Taboo Language Quotes

We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them thatexcrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules.

For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

I am not sure if we are numbed to the reality of rape, but here's the sad irony. While the word rape can add an edginess to your language, talking about actual rape is taboo. I didn't know this until one of my friends was raped. Then I knew this, because I didn't want to tell anyone. If she were mugged, I would have told everyone and raged.

The worst possible sexual education: a taboo imposed by the Catholic church plus romantic literature elevating love to unreal heights plus the obscene language of my peers. After all, I was nearly born in the nineteenth century, and I have no tender feelings for it.

Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend's rape. She ended not with an appear for women's rights or self defense, but by begging us to consider our language. We use the word 'rape' so casually, for sports, for a failed test, to spice up jokes. 'The test raped me.' 'His smile went up to justifiable rape.' These references confer casualness upon the word, embedding it into our culture, stripping it of shock value, and ultimately numb us to the reality of rape.

Eskimos have five words for different kinds of snow, because they live with it and it is important to them. But the Aztec language has but one word for snow, rain, and hail.

Language is a powerful tool of social control: as sex became repressed, words linking to the body became taboo. After all, how can we enjoy the sexuality of our bodies, shame free, when the very words we use to talk about them, think about them or write about them are considered obscene?

Do as you like, a minimal maxim, an old favorite of mine, so exalting and at the same time so difficult as a Rabelesian rule. I hold the liberation theory that the best writers liberate the language from taboos, tattoos, cockatoos, repetitions, old fashion repressions and expressions, clichés, fetters, and so forth. For this reason I call it sometimes liberature for short, this liberating literature.

...for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celbrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

The part of our being (mentality, feeling, physicality) which is free of all control let's call our 'unconscious'. Since it's free of control, it's our only defense against institutionalized meaning, institutionalized language, control, fixation, judgement, prison. Ten years ago, it seemed possible to destroy language through language: to destroy language that normalizes and controls by cutting that language. Nonsense would attack the empire-making (empirical) empire of language, the prisons of meaning. But this nonsense, since it depended on sense, simply pointed back to the normalizing institutions. What is the language of the 'unconcious'? (If this ideal unconscious or freedom doesn't exist: simply pretend that it does, use fiction, for the sake of survival, for all of our survival.) Its primary language must be taboo, all that is forbidden. Thus an attack on the institutions of prison via language would demand the use of language or languages that are which aren't acceptable, which are forbidden. Language, on one level, constitutes a series of codes and social and historical agreements. Nonsense doesn't per se break down the codes; speaking precisely that which the codes forbid breaks the codes.

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4.

Some Austronesian words borrowed into English include ‘taboo’ and ‘tattoo’ (from a Polynesian language), ‘boondocks’ (from the Tagalog language of the Philippines), and ‘amok,’ ‘batik,’ and ‘orangutan’ (from Malay).

The more obsessed with personal identity campus liberals become, the less willing they become to engage in reasoned political debate. Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: 'Speaking as an X' . . . This is not an anodyne phrase. It tells the listener that I am speaking from a privileged position on this matter. (One never says, 'Speaking as an gay Asian, I fell incompetent to judge on this matter'). It sets up a wall against questions, which by definition come from a non-X perspective. And it turns the encounter into a power relation: the winner of the argument will be whoever has invoked the morally superior identity and expressed the most outrage at being questioned. So classroom conversations that once might have begun, 'I think A, and here is my argument', now take the form, 'Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B'. This makes perfect sense if you believe that identity determines everything. It means that there is no impartial space for dialogue. White men have one "epistemology", black women have another. So what remains to be said? What replaces argument, then, is taboo. At times our more privileged campuses can seem stuck in the world of archaic religion. Only those with an approved identity status are, like shamans, allowed to speak on certain matters. Particular groups -- today the transgendered -- are given temporary totemic significance. Scapegoats -- today conservative political speakers -- are duly designated and run off campus in a purging ritual. Propositions become pure or impure, not true or false. And not only propositions but simple words. Left identitarians who think of themselves as radical creatures, contesting this and transgressing that, have become like buttoned-up Protestant schoolmarms when it comes to the English language, parsing every conversation for immodest locutions and rapping the knuckles of those who inadvertently use them.

