Don't Say That!: Verbal Taboos in Society

World War II saw the awesome destructive power of the A-bomb as they exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that fateful August of 1945. The incredible magnitude of destruction caused by these historic bombs was so great that we have yet to see a comparable explosion since that day. The A-bomb is respected and feared.

It used to be that the A-bomb was not the only bomb that was respected and feared. The F-bomb too was respected and seldom used. But today, Americans are dropping F-bombs with reckless abandon. Men, women, and children alike unleash the power of the F-bomb at will.

Dropping the F-bomb (also known as "using the F word") is one of many ways to violate a verbal taboo. What is a taboo? According to Wardhaugh, the word "taboo" comes to us from a Polynesian language known as Tongan. It references the forbidden, that which is to be avoided. In modern society, "taboo" refers to "disapproved behaviors in a society." Says Chu: "Taboos are established because people believe that such inappropriateness will bring harmful consequences to them either because this non-verbal or verbal behavior violates a code based on supernatural beliefs or it violates the moral code of the society." He observes that "once taboos are formed in a country, references to them become taboo, too."

Certain concepts or phrases are taboo on an international level. In general, references to death, bodily effluvia, or sex are considered taboo, as well as blasphemy. Chu agrees, stating that "Two verbal taboos are probably universal. The first of these are words that deal with excretion and sex. [...] Second, in both Western and Asian cultures the fear of death carries over into fear of the words having to do with death." We would add to Chu's assessment the concept of blasphemy -- the mockery of whatever a culture believes about spirituality or religion. For instance, a Buddhist culture would disapprove of the mockery of Buddha, or a Christian culture would disapprove of using the name "Jesus Christ" as an expletive; these would therefore be verbal taboos.

Certain words are also considered taboo merely because they sound like a taboo word. For example, to many Chinese, giving a fan as a gift is a taboo because the Chinese word for "fan" sounds very like the word for "separation," which is associated with death (Chu). In American society, we avoid "bellicose, chambermaid, circumscribe, elicit, excavate (associated with 'evacuate'), excrescence (associated with 'excrement'), masticate, menstruation, privet, rapier, rumpus, sects, titter, vile (associated with 'bile'). Even the word 'vowel', which could be referred to the word 'bowel'. 'Roaches' started to oust American 'cockroaches' in the eighteen twenties; 'haystacks' were beginning to replace 'haycocks'" (Rubin).

Many cultures have non-verbal taboos as well. Breaking cultural standards of female modesty, or offensive gestures are some well-known examples. Shakepeare described the thumbing of the nose, or the biting of the thumb as giving offense in the cultural setting of Romeo and Juliet. Most Americans are familiar with the raising of the middle finger as an obscene gesture. These are non-verbal taboos, which are outside the scope of our purpose here, but it is good to be aware of them.

As a response to all of these topics, polite society developed the "euphemism." A euphemism is basically saying it without saying it. Burridge elaborates: "In contemporary Western society, euphemism is typically the polite thing to do, and offensive language (or dysphemism) is little more than the breaking of a social convention. Many euphemisms are alternatives for expressions speakers or writers would simply prefer not to use on a given occasion." Most common expletives are actually euphemisms for a select few taboo words. Dang, darn, dad blame it, fudge, frick, shoot, and tarnation are all examples of euphemisms for common curse words. But a euphemism isn't just for curse words. Euphemistic phrasing can be used to politely refer to any taboo topic. We have "restroom" to describe the room where no one really rests, and "passed away", "departed", or "was gathered to his fathers" to substitute for "died" (Chu). People who engage in sexual activity are "sleeping together," though they are certainly doing more than just sleeping.

The history of taboos in Western society is a fascinating one. Rubin describes how "in the Victorian era polite society covered the legs of pianos and other pieces of furniture so that the sight of naked legs would not offend the ladies." Taboos in past ages would seem to us a bit extreme: "in 1963, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals... designed bikinis for stallions, petticoats for cows, and boxer shorts for small animals, so as to shield the eyes of Americans from the sight of these animals' sexual organs" (Rubin).

