Sách Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Title: Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Author(s): Keith Allan and Kate Burridge

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Date: 2006

Pages: 314

Size: 1.73 Mb

Format: PDF

Quality: High

Language: American English

Contents:

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 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.


Contents

List of figures

Acknowledgements

1. Taboos and their origins

2. Sweet talking and offensive language

3. Bad language? Jargon, slang, swearing and insult

4. The language of political correctness

5. Linguistic purism and verbal hygiene

6. Taboo, naming and addressing

7. Sex and bodily effluvia

8. Food and smell

9. Disease, death and killing

10. Taboo, censoring and the human brain

Notes

References

Index


About the authors

KEITH ALLAN is Reader in Linguistics and Convenor of the Linguistics Program at Monash University. His research interests focus mainly on aspects of meaning in language, with a second interest in the history and philosophy of linguistics. He has published in many books and journals, and is author of Linguistic Meaning (1986), Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon (with Kate Burridge, 1991), Natural Language Semantics (2001) and The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics (2007).


KATE BURRIDGE is Chair of Linguistics at Monash University. Her main research interests are on grammatical change in Germanic languages, Pennsylvania German, linguistic taboo, and the structure and history of English. She is a regular presenter of language segments on ABC radio. Her many published books include Blooming English (Cambridge, 2004) and Weeds in the Garden of Words (Cambridge, 2005).