My problem as a writer, using words, is to dispel the illusions of language while employing one of the languages that generates them. I can succeed only on the principle of “a hair of the dog that bit you.

In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation... a narcissism of minor differences.

Crawley, in language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation... a narcissism of minor differences.

The dissolving, uniting forces combine what to us have been incompatible: attraction with repulsion, darkness with light, the erotic with the destructive.  If we can allow these opposites to meet they move our inner resonance to a higher vibratory plane, expanding consciousness into new realms.  It was exciting, through my explorations some of which I share in later chapters, to learn firsthand that the sacred marriage or coniunctio, the impulse to unite seeming opposites, does indeed seem to lie at the heart of the subtle body’s imaginal world. One important characteristic of the coniunctio is its paradoxical dual action.  The creative process of each sacred marriage, or conjoining of opposites, involves not only the unitive moment of joining together in a new creation or ‘third,’ but also, as I have mentioned, a separating or darkening moment.5 The idea that “darkness comes before dawn” captures this essential aspect of creativity.  To state an obvious truth we as a culture are just beginning to appreciate.  In alchemical language, when darkness falls, it is said to be the beginning of the inner work or the opus of transformation. The old king (ego) must die before the new reign dawns. The early alchemists called the dark, destructive side of these psychic unions the blackness or the nigredo.  Chaos, uncertainty, disillusionment, depression, despair, or madness prevails during these liminal times of  “making death.” The experiences surrounding these inner experiences of darkness and dying (the most difficult aspects were called mortificatio) may constitute our culture’s ruling taboo. This taboo interferes with our moving naturally to Stage Two in the individuating process, a process that requires that we pass through a descent into the underworld of the Dark Feminine realities of birthing an erotic intensity that leads to dying. Entranced by our happily-ever-after prejudiced culture, we often do not see that in any relationship, project or creative endeavor or idea some form of death follows naturally after periods of intense involvement.  When dark experiences befall, we tend to turn away, to move as quickly as possible to something positive or at least distracting, away from the negative affects of grieving, rage, terror, rotting and loss we associate with darkness and dying. As

Looking back now, what I experienced in the wake of the Goldman piece was a lesson in the subtle truth about class politics in this country. Which is this: you can pick on the rich in an ironic, Arrested Development sort of way, you can muss Donald Trump's hair, you can even talk abstractly about class economics using clinical terms like "income disparity." But in our media you're not allowed to just kick the rich in the balls and use class-warfare language. The taboo isn't so much the subject matter, the taboo is the tone.

Rock 'n' roll was very simple music. All that mattered was the noise it made, its drive, its aggression, its newness. All that was taboo was boredom. The lyrics were mostly non-existent, simple slogans one step away from gibberish. This wasn't just stupidity, simple inability to write anything better. It was a kind of teen code, almost a sign language, that would make rock entirely incomprehensible to adults. In other words, if you weren't sure about rock, you couldn't cling to its lyrics. You either had to accept its noise at face value or you had to drop out completely.

We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.

THE ENGLISH WORD BEAR comes to us from a Germanic root, bero, meaning “the brown one” or “the brown thing.” In some Scandinavian languages, the word for bear derives from the phrase “honey eaters.” Many linguists believe these names are substitutes, created because speaking or writing the actual word for bear was considered taboo. As those in the wizarding world of Harry Potter were taught never to say “Voldemort,” northern Europeans often did not say their actual word for bear, perhaps because it was believed saying the bear’s true name could summon one. In any case, this taboo was so effective that today we are left with only the replacement word for bear—essentially, we call them “You Know Who.

