
fucking (Hughes, 1991, p.242). Yet, the most common terms in
everyday English are the last four, the others being relegated to
register-specific uses.
My impression about non-sexual taboos, is that rather than
targeting ethnic minorities only, bad language nowadays aims at
minorities in general, and this is obviously a culture-bound
phenomenon: in a given culture we may have a proliferation of
minority insults such as queer, gay, poof(ter), bugger, homo, lesbian,
dyke alongside ethnic ones, like nigger, Paki, wop. Targeting sexuality
rather than ethnicity is more typical of Mediterranean cultures,
perhaps due to their catholic background. Less so in northern
European cultures, where expressions of deviant sexuality are
infrequently used as insults in the spoken language.
Many terms have become more or less desemanticised, like most
derivatives from fuck. It may depend on frequency of use: the higher
the frequency of a taboo term, the greater the probability that its
original psychological impact will be watered down with tear and
wear to a weakened daily usage void of linguistic strength.
1.4. The psychology of abuse
One intriguing aspect of abusive and expletive language lies in its
psychological motivations. Bad language has almost always an
emotive connotation. This is an aspect which has not yet been widely
studied even though we can easily agree on its centrality (except Jay
(1992; 2000)).
We know that our brain processes and responds to information
differently in the two hemispheres. The left hemisphere controls
10
Chapter 1
analytical, rational, logical, structural processes like mathematical
computation, syntax, and the serialization of linguistic impulses. The
right hemisphere is gestaltic and controls general, emotional,
combinatory processes like global sound and visual composition, and
the semantic processing of language. It seems that this specialisation
carries over to the control of bad language too. As we see in people
affected by Tourette’s syndrome, localised brain damage can cause a
total lack of control over one’s foul language: Touretters show a
marked inability to communicate effectively, but deploy a very
forceful array of swearwords and insults, often without being able to
control their flow (Saphiro, Saphiro, Young, & Feinberg, 1988). The
condition can have various forms, from being a mere tic to producing
endless and uncontrollable outbursts of fierce abuse and cursing. All
this takes place in the context of heavy to total loss of normal
language skills. This is considered proof that “obscene vocabulary is
stored or accessed differently in the brain from other vocabulary”
(Allan & Burridge, 1991, p.24). We can pausibly extend this statement
to grammar at large, and claim that the brain has dedicated access
mechanisms no merely to obscene vocabulary but rather to obscene
grammar altogether, comprising lexis, pronunciation, syntax,
idiomatic expressions, etc.
It is thought that the control and inhibition of taboo language
belongs to the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere might
attend to the semantic repository for such expressions. It is interesting
to note in this respect that patients with left-hemisphere injury are
proficient at cursing and insulting specially out of context, whereas
right-hemisphere damage wipes this ability out. In the first case, the
ability to contextualise insults is clear, in the latter we lack the
semantic content for such expressions. “An act of cursing is the
product of left hemisphere decision making abilities and semanticsyntactic processing along with emotional processing in the right
hemisphere” (Jay, 2000, p.43). Jay (ibid.) even postulates the
existence of a Cursing Acquisition Device (CAD) in analogy with
Chomsky’s LAD, noticing how small children are quickly sensitive to
obscene language (and proficient at using them).
We know that the strength of taboo expressions lies in their
psychological and social ban. The force of an expression has nothing
Introductory Background
11
to do with intrinsic linguistic make-up (cf. above), but lies in the
disruption it is capable of achieving on a psychological and social
level. The stronger the ban, the more efficient the expression is felt to
be4.
Linguistic taboos can be direct or indirect, namely an expression
can be banned because it recalls a taboo object or because it is
considered a taboo in itself. Sexual words are generally forbidden
because they indirectly recall illegal boundaries; in some northern
Australian cultures, it is forbidden to pronounce a dead person’s
proper name (Lévi-Strauss, 1962). And phonetic similarity often
makes words unmentionable (cf. ass recalling arse).
What exactly contributes to the semantic make-up of a taboo word
has been long debated in the literature: Freud (1913) for instance
states that taboo words imply two opposing meanings: either they
indicate something sacred or something dangerous, sinister, impure.
Mead (1937) adds that taboos imply not only a sense of prohibition,
but also fear of punishment following the breach of an interdiction.
What seems to be at work in manufacturing taboo is a deep sense
of broken intimacy. In the ban relating to religious, sexual and
scatological taboos, there is a sense of respect for human individuality
in its most private recesses; a taboo concerns whatever is felt as most
personal, private, intimate of human beings. Whatever is
‘unshareable’ is consequently felt improper for public display or even
mention. To break a taboo is therefore to destroy or maim some sacred
ground of the individual’s unshareable intimacy.
Giraud (1975) talks about the obvious necessity to hide acts
relating to sexual love and defecation, for instance. And Allan and
Burridge (1991, p.52) quote a statement by Frazer recalling how many
communities believe that malevolent magic can be performed on a
person’s effluvia (blood, saliva, excrements, even nails and hairs); the
relative taboos on body parts producing such effluvia is meant to
protect the person. Again, this may be seen as a sign of respect for the
individual’s unshareable intimacy, to the point that bodily secretions
may represent a physical emanation of the human soul or its persona.
4
“To forbid something is to make it meaningful” (Lévi-Strauss, 1962).
12
Chapter 1
The mention of such elements, specially as curses, may or may not
have a magic power in the mind of the speaker, but it certainly
empowers language with the ability to cause disruption, destruction
and vengeance for a received or perceived wrong. This may contribute
to the explanation of the disruptive power attached to foul language.