Linguistic Taboo Revisited

Linguistic taboo has been relegated for a long time to a peripheral position within Linguistics, due to its social stigmatization and inherent linguistic complexity. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in revisiting the phenomenon, especially from cognitive frameworks. This volume is the first collection of papers dealing with linguistic taboo from that perspective. The volume gathers 15 chapters, which provide novel insights into a broad range of taboo phenomena (euphemism, dysphemism, swearing, political correctness, coprolalia, etc.) from the fields of sexuality, diseases, death, war, ageing or religion. With a special focus on lexical semantics, the authors in the volume work within Cognitive Linguistics frameworks such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, cultural conceptualization or cognitive sociolinguistics, but also at the interface of pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, cognitive science or psychiatry. This volume provides theoretical reflections and case studies based on new methods and data from varied languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gikũyũ and Egyptian Arabic). As such, it moves towards a new generation of linguistic taboo studies.

Linguistic taboo has been relegated for a long time to a peripheral position within Linguistics, due to its social stigmatization and inherent linguistic complexity. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in revisiting the phenomenon, especially from cognitive frameworks. This volume is the first collection of papers dealing with linguistic taboo from that perspective. The volume gathers 15 chapters, which provide novel insights into a broad range of taboo phenomena (euphemism, dysphemism, swearing, political correctness, coprolalia, etc.) from the fields of sexuality, diseases, death, war, ageing or religion. With a special focus on lexical semantics, the authors in the volume work within Cognitive Linguistics frameworks such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, cultural conceptualization or cognitive sociolinguistics, but also at the interface of pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, cognitive science or psychiatry. This volume provides theoretical reflections and case studies based on new methods and data from varied languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gikũyũ and Egyptian Arabic). As such, it moves towards a new generation of linguistic taboo studies.

The “THINKING: Bioengineering of Science and Art” is to discuss about philosophical aspects of thinking at the context of Science and Art. External representations provide evidence that the fundamental process of thinking exists in both animal subjects and humans. However, the diversity and complexity of thinking in humans is astonishing because humans have been permitted to integrate scientific accounts into their accounts and create excellent illustrations for the effects of this integration. The book necessarily begins with the origins of human thinking and human thinking into self and others, body, and life. Multiple factors tend to modify the pattern of thinking. They all will come into play by this book that brings thinking into different disciplines: humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and applied sciences. The thinking demands full processing of information, and therefore, the book considers the economy of thinking as well. The book thoroughly intends to explore thinking beyond the boundaries. Specifically, several chapters are devoted to discipline this exploration either by artistic thinking alone or by art and mathematics-aided engineering of complexities. In this manner, the book models variations on thinking at the individual and systems levels and accumulates a list of solutions, each good for specific scenarios and maximal outcomes.

This volume brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines to define and describe tabooed words and language and to investigate the reasons and beliefs behind them. In general, taboo is defined as a proscription of behaviour for a specific community, time, and context. In terms of language, taboo applies to instances of language behaviour: the use of certain words in certain contexts. The existence of linguistic taboos and their management lead to the censoring of behaviour and, as a consequence, to language change and development. Chapters in this volume explore the multiple types of tabooed language from a variety of perspectives, such as sociolinguistics, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, historical linguistics, and neurolinguistics, and with reference to fields such as law, publishing, politics, and advertising. Topics covered include impoliteness, swearing, censorship, taboo in deaf communities, translation of tabooed words, and the use of taboo in banter and comedy.

This book reflects on the ways in which metaphor and metonymy are used conceptually and linguistically to mitigate the more difficult dimensions of death and dying, setting out a unique line of research within Conceptual Metaphor Theory.// The volume argues that metaphor and metonymic descriptions of death and dying reflect taboos, concealment, and other considerations not found in figurative descriptions of life, producing distinct forms of euphemism, frames, and mental spaces particular to conceptualisations of death. The first part focuses on the more palatable concepts which metaphorically structure and help to better understand death. The second section takes a closer look at metonymy to illuminate the ways in which it allows a person to zoom in on death’s more inoffensive dimensions or zoom out on its more troubling aspects. A wide range of classical and modern examples from European, Asian, Australian Aboriginal, and African languages and cultures showcase points of overlap and divergence. // Opening up new lines of inquiry into research on death and dying and offering a linguistically-focused complement to anthropological and religious studies on the topic, this book will be of interest to scholars in cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, and cultural studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish provides an up-to-date overview of the latest research examining sociolinguistic approaches to analyzing variation in Spanish. Divided into three sections, the book includes the most current research conducted in Spanish variationist sociolinguistics. This comprehensive volume covers phonological, morphosyntactic, social, and lexical variation in Spanish. Each section is further divided into subsections focusing on specific areas of language variation, highlighting the most salient and current developments in each subfield of Hispanic sociolinguistics. As such, this Handbook delves further into the details of topics relating to variation and change in Spanish than previous publications, with a focus on the symbolic sociolinguistic value of specific phenomena in the field. Encouraging readers to think critically about language variation, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers seeking to explore lesser-known areas of Hispanic sociolinguistics. The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish will be a welcome addition to specialists and students in the fields of linguistics, Hispanic linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

Why do people take offence at things that are said? What is it exactly about an offending utterance which causes this negative reaction? How well motivated is the response to the offence? Offensive Language addresses these questions by applying an array of concepts from linguistic pragmatics and sociolinguistics to a wide range of examples, from TV to Twitter and from Mel Gibson to Donald Trump. Establishing a sharp distinction between potential offence and actual offence, Jim O'Driscoll then examines a series of case studies where offence has been caused, assessing the nature and degree of both the offence and the documented response to it. Through close linguistic analysis, this book explores the fine line between free speech and criminal activity, searching for a principled way to distinguish the merely embarrassing from the reprehensible and the censurable. In this way, a new approach to offensive language emerges, involving both how we study it and how it might be handled in public life.