Although scholars such as Butler have debated such approaches as reinforcing problematic identity models and creating an either/or distinction, Lather is referring to the power of using the discouraged discourse as an act of transgression. Thus, embodiment and reflexivity are tools used to disrupt current language and assumptions about the value of female bodies through a voluptuous validity. The term "voluptuous" is not used as an objectification of a sexualised body, as seen through the male gaze, but rather as an ownership of the body through a somantic fullness. Characteristics associated with female, body, fluids, excess, undisciplined, and out of order aspects are purposively used as an act of rebellion against patriarchal taboos.

sophisticated reader that he is simply referring to magical aspects of sexual activity that were bound to be misunderstood by the general public anyway. His attitude being: if only a handful of individuals will ever understand what is being written, write it in such a way that it will never go out of print. The modern reader must also bear in mind that the transcendent nature of spiritual subject matter often can only be represented by images terrible and strange. Language is not representative of reality. That Crowley was a master of metaphor is unarguable. But what is more significant is his ability to utilize words and images in the same manner as the Zen Master's Koan; expressing what appears technically to be a logical formula of language in such a way as to force the mind of the reader to deal with realities that transcend logic. The Hindu Goddess

I believe that if, like me, you have privilege and are equipped with the resources and knowledge to have these conversations, it is your job to educate those who have no idea how to navigate this information, define these resources, and to challenge their own preconceived ideas. It is not solely the responsibility of marginalised people to advocate for their own rights, to explain their own oppression, or to hold hands with the very people undermining them. This is a reminder that each and every one of us has arrived at our current worldview because of people who took the time to explain things, who performed labour to educate us. We need to pay that forward, not sit on high horses. I know I am the product of the people closest to me, and that our debates and occasional conflicts are at the crux of my self-development, reflection, and empowerment. It isn’t your job to engage in harmful conversations with those committed to misunderstanding you but it isn’t helpful to demonise people whose views do not mirror your own or whose progress is slower. It isn’t effective to shut down and to turn your back on those with other worldviews once you believe you know better. We shouldn’t pull the ladder up behind us when we decided we’re in the right place. We shouldn’t be shutting up shop. This is the ultimate opportunity to use what we have learned to ensure marginalised people do not have to have these conversations. We don’t need to speak on behalf of anyone but we can direct people to resources, we can push back on problematic language and views, and we can use our knowledge and privilege for change-making. If you hold the privileges that I do, a White woman claiming to be a feminist, your fear is not enough of a barrier. I know that is a confronting statement but it is something we must interrogate. It is vital to note that there are many circumstances where breaking your silence, challenging the status quo, and speaking out pose a threat. I want to be clear that this is not a call to subject yourself to devastating outcomes, or dangerous conversations, or situations that pose a threat to your safety or security. But if the only thing standing between you and change is fear of causing your friends discomfort, or lowering the mood by calling out something that may be considered taboo, you must walk through that fear. History depends on it. Change is contingent on your voice. If you want to identify as a feminist. If you want to claim this space and that you are #doingthework, this is exactly what that work looks like. Having difficult conversations, being brave, and challenging widely held assumptions. Turning up to the protest. Putting your money toward causes you claim to stand for. Buying the book and using what you’ve learned to ensure this work does not remain the sole responsibility of the impacted, marginalised communities, but becomes something that those without lied experiences understand and advocate for. Doing all this, is more than half the battle. The next time you bookend a conversation with “it is not my job to educate you”, I think it is really important to remember that, actually, it kind of is. Your privilege means you have access to people and influence over them. You are considered by society to be more palatable in your anger, and your advocacy, and people are more willing to hear you speak to difficult topics. It is your job to educate yourself, and to use that inherent privilege to educate others, or to at least have a go. It is your job, as the feminist you claim to be, to act as a barricade for people experiencing compounding marginalisations. It is your job to educate yourself and others. It is as simple as that.

In a society that consists of “a loose federation of groups with their own languages, customers, taboos, freedoms, courting habits and senses of morality...tolerance demands that no one group may be allowed to impose its own moral views, however strongly held, upon another; still less should they be able to use the severe sanctions of the criminal law to do so. The law...is at its best when it is enforcing practical remedies for specific crimes; it is at its worst when it tries to enforce the morality of one group in society upon another which may, for quite sincere and logical reasons, refuse to accept it.” ---Sir John Mortimer, British barrister and novelist

In a society that consists of “a loose federation of groups with their own languages, customers, taboos, freedoms, courting habits and senses of morality...tolerance demands that no one group may be allowed to impose its own moral views, however strongly held, upon another; still less should they be able to use the severe sanctions of the criminal law to do so. The law...is at its best when it is enforcing practical remedies for specific crimes; it is at its worst when it tries to enforce the morality of one group in society upon another which may, for quite sincere and logical reasons, refuse to accept it.