Human anatomy has always held an element of taboo for polite society, as Rubin brilliantly describes:

One of the earliest victims of verbal prudery was the mention of various parts of the body. 'Belly' as early as 1375 was replaced by 'stomach'; and the word 'leg' seems to have engendered more distress than 'belly', especially in the United States, where even the mention of 'feet' was banned at one time. So 'legs' became 'limbs'; 'naked' in the proper English press still remains 'unclothed'; 'bosoms' refer to breast (Even breastpin in the USA in 1834 became 'bosom pin'.); and at the beginning of the century a 'breast of chicken' was referred to as the 'second wing'. Noah Webster (1833), the famous lexicographer, got down to bowdlerise the Bible. He replaced 'teat' with 'breasts', 'stink' with 'smell', 'in the belly' with 'in embryo', etc...

We are beginning to observe a progression: society becomes progressively more tolerant toward a taboo as people continually violate it. None of the above mentioned taboos are taboo to us any longer. Today's media serves us an almost limitless supply of things which were formerly taboo -- large-scale death, frequent casual sex, common references to bodily functions and anatomy. Ehrenhalt shows how the preponderance of sexual material in today's culture ruins its effectiveness for swearing:

"[We do not] believe in sex any more the way most American children and millions of adults believed in it a generation ago: as an act of profound mystery and importance that one did not engage in, or discuss, or even invoke, without a certain amount of excitement and risk. We have trivialized and routinized sex to the point where it just doesn't carry the emotional freight it carried in the schoolyards and bedrooms of the 1950's."

He concludes: "When sexuality loses its power to awe, it loses its power to create genuine swearing." It is little surprise, then, that swearing rarely inspires the awe it once did. Rubin gives us another example: "Neither the word 'syphilis' nor the word 'gonorrhea' was permissible in the U.S.A. till the mid-thirties: Efforts in the early years to diminish these words were successful in both the U.S.A. and Britain by prudery, especially the prudery of newspapers which referred to them by various euphemisms such as 'vice diseases', or 'a certain illness'." Today these words are not exactly embraced, but they are nonetheless acceptable. Burridge shows how words denoting "old people" have changed. "Words like geriatric and senile, once respectful terms for one's elders, have become highly contemptuous in the 20th century," she says. "So far the word senior as in senior citizen (replacing old-aged pensioner) has not yet acquired the same negative overtones as these two words, yet arguably it has already lost its euphemistic sheen." This is a reverse case of society's prejudices becoming attached to new euphemisms and forcing them to become taboos.

Ehrenhalt describes a typical modern encounter:

I am sitting in a meeting at the office, talking with a colleague about a business circumstance that may possibly go against us. "In that case, we're [expletive]," he says. Five years ago, he would have said "screwed." Twenty years ago, he would have said, "We're in big trouble." Societal tolerance of profanity requires us to increase our dosage as time goes on.

The overuse of verbal taboos in today's society leads to the taboos no longer being taboos at all. If a taboo is accepted by a culture, then by definition it is no longer a taboo. Ehrenhalt describes this phenomenon eloquently: "the supply of genuinely offensive language has dwindled almost to nothing as the 20th century comes to an end; the currency of swearing has been inflated to the brink of worthlessness. When almost anything can be said in public, profanity ceases to exist in any meaningful way at all."

Is it a good thing or a bad thing to get rid of verbal taboos? It could be a good thing -- if there are no curse words, no one will curse. If all words are acceptable, no one can be offended. But it's not that simple -- perhaps words which used to be taboo were considered such for very good reasons, and with the elimination of the cultural stigma on those words, words will be spoken freely everywhere that should not be spoken at all, or if so, they should be reserved for very special cases.

To answer this question, let us first consider the purposes that the violation of a verbal taboo serves. Ardó describes a theory postulated by Timothy Jay, called the "NPS theory of cursing." According to this theory, cursing results because we "operate under three interlocking systems: neurological control, psychological restrains, and socio-cultural restrictions."

