Taboo topics in contemporary foreign language teaching with the special review on Spanish language

Abstract

There is more and more attention given to development of inter-cultural competence of students in contemporary foreign language, and this is why knowing cognitive cultural models of the community which language is being learnt is of a great significance of students of any foreign language so that they can use the language adequately in real communicative situations. In this paper, taboos and euphemisms are presented as examples of cognitive cultural models, and this is why in the paper we are focusing at the significance of these two models in the context of foreign language teaching, with the special review on the Spanish language as L2. The aim of this paper is to offer replies to questions concerning the inclusion of taboos or euphemisms into the foreign language teaching. Apart from the theoretical part of the paper, there was a questionnaire done among the students of the final year of Spanish language and Hispanic literature at the Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University. The results of the research show that students of Spanish are in most cases aware of the existence of taboos, but that they avoid talking about taboo topics. Nevertheless, students think that taboo topics should be included into teaching Spanish.