Euphemisation of Taboo Areas (2023) [pdf]

149 ISSN 2299–7164 Vol. 19 (2023) s. 149–161 Academic Journal of Modern Philology doi: 10.34616/ajmp.2023.19.10 Open Access. Published by Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch and College for Interdiscip linary Studies, University of Wrocław. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Grzegorz A. Kleparski University of Rzeszów, Department of English gkleparski@ur.edu.pl ORCID: 0000000298367892 On Extralinguistic Motivation in Semantic Change: Euphemisation of Taboo Areas Abstract This article is meant to be a contribution to the study of the multifaceted nature of taboo and euphemism that represent those linguistic mechanisms that are created by the working of both overt and covert social and psychological factors. And so, the process of sense derogation goes hand in hand with euphemisation, the process of using a new word to refer to an item or concept that for various reasons language users hesitate to talk about straightforwardly. Once a euphemism is accepted, the original term that has been subject to replacement tends to become even less acceptable, undergoing the process of accelerated pejoration. Above the individual level, the use of a particular lexical item may be interdicted by the rules imposed by a given society or a certain sphere within a given society. The mechanisms of taboo and euphemism affect lexical items relatable to various levels of the Great Chain of Being, starting with the suprahuman layer where there is the sphere of gods that has been universally subject to taboo, but also animal world where hunting taboos must ultimately be treated as a verbal tactic to obscure the hunter’s intentions; the usage rules are motivated by the fear that the hunted animals may understand the hunters’ speech and intentions. Keywords: taboo, area of taboo, euphemism, pejoration, psychological causes, political correctness Various analyses of historical meaning change point to the fact that – from the point of view of the advances of cognitive linguistics – one has grounds to claim that many such semantic developments are extralinguistically motivated, and they are generated by language external mechanisms of human cognition grounded in human experience. Radden and Panther (2004: 31) argue that a fully fledged theory that may aspire to bring to light the complete spectrum of causes must include a number of language independent factors, amongst others, cultural, social, psychological and anthropological motivations and conditionings. Here, we would like to concentrate on selected aspects of taboo and 150G A. K euphemism, and – in particular – an attempt shall be made to encircle the main areas of euphemisation that may be distinguished. Obviously, one of the objective difficulties that we face in any discussion of taboo and euphemism is that the criteria for what is pleasant, moral, acceptable and proper have varied in different periods of the history of mankind, geographical location, as well as socio cultural characteristics of a given nation. On the whole, the phenomenon of taboo works in various experiential areas, and the result is the rise of figurative substitution of tabooed lexical items, known as euphemism, which works as a linguistic veil on anything that is considered either unpleasant, immoral, unacceptable, improper and unwelcome. By nature, euphemisms are most frequently used to avoid those words and expressions that are directly under taboo, but also – not infrequently – they are employed to avoid a wide range of connotations that are negative in some way. In particular, it is fairly evident that many politicians and military men are wellknown for notoriously employing euphemisms in order to glamorise their views and actions or to veil the true nature of their outlooks and deeds. And so, for example, such abstract nouns as liberation or pacification have come to be resorted to in order to refer to very much downto earth acts of killing of people, and ethnic cleansing has become a somewhat clinical euphemism to express the sense ‘killing or expelling unwanted ethnic groups’. In the battlefield area one of the most recent innovations is the expression surgical operation that has become a recent medicine based passkey to encapsulate the idea of a well organised military action carried out to eliminate either enemy leaders or/and vital elements of an enemy’s critical infrastructure. More generally, in various cultures of the world the use of certain lexical items is believed to invite sinister, threatening or outright evil consequences, such as to expel demons, alienate the gods or activate meteorological calamities of different sorts and varying gravity. Such words that denote things/objects/ phenomena that are feared or felt offensive or/and unacceptable are frequently replaced by some kind of figurative equivalents, that is descriptive, round sounding terms that in some way render the word innocuous. A Zulu wife, for example, is not allowed to mention the name of her fatherinlaw or the names of his brothers (see: Anderson 1974: 179–180). In turn, the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands have developed – as richly documented by Jakobsen (1897) – extensive secondary vocabulary to name all parts of their fishing boats, species of fish and types of whether, that is, those aspects of their insular life they are so much dependent on. One may formulate the rule that says that if at some point of its history a word is struck by a taboo ban, it must be at some later stage replaced by a harmless and smooth sounding alternative that has come to be known as the noa term which is a Polynesian word for the word that replaces a taboo word, generally out of fear that the use of the original name may summon an object or action that is neither expected nor welcome. Language users resort to a number of mechanisms, among others they make use of lexical replacement, slight sense modification and radical sense transfer, in order to come to terms with the limits of social tolerance and/or peer acceptability, especially when they speak about what is either unmentionable or requires special verbal attention and care. It seems that the most important requirement that the euphemistic term has to meet is that it does not share the negative connotations of the dysphemistic term. Both taboo and euphemism have far reaching linguistic consequences on the processes of semantic change, and they oftentimes induce some form of lexical change. On the one hand, the most frequent result is that a pre existing word starts to be used in a novel sense. For example, in the 19th century tart – 151O E M  S C though present in the bakery sense since the Late Old English period – started to be used as a euphemism for bitch or prostitute (see: Kleparski 1986, 1990). In other cases, such as, for example, the case of the word gosh, the result of tabooisation is the rise of an entirely new lexical item that enters the vocabulary of a given language. For instance, in American English the lexical items donkey and rooster have replaced the nouns ass and cock respectively because of their homonymy with the latter pair that is under strong taboo. Obviously, lexical replacement is not necessarily limited to tabooed lexical items. Taboo and euphemism seem to represent those linguistic mechanisms, that are influenced, or – to put it more adequately – created by the working of both overt and covert social and psychological factors, for example in the process of sense derogation, as pointed out by, for example, Denning et al. (2007: 149) the process of sense derogation often goes hand in hand with euphemisation, the process of using a new word to refer to an item or concept that language users hesitate to talk about straightforwardly. Once a euphemism is accepted, the original term or terms that have been subject to replacement tend to become even less acceptable, undergoing the process of accelerated pejoration. On the whole, euphemism is a pervasive phenomenon so deeply woven into virtually every known culture, that one has grounds to claim that every human has been, as Williams (1975: 198) puts it, […] preprogrammed to find ways to talk around tabooed subjects. Above the individual level, not infrequently the use of a particular lexical item may be interdicted by the rules imposed by a given society or a certain sphere within a given society, a particular class of people or a particular professional group. Thus, for example, the word cripple is in present day English virtually taboo as a noun, being replaced by handicapped person or disabled person, and – moreover – some language users advocate the need for replacing the last two formations with such inventions as person with disability, handicapable or differently abled. On Gods, Popes and Devils: Religious Taboo What has come to be known as the Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life that begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals down to minerals. The mechanisms of taboo and euphemism affect many items relatable to various levels of the Great Chain of Being, starting with the suprahuman layer where there is the sphere of gods that has been universally subject to taboo. When we delve into the beginnings of human civilization we see that Bonfante (1939) regards the traditional manner of using the names of Ancient Greek gods accompanied by numerous epithets as a clear indication of religious taboo. The author maintains that the epithets of praise were meant to either hide and/or belittle the fact of pronouncing the particular name of god. This hypothesis gains more ground when we consider the fact that Judeo Christian religiousness forbids believers to pronounce the name of god in vain. Note that, for example, the name of the Jewish god Yahweh is considered so sacred that it cannot be read out, and hence it is replaced with other synonymous