Introduction: Beyond Bad Words

Abstract

As that which ought not to be said, taboo speech involves moral life of language. Efforts to proscribe speech may be justified variously, by appeal to religious dictates, state policy, or etiquette. They may be conventionalized and institutionalized, policed and punished in myriad ways. But a familiar irony haunts all these efforts: proscription is, in a word, productive (cf. Foucault 1978, Butler 1997). The more intense interdiction, more power seems to accrue to transgressive act. From Freud's theory of subconscious repression to laments over failure and futility of civility campaigns, this irony is a familiar one. The more that taboo acts are prohibited, more their power seems to grow. The same is true for language Under proscriptive regimes, like FCCban on obscenities on broadcast television and radio, or edicts of royal court in Tahiti prohibiting utterances of king's name (Simons 1982), one can't even innocently mention a taboo expression, by embedding wayward curse in a quote, for instance, without utterance counting as a taboo use. Verbal taboos are, properly speaking, unmentionable. Ironically, proscriptions and even appropriate substitutes these regimes recommend (e.g., euphemisms, circumlocutions, special citational forms like the F-word) make taboo utterances more salient. And rather than fix or stabilize a speaker's relation to taboo object- by ensuring a safe, respectful distance, for instance-proscription and efforts at containment seem to make such relations less stable. As conventions, they may now be flouted, parodied, played upon, or otherwise altered for strategic and interactional effect. These essays on moral life of language thus explore dynamic affordances and instabilities of verbal taboo, with cases that draw on diverse languages from sites and populations across globe. In addressing manifold ways in which proscription is productive, we push past an earlier literature that saw verbal taboo as a matter strictly of avoidance and control, and as involving mechanical reproduction of cultural norms and values. 1. Unmentionables as Performatives. A core irony explored in this issue is way proscriptions can intensify performativity of would-be taboos items, investing prohibited forms with a seemingly inherent power and efficacy, to extent that expressions are seen to have inescapable, indefeasible effects. John Austin (1962), it may be recalled, argued that speech-act performativity depends in part on features of context, which he formulated in terms of For a wedding to be successful, individual who says I now pronounce you man and wife must be an ordained minister, couple willing, and a witness present. Such felicity conditions precede, condition, and otherwise constrain performativity of language; without them performative utterance wouldn't count as an act. But taboo utterances (e.g., saying F-word on FCC-regulated broadcasts or uttering Tahitian king's name) rest on few, if any, such conditions. Like pragmatic prefabs or readymades, these expressions seem to have their context coiled tight inside. Utter them, and they count as a social act (as profanity, blasphemy, social injury, etc.) irrespective of felicity conditions like intentions of speech participants or institutional authority of speaker to engage in act. Quote a verbal taboo in a reported speech construction and you risk replicating offense. Unmentionables may become so essentialized that their performativity comes to rest on few if any felicity conditions, demonstrating a seldom appreciated point: performativity is gradient, a matter of degree.1 The strong indexicals-from curse words to stigmatized dialects-that authors in this volume discuss represent points at far end of this continuum. 2. Hazards of Addressivity. Strong performatives usher into existence not just actions, like 'blasphemy,' but addressees. …