In a society that consists of a loose federation of groups with their own languages, customers, taboos, freedoms, courting habits and senses of morality...tolerance demands that no one group may be allowed to impose its own moral views, however strongly held, upon another; still less should they be able to use the severe sanctions of the criminal law to do so. The law...is at its best when it is enforcing practical remedies for specific crimes; it is at its worst when it tries to enforce the morality of one group in society upon another which may, for quite sincere and logical reasons, refuse to accept it.

Understanding consumer preferences, market trends, and business opportunities all depend on market research. However, a nuanced approach is required when conducting market research survey in Myanmar. Participation in surveys and the quality of the data can be significantly influenced by cultural norms, beliefs, and practices. The challenges and opportunities of conducting surveys in this one-of-a-kind cultural landscape are brought to light in this article, which examines the intricate connection between culture and market research in Myanmar. Researchers can gain valuable insights for informed decision-making and successful market strategies by comprehending and adapting to Myanmar's cultural nuances. Introduction to market research survey in Myanmar is a country with a lot of culture and tradition that makes it a special place to conduct market research. Understanding the cultural nuances that influence survey participation is essential for businesses trying to comprehend consumer preferences and behaviors in this diverse market. An Overview of Myanmar's Market Research Landscape Market research is rapidly evolving in Myanmar in tandem with the country's economic expansion. In order to gain useful insights from surveys, it is necessary to have a comprehensive comprehension of the cultural dynamics of a population with a wide range of languages and ethnic groups. Understanding How Culture Affects Survey Participation Culture has a big impact on how people respond to market research surveys. Survey response rates can be influenced by interpersonal dynamics, social norms, and traditional beliefs in Myanmar. Cultural Factors That Affect Survey Response Rates People's responses to surveys can be influenced by factors like respect for authority, communal decision-making, and communication styles. The key to maximizing survey participation is recognizing and adapting to these cultural differences. The willingness of respondents to participate in surveys can be influenced by traditional beliefs and practices like face-saving behaviors, hierarchical structures, and superstitions. Researchers can create survey environments that are conducive to honest and valuable feedback by recognizing and respecting these traditional beliefs. Tailoring Survey Designs to Match Cultural Preferences in Myanmar To guarantee the success of market research surveys in Myanmar, survey designs must be adapted to match cultural norms and preferences. In addition to increasing respondent engagement, this strategy encourages inclusivity and a respect for local customs. Adjusting Poll Arrangement for Social Awareness From the language utilized in study inquiries to the visual plan of overview materials, social responsiveness ought to be a core value in forming review surveys. Researchers can increase respondent trust and openness by avoiding potential taboos and including references that are culturally relevant. Respecting local customs, such as greeting rituals, gift-giving practices, and preferred modes of communication, can increase respondents' willingness to participate in surveys by incorporating them into the design of the survey. Researchers can create a more engaging and culturally appropriate research experience by incorporating these elements into survey design. Overcoming Language Barriers in Market Research Surveys Myanmar's language diversity makes conducting market research surveys a significant challenge. Language barriers must be overcome and multilingual survey administration must be promoted in order to ensure effective communication and data collection. Challenges of Myanmar's Language Diversity With over 100 languages spoken there, language barriers can make it hard to take surveys and understand them. Utilizing survey materials that are suitable for a particular language and, if necessary, the services of an interpreter, researchers must overcome these obstacles. The use of bilingual survey

Just as ritual, if I have correctly interpreted it , was the first step toward effective expression and communication through language, so taboo was the first step toward moral discipline. Without both, man's career might have ended long ago, as so many powerful rulers and nations have ended their lives, in psychotic outbreaks and life-depressing perversions.

