Forbidden Words

Abstract

Many words and expressions are viewed as 'taboo', such as those used to describe sex, our bodies and their functions, and those used to insult other people. This 2006 book provides a fascinating insight into taboo language and its role in everyday life. It looks at the ways we use language to be polite or impolite, politically correct or offensive, depending on whether we are 'sweet-talking', 'straight-talking' or being deliberately rude. Using a range of colourful examples, it shows how we use language playfully and figuratively in order to swear, to insult, and also to be politically correct, and what our motivations are for doing so. It goes on to examine the differences between institutionalized censorship and the ways individuals censor their own language. Lively and revealing, Forbidden Words will fascinate anyone who is interested in how and why we use and avoid taboos in daily conversation.

Subtitling Tarantino’s offensive and taboo dialogue exchanges into european spanish: the case of Pulp Fiction

“…English usage is characterised by two markedly different registers, that is, a higher register (formal utterances, professional and literary language) and a lower register (ordinary conversation, situation comedy or sitcom, dirty story, etc.). The object of this study is centred on the lower register, and more particularly on offensive language (Hughes, 2006;Díaz Cintas, 2012;Filmer, 2014) and taboo language (Allan and Burridge, 2006;Jay, 2009), although there are other terms coined by other authors such as bad language (Azzaro, 2005;McEnery, 2006), dirty language (Jay, 1980), emotionally charged language (Díaz Cintas and Remael, 2007). foul language (Wajnryb, 2005), rude language (Hughes, 2006), strong language (Lung, 1998;Scandura, 2004), to cite some of them.…”

Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape

“…He explicates how their expressions of concern -that the campaign has a dampening effect on the ability to have a meaningful public discussion about the nature of intellectual disability, that it violates freedom of expression -are effectively rendered irrelevant because the campaign has already moved into the mobilization of affect phase. The analysis combines insights from studies of language ideological debates (Blommaert, 1999) and verbal hygiene (Allan and Burridge, 2006;Cameron, 1995) to highlight how it is that some discourse practices come to be authoritatively entextualized over others, particularly in an age when a significant amount of public discussion tends to take place in cyberspace.…”

“…This comparison helps to also highlight how it is that some discourse practices come to be authoritatively entextualized over others, particularly in an age when a significant amount of public discussion tends to take place in cyberspace. In this regard, the analysis of the R-word campaign allows us to bring together insights from studies of language ideological debates (Blommaert, 1999) and verbal hygiene, particularly political correctness (Allan and Burridge, 2006;Cameron, 1995), to enrich our understanding of how the digital affordances of the linguistic cyberscape impact on attempts to influence the social circulation of linguistic resources (cf. Stroud and Mpendukana, 2009, p. 364), within cyberspace as well as in the world outside.…”

Conceptualist semantics: explanatory power, scope and uniqueness

“…Expletives like hurray, yum, woops, damn and ouch are standardly acknowledged not to be 'descriptive', but 'expressive': to require, that is, an emotional rather than a conceptual identification of meaning (Leech, 1981;Lasersohn, 2005;Allan and Burridge, 2006;Potts, 2007;Potts et al, 2009;cf. Jackendoff, 2007).…”