Problems translating tabooed words from source to target language

If translating is always a difficult art, translating tabooed words or phrases is particularly difficult since the translator has to take into account not only the usual linguistic problems such as polysemy, false friends, ambiguity, or anachronisms. S/he also has to take into account aspects that are not, strictly speaking, linguistic, but cultural and/or political. This chapter analyses how the problems translating not only patent and explicit tabooed words, insults, invectives have been handled in different translations of a single text, but veiled allusions as well. Since the kind of words I am dealing with are susceptible to being considered offensive in the target language, while they are not—or are not with the same intensity—in the source language, it is also shown how, consciously or unconsciously, translators have often softened or censored the exact scope of the original utterances in their translations.

Taboo language awareness in early childhood

This chapter investigates the emergence of English-speaking children’s taboo lexicon (taboo words, swear words, insults, and offensive words) between one and twelve years of age. It describes how the lexicon of taboo words children use shift over time to become more adult-like by age twelve. Less is reported regarding the question of what these taboo words mean to the children who say them. Judgments of ‘good’ words versus ‘bad’ words demonstrate that young children are more likely to judge mild words as bad than older children and adults. The methodological and ethical problems related to research on children’s use of taboo words are outlined as well as suggestions for conducting meaningful research with children in the future.

An anthropological approach to taboo words and language

The anthropological approach to taboo words and language begins with an understanding and acceptance of cultural relativity. Anthropologists are keenly aware that everyday speech that might be perfectly decorous in one society is often laughable or, in extreme cases, scandalous in another. Anthropologists also identify taboo words and language by popular responses to their utterance. According to anthropological definitions, tabooed behavior—be it verbal or otherwise—must be negatively sanctioned. Sometimes sanctions take the form of public rebuke. At other times they are expressed through collective scorn or ostracism. This essay explores these ideas with ethnographic examples chosen from the closely related fields of cultural anthropology and folklore. Supporting material comes from a variety of societies located in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Latin America, and—within the United States—Native America and African America. The author analyses nicknaming, verbal dueling, and various types of joking relationships, among other speech forms, as anthropologically prominent forms of tabooed language.

Swearing and the brain

This chapter explores and summarizes the current knowledge about the neurophysiological substrata of the utterance of expletives—its brain regions, pathways, and neurotransmitters, and its interaction with hormones. The chapter presents clinical data that have been gathered directly from patients of aphasia, Tourette syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain injuries—all are disorders often accompanied with expletives. It also discusses the possible relations between swearing and aggression, swearing and pain, and swearing and social inhibition in the population at large. Finally, the chapter examines the clinical data and the data gathered from the population at large within one frame, and proposes two hypotheses that can serve as possible directions for future research about the biological substrata of swearing. No previous knowledge of the brain is assumed.

Taboo language used as banter

Taboo is used in many cultures to cement familial and other relationships, not only by observing taboos but by selectively breaking them. Probably the most common form of societally sanctioned taboo-breaking is within what anthropologists call joking relationships—close relationships in which people are expected to show their affinity by behaving to each other in mocking or insulting ways that would be unacceptable outside the relationship. Such relationships have been found among many Native American groups and throughout Africa, typically involving people who are joined by particular kinship or ceremonial links. In the African diaspora these traditions are maintained in less formal ways, most famously in the dozens, an African American tradition of insult play that most typically involves sexualized or otherwise taboo-skirting insults directed at a companion’s or acquaintance’s mother.

Speech or conduct?

This chapter offers an analysis of the key forms of linguistic censorship found within common law jurisdictions and examines their legal rationale in terms of the distinction between speech and conduct. Case law domains examined include blasphemy, public order offences, obscenity and key literary trials, broadcasting, popular music, trademark law, and personal names. The culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s over censorship involved a two-way clash between the establishment and progressive activists. Today, issues such as hate speech, misogyny, and online trolling offer a challenge to notions of social liberation through the ending of taboo. Identity politics provides a framework for understanding the harm associated with certain forms of linguistic behaviour. While in many domains law has retreated from linguistic censorship, legal systems as well as global social media corporations continue to debate whether and how to control linguistic expression in different domains.

Taboo words and language

Taboo refers to a proscription of behaviour for a specifiable community of one or more persons at a specifiable time in specifiable contexts. For behaviour to be proscribed it must be perceived as in some way harmful to an individual or their community but the degree of harm can fall anywhere on a scale from a breach of etiquette to out-and-out fatality. All tabooed behaviours are deprecated and they lead to social if not legal sanction. Shared taboos are a sign of social cohesion. This chapter surveys the history of taboo, fatal taboos, uncleanliness taboos, exploitation of taboos, swearing, censoring, taboo as a source of language change, and finally reviews the content of this handbook.

Linguistic taboos in a second or foreign language

This chapter investigates the issues that arise when second and foreign language (LX) users include swearwords and taboo words in their speech. Knowing how to use these words appropriately requires considerable pragmatic competence. The difficulties that LX users face can arise from gaps in the semantic and conceptual representations of the LX swearwords and taboo words which leave them unsure about their exact meaning, their emotional force, their offensiveness, and their perlocutionary effects. Paradoxically, perfect knowledge of the LX is no guarantee for successful use of swearwords and taboo words because interlocutors might judge that LX users (identifiable though a foreign accent for example) do not have the right to use their swearwords and taboo words because they do not belong to the ‘in-group’. LX users are generally aware that LX swearing is a linguistic minefield that requires extra caution.

Taboos and bad language in the mouths of politicians and in advertising

The more that image matters, the more that profanities and taboos can affect the standing of an individual or brand. Profanity is able to make the individual who employs it seem dominant, amusing, or companionable. While there may be situations where it has a positive effect, however, there are others where it can be negative. It can make someone seem thoughtless, rude, out of control, or even threatening. Similarly, the breaking of cultural taboos can assist an individual in forming bonds, or cause them to be excluded, depending on the situation. The more that image is foregrounded as a concept in a given forum, the more that this becomes a danger. This chapter will look at the use and abuse of profanity and taboos in both advertising and politics, considering why it is so often avoided, as well as looking at what happens when it is not. There are numerous examples drawn from real life and these are framed within the discussion.

Philosophical investigations of the taboo of insult

What makes something an insult? There are various ways of insulting someone. We can insult directly or indirectly, via omission or commission, verbally or non-verbally, or with explicitly marked expressions or seemingly mundane language. What, if anything, ties all of these instances together under the banner of insult? And how does insult work? In this chapter, the concept of ‘insult’ is explored, offering a characterization of it as a mechanism that undermines reasonable expectations of respect. Attention is then turned to linguistic insults to investigate how they work, drawing on insights from Ernest Lepore and Matthew Stone. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how slur terms fit, raising and responding to possible objections to the account of their discursive role.