浅析中英语言禁忌(1)(5)
2017-08-09 01:22
导读：3.2 In vocabulary “Roughly speaking, taboo words in English fall into three types, namely obscenities, profanities and vulgarities”.[9] Based on this classification, the part firstly analyzes the
3.2 In vocabulary
“Roughly speaking, taboo words in English fall into three types, namely obscenities, profanities and vulgarities”.[9] Based on this classification, the part firstly analyzes the three types as follows:
3.2.1 In obscenities
Obscene words refer to words relating to sex in a shocking and offensive way. That is to say, obscene words may cause offence to the social moral principles. They usually go out of use in public occasion and cannot appear in literary language. These words are related to human beings sexual behaviors. In both English and Chinese, these words are to be avoided in polite conversations, because they may cause strong disapproval.
In America, the Sexual Revolution in 1960s and 70s made people more open toward sex, but now words such as “making love” and “having sex” still seldom appear directly in writing, let alone in conversation. Western people are serious towards sex terms to a certain degree, so to speak.
The Chinese people also treat terms on sex seriously. Chinese people always use the expression of “ 作风问题”or“不正当关系”to show the immoral relationship between a man and a woman.
As we all know, pregnancy is a normal physiological phenomenon, but in daily life, people won’t say it directly, as it is related to sex. If someone is pregnant, English people will say, “she is expecting a baby” or “she is in a family way”. Similar euphemisms can be found in Chinese “有喜了”, “行动不便了”.
3.2.2 In profanities
Profanities refer to religious words used in a way that shows a lack of respect for God or holy things. Religion is a fertile field of this type of taboo terms. A typical example is that Christian cannot refer to God or God’s name. “The Ten Commandments forbid people to ‘take the name of the Lord your God in vain’. So it is considered very rude to say ‘goddame’ or ‘goddamned’”. [10] The words such as “God,” “Jesus,” “damn” and “hell” etc, are considered holly and only properly used in religion. If they appear in daily communication, they will make people unpleasant and disgusted. So people always try to avoid using these taboo words directly. They would like to use their euphemisms “Gosh,” “Jeepers creepers,” “dash” and “heck”. Some people also avoid referring to the devil, which is considered disrespectful. So they use “the deuce”, “the dickens”, “ old Nick” to substitute “ the devil”.
（科教论文网 Lw.nsEAc.com编辑整理）
We can find similar examples in Chinese. In religion, people use some complimentary address to refer to awesome gods, e.g. “大帝”, “大圣”, “佛陀 (Buddha)”. Another example is that, tiger is regarded as the divine animal near the Changbai Mountain situated in the Northeast of our country. Therefore, there was the custom of “tiger is the god” in ancient times. People avoided calling the “tiger” directly and gave the tiger another name, “山君” or “山佛爷”.
3.2.3 In vulgarities
Both in English and Chinese the vulgar words are usually rude and offensive and bring about unpleasantness, anger or conflicts.