This whole illusion has its history in ways of thinking—in the images, models, myths, and language systems which we have used for thousands of years to make sense of the world. These have had an effect on our perceptions which seems to be strictly hypnotic. It is largely by talking that a hypnotist produces illusions and strange behavioral changes in his subjects—talking coupled with relaxed fixation of the subject’s conscious attention. The stage magician, too, performs most of his illusions by patter and misdirection of attention. Hypnotic illusions can be vividly sensuous and real to the subject, even after he has come out of the so-called “hypnotic trance.” It is, then, as if the human race had hypnotized or talked itself into the hoax of egocentricity. There is no one to blame but ourselves.

The assimilation of taboo images to the everyday language of doing business produces a strange effect. It domesticates the taboo while at the same time making the everyday transactional world more porous, more open to the forbidden. The wolf of unbridled appetite slips into everyday convention in the sheep's clothing of commercial language.

The child is tricked into the ego-feeling by the attitudes, words, and actions of the society which surrounds him - his parents, relatives, teachers, and, above all, his similarly hoodwinked peers. Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment. We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.

Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees “Girl! English, eh? What is your name? Indians stole you, eh? I’ll send news to your people.” His excellent speech meant that he did a lot of trading with the English. It meant, Mercy prayed, that he liked the English. She found her tongue. “Will you take me to France, sir? Or anywhere at all? Wherever you are going--I can pay.” He raised his eyebrows. “You do not belong to an Indian?” She flushed and knew her red cheeks gave their own answer, but rather than speaking, she held out the cross. The sun was bright and the gemstones even brighter. The man sucked in his breath. He leaned very close to her to examine the cross. “Yes,” he said. “It is worth much.” He straightened up slowly, his eyes traveling from her waist to her breast to her throat to her hair. The other sailors also straightened, and they too left their work, drawn by the glittering cross. “So you want to sail with me, girl?” He stroked her cheek. His nails were yellow and thick like shingles, and filthy underneath. He twined her hair into a hank, circling it tighter and tighter, as if to scalp. “You are the jewel,” he said. “Come. I get a comb and fix this hair.” The other sailors slouched over. They pressed against her and she could not retreat. He continued to hold her by the hair, as if she were a rabbit to be skinned. She could see neither river nor sky, only the fierce grins of sailors leaning down. “Eh bien,” said the Frenchman, returning to his own tongue. “This little girl begs to sail with us,” he told his men. “What do you say, boys?” He began laughing. “Where should she sleep? What am I bid?” She did not have enough French to get every word, but it was the same in any language. The sailors laughed raucously. Indians had strong taboos about women. Men would not be with their women if they were going hunting or having important meetings, and certainly not when going off to war. She had never heard of an Indian man forcing himself on a woman. But these were not Indians. She let the cross fall on its chain and pushed the Frenchman away, but he caught both her wrists easily in his free hand and stretched her out by the wrists as well as by the hair. Tannhahorens pricked the white man’s hand with the tip of his scalping knife. White men loading barrels stood still. White sailors on deck ceased to move. White passersby froze where they walked. The bearded Frenchman drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. A little blood ran down his arm. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “She’s yours. I see.” The sailors edged away. Behind them now, Mercy could see two pirogues of Indians drifting by the floating dock. They looked like Sauk from the west. They were standing up in the deep wells of their sturdy boats, shifting their weapons to catch the sun. Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim.

If one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language; one is less likely to be seduced into excusing it.

I would like the public of Bombay to revise their sporting code and erase from it communal matches. I can understand matches between colleges and institutions, but I have never understood the reason for having Hindu, Parsi, Muslim and other Communal Elevens. I should have thought such unsportsmanlike divisions would be considered taboo in sporting language and sporting manners.

word. To not have to struggle to convey meaning in a language not my own. For the first few years in Africa, just listening to people was exhausting: mentally translating the words into English, having to think through everything twice. At the same time, he’d struggled to understand all the customs and taboos—many downright bizarre to him, and some even dangerous if broken. He had to distill his teaching into simple truths that he could convey. Once he’d told the natives before he started preaching that he had the vocabulary of a seven- or eight-year-old and, thus, to please bear with him.

Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment. We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.

The authorship question is a massive game of Clue played out over the centuries. The weapon is a pen. The crime is the composition of the greatest works of literature in the English language. The suspects are numerous. The game is played in back rooms and basements, beyond the purview of the authorities.

