The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language
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i THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF TABOO WORDS AND LANGUAGE Edited by KEITH ALLAN OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ii CONTENTS Notes on Contributors 1. Taboo words and language: an overview KEITH ALLAN 2. Taboo language and impoliteness JONATHAN CULPEPER 3. Taboos in speaking of sex and sexuality ELIECER CRESPO FERNÁNDEZ 4. Speaking of disease and death RÉKA BENCZES AND KATE BURRIDGE 5. The psychology of expressing and interpreting linguistic taboos TIMOTHY JAY 6. Taboo language awareness in early childhood TIMOTHY JAY 7. Swearing and the brain SHLOMIT RITZ FINKELSTEIN 8. STICKY: Taboo topics in deaf communities JAMI N. FISHER, GENE MIRUS, AND DONNA JO NAPOLI 9. Taboo terms and their grammar JACK HOEKSEMA 10. Taboo as a driver of language change KATE BURRIDGE AND RÉKA BENCZES 11. Problems translating tabooed words from source to target language PEDRO CHAMIZO DOMÍNGUEZ iii 12. Linguistic taboos in a second or foreign language JEAN-MARC DEWAELE 13. Philosophical investigations of the taboo of insult LUVELL ANDERSON 14. Religious and ideologically motivated taboos KEITH ALLAN 15. Speech or conduct? Law, censorship, and taboo language CHRISTOPHER HUTTON 16. Taboo language in books, films, and the media GABRIELE AZZARO 17. Taboos and bad language in the mouths of politicians and in advertising TOBY RALPH AND BARNABY RALPH 18. Taboo language used as banter ELIJAH WALD 19. Taboo language as source of comedy BARRY J. BLAKE 20. An anthropological approach to taboo words and language STANLEY H. BRANDES References Index iv Notes on contributors Keith Allan MLitt, PhD (Edinburgh), FAHA, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Monash University and Honorary AProf at the University of Queensland. Research interests: aspects of meaning in language; the history and philosophy of linguistics. Books include: Linguistic Meaning (1986; 2014); Euphemism and Dysphemism (with Kate Burridge, 1991); Natural Language Semantics (2001); Forbidden Words (with Kate Burridge, 2006); Concise Encyclopaedia of Semantics (2009); Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics (2010); Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics (with Kasia Jaszczolt, 2012); Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics (2013); Routledge Handbook of Linguistics (2016). Many contributions to scholarly books and journals. Email: [email protected]. Homepage: http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/keith-allan. Luvell Anderson (PhD, Rutgers University) is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. Before coming to Memphis, he was Alain Locke Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University. His research lies principally in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Race, and Aesthetics. He has published articles on the semantics of racial slurs and on racist humor and is co-editor of the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (Routledge Press). Professor Anderson is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the relationship the role of race and power in our discursive practice and the implications for cross-cultural understanding. Email: [email protected] Gabriele Azzaro has taught Italian language, literature and linguistics in the UK, English language and linguistics in various Italian universities, English linguistics and Technology for English Language Learning in the national teacher training programme at Bologna university. He is professor of English and English language Teaching Methodology. He has published on English syntax, L1 acquisition of English, digital analysis of spoken English, on taboo language in films and TV series, and is at present part of a research group on emotions in English language teaching. Email: [email protected] Réka Benczes is Associate Professor at the Institute of Behavioural Studies and Communication Theory, Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary), and an Affiliate of the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University (Australia). She is the author of Creative Compounding in English (2006; John Benjamins); Kognitív nyelvészet ([Cognitive linguistics] with Zoltán Kövecses, 2010, Akadémiai Kiadó); and dozens of articles on compounding, lexical creativity and metaphorical conceptualization. v Her most recent monograph, Rhyme over Reason: Phonological Motivation in English (2018, Cambridge University Press). Email: [email protected] Barry Blake retired from the position of Foundation Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University in 2003. His publications include Case (CUP 1994, 2001), Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language (Equinox 2007), All about Language (OUP 2008) and Secret Language (OUP 2010). His current research is on Australian Aboriginal languages and Present-Day English. Email: [email protected] Stanley H. Brandes holds a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught for over forty years. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Iberian Peninsula, Mexico, and the United States. His current research areas include animal-human relations, the history of anthropology in Europe, visual anthropology, ritual and religion, and food and drink. Brandes is the author of six books and numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews and communications. His interest in taboo language emerges most prominently in Metaphors of Masculinity (1980), Staying Sober in Mexico City (2002), and Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead (2006). Email: [email protected] Kate Burridge, FAHA, is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University. Her main areas of research are language change, the Pennsylvania German of Anabaptist communities in North America, notions of linguistic taboo, the structure and history of English. Recent books include Forbidden Words: Taboo and the censoring of language (with Keith Allan, 2006), Introducing English Grammar (with Kersti Börjars, 2010), Gift of the Gob: Morsels of English language history (2010), Wrestling with Words and Meanings (with Réka Benczes, 2014), For the Love of Language (with Tonya Stebbins, 2015), Understanding Language Change (with Alex Bergs, 2016). Email: [email protected] Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez is a Full Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Malaga (Spain), where he currently teaches Philosophy of Language and Translation of Philosophical Texts. His most recent publications deal with metaphor, taboo language, and the theory of translation, particularly false friends – to which devoted a book: Pragmatics and Semantics of False Friends (Routledge, 2010). He is currently working on (1) the relation between ambiguity/vagueness and euphemism, and (2) the way a philosopher’s thought can be understood from the translations of his/her works. Email: [email protected] Eliecer Crespo-Fernández is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Castile-La Mancha, Spain. His research interests focus on the semantic and vi pragmatic dimensions of euphemism and dysphemism. Books include: El eufemismo y el disfemismo (2007), El lenguaje de los epitafios (2014), Sex in Language. Euphemistic and Dysphemistic Metaphors in Internet Forums (2015), Describing English (2016), and co- authored Anglicismos sexuales en español. El inglés como recurso eufemístico y disfemístico en la comunicación virtual (2018). He has research articles in Text&Talk, Spanish in Context, and Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Currently editing a volume on taboo in discourse. Email: [email protected] Jonathan Culpeper is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK. His research spans pragmatics (especially sociopragmatics), stylistics (especially of plays) and the history of English (especially early modern English). His recent major publications include Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence (2011, CUP), Pragmatics and the English Language (with Michael Haugh, 2014, Palgrave), and The Palgrave Handbook on (Im)politeness (with Michael Haugh and Dániel Kádár, 2017, Palgrave). He was until recently co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pragmatics. Email: [email protected] Jean-Marc Dewaele is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism at Birkbeck, University of London. He is interested in individual differences in the experience and communication of emotion. He is President of the International Association of Multilingualism, former president of the European Second Language Association, and General Editor of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. He won the Equality and Diversity Research Award from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (2013) and the Robert Gardner Award for Excellence in Second Language and Bilingualism Research (2016) from the International Association of Language and Social Psychology. Email: [email protected] Shlomit Ritz Finkelstein earned her first PhD in theoretical physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1987, and in 2009 she earned her second PhD from Emory University, for which she conducted a multidisciplinary study of Tourette syndrome. She is currently an adjunct professor at the Emory’s psychology department researching the cognitive and neurolinguistic aspects of swearing. Email: [email protected] Jami Fisher is the American Sign Language Program Coordinator and Lecturer in Foreign Languages in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a native ASL user and CODA, born and raised in Philadelphia. Her current academic interests include integrating collaborative, Deaf community-based programming into ASL and