A Dynamic Study Of The Appropriateness Of Linguistic Taboo Uses

Linguistic taboos exist in all kinds of cultures in the world and they are both a social and a linguistic phenomenon. Linguistic taboos are a unique paradox in language communication. From their function as a social norm, they cannot be used, that is why they are called linguistic taboos. However, they are tools of expression, or they could hardly exist in language. In essence, linguistic taboos serve as a norm in language communication about ways of saying certain things that cannot be mentioned or talked about.Since language is always used in related contexts, the discussion and analysis of linguistic taboo uses in this thesis is mainly based on the Context Theory. According to Marlinowski, context can be distinguished into three types: (1) context of utterance; (2) context of situation, and (3) context of culture. Firth put forward the notion of the context of situation. The Context Theory and some other theories, such as Halliday's idea of Register, Grice's Cooperative Principle, Leech's Politeness Principle, and Brown and Levinson's Face Theory, serve collectively as the theoretical background of the thesis.Linguistic taboos come into existence and develop with human society, and they have become a particular linguistic system which has continued through different stages of human history—the primitive superstitious stage, the feudal patriarchal stage, and the modern democratic stage. Words and expressions that are considered linguistic taboos share some features in common: objectivity and universality, diversity and particularity, and stability and temporality. Since linguistic taboos involve many things and phenomena they refer to, they are divided into five major types in the thesis: (1) linguistic taboos associated with name; (2) linguistic taboos associated with sex; (3) linguistic taboos associated with bodily excrement; (4) linguistic taboos associated with unfavorable matter, and (5) linguistic taboos associated with profession. Since linguistic taboos develop and change with time, some of them have remained as taboo words for centuries, others, after a period of time, may have been used in normal speech. Additionally, some non-taboo or newly created words may join this category when the things they refer to become tabooed in our society. Further more, from the rhetorical point of view, the taboo phenomenon in language is rather extensive. Communication is a dynamic process of transmitting messages. In this process, communicators intentionally code their behaviors into messages which are transmitted from the encoder to the decoder in order to induce and elicit particular attitudes or behaviors. A communication is likely to be successful if the encoded and decoded messages are similar. Otherwise, discrepancy is likely to interfere with the success of the communication. But the similarity is often dependent on, or limited by, the fact that the encoder and the decoder share some mutual experiences and similar referential frames. Linguistic taboos are violated when they are used in communication, but when people observe the linguistic taboo phenomenon they usually use euphemisms to replace the taboo words. Due to the sensitive nature of linguistic taboos, people usually avoid using them, but in fact, linguistic taboos are used in some real situations, including in intercultural communication, and in different ways. These uses of linguistic taboos are studied in the thesis applying a descriptive approach and with examples.The appropriateness is a matter of evaluating any human behavior. It refers to the fact that a behavior is suitable, acceptable or correct for particular circumstances. The appropriateness of a linguistic behavior, especially the linguistic behavior concerning taboo words as discussed in the thesis is to be studied according to the context in which the behavior takes place. Considering the appropriateness of linguistic taboos in communication, context is of crucial importance. Mainly based on the context theory, the thesis engages in analyzing how the contextual factors—participants, setting and activity influence the use of linguistic taboos. Besides, some other factors such as psychological factors, cultural factors (religion, value and social convention) and politeness are closely related to this analysis.In this thesis, the qualitative analysis of linguistic taboo uses is tentative, and the main conclusion is that the use of language should match the contextual restrictions. Generally speaking, if all the contextual factors are supposed to be permissive, the linguistic taboo uses can be considered appropriate. Language users should try to make a dynamic analysis of the appropriateness of linguistic taboo uses with a comprehensive examination of the context and a consideration of other related factors in communication, so as to make human communications more reasonable and harmonious.