Shakespeare’s knowledge of classics and philosophy has always puzzled his biographers,” admitted the scholar E. K. Chambers. “A few years at the Stratford Grammar School do not explain it.” Others have tried to resolve the puzzle by downplaying Shakespeare’s erudition. The plays merely “looked learned,” especially “to the less literate public,” insisted Harvard’s Alfred Harbage. But the plays have sent scholars writing whole books on the law in Shakespeare, medicine in Shakespeare, theology in Shakespeare. Shakespeare and astronomy. Shakespeare and music. Shakespeare and the classics. Shakespeare and the Italian novella. Shakespeare and the French language.

There was nothing particularly new about the name-calling. It was the same language Sir Sidney Lee had used a century before (“ madhouse chatter,” “foolish craze,” “morbid psychology”). The language betrayed a lack of confidence in their own position. Instead of arguing calmly from facts, they resorted to the old ad hominem attacks.

Shakespeare’s women are rebellious and clever, critical of women’s subordinate status, quick to point out the folly of men, and adept at outwitting patriarchal controls. “Why should their liberty than ours be more?” Adriana exclaims in The Comedy of Errors, bemoaning the limitations of her life. Instructed that “a wife’s will must be bridled by her husband’s,” she retorts, “There’s none but asses will be bridled so!” When Beatrice’s uncle suggests she find a husband in Much Ado About Nothing, she laughs and says, “Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, Uncle, I’ll none.” Shakespeare’s women follow their own consciences, refusing to be subdued into feminine silence, and they use language itself as a tool of liberation.

In 1640 an anthology of Shakespeare’s poems was published, irreverently questioning the Folio’s presentation of Shakespeare. It, too, featured a copy of the Droeshout portrait but added a bright light behind his subject’s head, suggesting the figure in front is but a shadow. To drive home the point, an accompanying poem called the figure a “shadow” and mimicked the language of Jonson’s famous tribute, sprinkling it with sarcastic question marks that contest the legitimacy of the image: This Shadow is renowned Shakespear’s? Soule of th’age The applause? Delight? The wonder of the stage. Some of the First Folio’s early readers apparently suspected that this was a false image of the author.

Shakespeare is his texts, a man dissolved into language, word made flesh, flesh made word. One does not need to look for the author, for he is right there! In every line of his works. “Shakespeare” thus becomes a placeholder for the unknown, a name for an absence, even as inquiries into the absence are forbidden.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, the 2004 New York Times best seller by the Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt. “Let us imagine that Shakespeare found himself from boyhood fascinated by language, obsessed with the magic of words,” Greenblatt begins. Let us imagine. It is alluring, inviting, and entirely make-believe.

English at this time was very much the ‘poor relation’ of the three in terms of prestige, and this lowly status of English post-Norman conquest finds echoes in the modern English lexicon. When people say: ‘He uttered an Anglo-Saxon expression’ as a euphemism for ‘he swore’, they do so with good reason: much of our modern earthy or taboo vocabulary carries the stigma of low-status English in medieval England, while its socially acceptable equivalents have generally been borrowed from Norman French. The social divide between the new ruling class and the subjugated English is also evident elsewhere in the lexicon. Pork, mutton and beef, delicacies available only to the Norman-speaking élites in the Middle Ages, are terms of Anglo-Norman origin, but the names of the animals which provide them, pig, sheep and cow, all come from Anglo-Saxon, the language of the farmers who produced the meat for the rulers’ table.

There is evidence that even some Indo-European language speakers retained this archaic memory of a “Bear Clan” ancestor myth as well. A common element of this type of myth is that ancestral connections to an animal (e.g. a bear) is used to justify some sort of taboo. In the case of the bear, it is common for Siberian and Mongolian peoples to observe a taboo around the speaking of the name of the bear, precisely because it is associated with the cult of ancestors. Indeed, a common term used to avoid speaking the real word for bear in Mongolian is “baabgai” meaning “father.

One interesting observation that has been made about the Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages is that they also seem to have inherited a taboo associated with the name of the bear, which in Proto-Indo-European was something like “*hrktos” (hence Greek Arctos and Latin Ursus). In Northern Europe, however, it seems that the Germanic and Balto-Slavic peoples used circumlocutions or “nicknames” for the bear. Thus, in Germanic languages, the old Indo-European word for bear has been replaced by a circumlocution meaning “The Brown One.” In Slavic languages like Russian, they say “Medved” which means “Honey Eater.” Very similarly, the original word for bear in Lithuanian has been replaced by “Lokys” which may mean “Breaker.

Harvey referred to the new “Venus in print” armed by the “bravest Minerva,” did he mean the new poem by Shakespeare? Noticeably, Harvey never says it is by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. He does not mention the author’s name at all. Instead, he says that the poem is “armed with the complete harness of the bravest Minerva.” Protected, shielded, equipped with a weapon. His language emphasizes Minerva’s protective qualities—the complete military “harness”—and implies, perhaps, that the name “Shakespeare” itself is the armor, the shield.

What surfaces again and again with Shakespeare is this sense of concealment and mystery—of things said cryptically and then suppressed; of rumors refracted through the obscure, densely allusive language of Elizabethan poetry.

The relationship between an artist’s biography and his writing is always a difficult subject,” concedes Worden, “but there can be no other important writer since the invention of printing for whom we are unable to demonstrate any relationship at all.” Why didn’t Shakespeare bother to educate his children? His daughters couldn’t write. One signed with what Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, paleographer and director of the British Museum, called a “painfully formed signature, which was probably the most that she was capable of doing with the pen.” The other, he concluded, “could not write at all, for she signed with a mark.” How could a writer—any writer, let alone the greatest writer in the English language—be indifferent to the literacy of his children?

The gleaming orange and silver express slid to a stop beside them. Tiger barged his way on board. Bond waited politely for two or three women to precede him. When he sat down beside Tiger, Tiger hissed angrily, "First lesson, Bondo-san! Do not make way for women. Push them, trample them down. Women have no priority in this country. You may be polite to very old men, but to no one else. Is that understood?" "Yes, master," said Bond sarcastically. "And do not make Western-style jokes while you are my pupil. We are engaged on a serious mission." "Oh, all right, Tiger," said Bond resignedly. "But damn it all..." Tiger held up a hand. "And that is another thing. No swearing, please. There are no swearwords in the Japanese language and the usage of bad language does not exist." "But good heavens, Tiger! No self-respecting man could get through the day without his battery of four-letter words to cope with the roughage of life and let off steam. If you're late for a vital appointment with your superiors, and you find that you've left all your papers at home, surely you say, well, Freddie Uncle Charlie Katie, if I may put it so as not to offend." "No," said Tiger. "I would say 'Shimata', which means 'I have made a mistake.'" "Nothing worse?" "There is nothing worse to say." "Well, supposing it was your driver's fault that the papers had been forgotten. Wouldn't you curse him backwards and sideways?" "If I wanted to get myself a new driver, I might conceivably call him 'bakyaro' which means a 'bloody fool', or even 'konchikisho' which means 'you animal'. But these are deadly insults and he would be within his rights to strike me. He would certainly get out of the car and walk away." "And those are the worst words in the Japanese language! What about your taboos? The Emperor, your ancestors, all these gods? Don't you ever wish them in hell, or worse?" "No. That would have no meaning." "Well then, dirty words. Sex words?" "There are two--'chimbo' which is masculine and 'monko' which is feminine. These are nothing but coarse anatomical descriptions. They have no meaning as swearing words. There are no such things in our language." "Well I'm...I mean, well I'm astonished. A violent people without a violent language! I must write a learned paper on this. No wonder you have nothing left but to commit suicide when you fail an exam, or cut your girlfriend's head off when she annoys you." Tiger laughed. "We generally push them under trams or trains." "Well, for my money, you'd do much better to say 'You-------'," Bond fired off the hackneyed string, "and get it off your chest that way." "That is enough, Bondo-san," said Tiger patiently. "The subject is now closed. But you will kindly refrain both from using these words or looking them. Be calm, stoical, impassive. Do not show anger. