英汉禁忌语的文化根源(英文)

Abstract: Taboo is a kind of very common phenomenon and exists in almost every field of daily life. Being a common social-cultural phenomenon, taboo is the extension of people’s self-protection psychology. As people live in different times and societies, and the language they use belong to different categories, accordingly this kind of language variation created by them are varied, and reflect various social cultures and values. The paper talks about the classification, characteristics, functions, etc of Chinese and English verbal taboos and the related cultural root to make people understand the different culture and use the English language decently and skillfully in our cross-cultural communication.

Key words: Verbal taboo; Psychology; Culture

摘  要：禁忌是一种非常普遍的现象它几乎存在于日常生活的各个领域。作为一种普遍的社会现象，禁忌是人们自我保护的心理的延伸。人们生活在不同的时代不同的社会，他们所用的语言也属于不同的种类。由于语言的多样性因此反映了不同的文化和价值。本文试图从英汉禁忌语的种类，性质，功能等方面论述其背后的不同文化根源让人们了解不同的文化并且在跨文化交际中合理恰当的运用英语。

关键词：语言禁忌；心理；文化

Introduction
Language communication is the most important means by which people maintain their social relationship. During their communication, people will inevitably encounter unpleasant situations. Using direct and definite language to talk about unpleasantness will undoubtedly displease both sides and possibly affect their relationship. Taboo is closely related cultural and linguistic phenomena of human society. Almost any of the cultures in the world has its own taboo. The word “taboo” is from Polynesian, meaning “sacred” or “accused”. The word taboo (also spelled tabu) was first used by Captain James Cook in 1777 in his journal; he had heard the word from the speakers of Tongan, a Polynesian language. It referred originally to persons, activities (including speech), or things under prohibition. Afterwards, it was borrowed into English.
Taboo can be classified into verbal taboo and non-verbal taboo. Verbal taboo means in the process of communication, people can not, dare not or do not want to say some words, they take the attitude of avoiding taboo because of some reasons. Some of these words are considered as dangerous, holy, and some of them are considered as embarrassing, they are limited to be used by somebody in some places. And there are two aspects of verbal taboo: one is word–fetishism; the other is the forbidden use of language. In uncivilized and crude society, the primitives were often confronted with puzzling and threatening situations and phenomena, such as death and diseases. As they could not understand and explain the extraordinary events and performance, success and failure, they worshiped, and even dreaded the supernatural. Such psychology leads to superstition, and then developed into Fetishism. The specific language was also defied, that is, Word Fetishism. Out of the worship of gods and ghosts, their names must be avoided. So their names became the earliest taboo words, and other words used to replace them became the earliest euphemisms. When a taboo word is abandoned, people have to find another word to fill up the vacancy.

1  Taboo
The glamour of language exists nearly in every aspect. English and Chinese taboos are currently undergoing intriguing changes with the changing times and conceptions.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net