According to Jay, at the neurological level, "cursing can be non-propositional or propositional. The former is an automatic response to pain, surprise, happiness, frustration or some other emotion, coming from the right hemisphere of the brain. The latter is, however, done creatively and often for highly strategic purposes such as dirty joke telling" (Ardó). The psychological considerations include "personality, religiosity, sexual anxiety, the sexual lexicon," etc., and the socio-cultural factors include "speaker power, gender identity, joke telling, verbal duelling, slang, magic, etiquette and law."

Ehrenhalt agrees on some level with Jay's theory, as he proposes several important purposes of swearing, the first being emotional release. Robert Graves authored a book in the 1920s called The Future of Swearing, in which he propounded the notion that "profanity [is] the adult replacement for childhood tears" (Ehrenhalt). He also mentions the "safety-valve" theory, set forth by anthropologist Ashley Montagu. She saw profanity as a safety valve, a "verbal substitute for physical aggression." When someone swears, Montagu wrote, "potentially noxious energy is converted into a form that renders it comparatively innocuous" (Ehrenhalt).

But Ehrenhalt hits on a frightening truth when he evaluates the function of swearing. For swearing to be effective, it must refer to some awe-inspiring concept, something perhaps just a little bit frightening. In his own words, "to profane something... one must believe in it." For example, unless someone truly believes in Jesus Christ, using his name will be impotent as a swear word. We would expand Ehrenhalt's notion to mean that either the speaker or the listener (be it a single person, or the culture or subculture at large) must believe in that which is being profaned. And now Ehrenhalt's rather disturbing insight: "The cheapening of profanity in modern America represents, more than anything else, the crumbling of belief."

So we can safely establish that the loss of taboos is a bad thing. We agree with Ehrenhalt's notion that "healthy societies need a decent supply of verbal taboos and prohibitions, if only as yardsticks by which ordinary people can measure and define themselves." Once what is taboo becomes culturally acceptable, those people who formerly had been rebels must look for something even more offensive to keep their rebel status.

The presence of verbal taboos serves a particularly interesting function in the subculture of the Church. The presence of words and concepts considered "offensive" or "vulgar" allows the Christian an opportunity to practice control over his or her tongue.

When profanity and blasphemy become accepted, what then is taboo? Oddly, there are only a very few words still considered taboo for their offensive content. But the new taboo is found in political correctness (see Burridge's article for detail).

What should the Christian's attitude be toward Verbal Taboos? For example, many Christians find themselves feeling guilty for finding cursing funny. They wonder why saying "s--t" is wrong, but saying "crap" is permissible, when the two words are essentially synonymous. And what about taking the Lord's name in vain? Ehrenhalt points out that "most Americans tell poll-takers that they believe in God, but few of them in a way that would make it impossible to take His name in vain." Even people who would never use his full name use euphemistic shortened versions without being aware of it. One might well imagine a Christian saying, "Geez, I would never take the Lord's name in vain! My gosh!"

On a broad scale, the Church is quite conservative, and as a result, has not followed society's trend toward making cursing mainstream. The church maintains the same standards of speech that it has for years, although as society becomes more and more profane, more and more euphemisms are being allowed in the Church. Likewise, though the Church has generally not gone along with "politically correct" trends, as society becomes more and more politically correct, the church finds itself using more and more politically correct jargon.

Scripture says "Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths" (Eph. 4:29, NIV). One of the Ten Commandments tells would-be followers not to take the Lord's name in vain. These Scriptures seem to indicate a position not only on the non-violating side of the fence, but a position well away from the fence itself. We might safely say that "unwholesome talk" includes many common euphemisms for those subjects considered to be culturally offensive i.e. excretion, anatomy, sex, etc.

What a person decides about what one is permitted to say is still a personal decision, but hopefully we have shed some light on the subject that was useful in formulating those decisions.

Works Cited

Ardó, Zsuzsanna. "Emotions, Taboos, and Profane Language"

Burridge, Kate. "Political Correctness: Euphemism With Attitude"

Chu, Man-Ping. "Do We Share the Same Taboos?: Cultural Influence on Language Choice" (link no longer exists)

Ehrenhalt, Alan. "Maledictoratory: The High Costs of Low Language"

Rubin, Norman A. "Mrs. Grundy's Studies in English Prudery"

Wardhaugh, R. An Introduction To Sociolinguistics, 2nd edition.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.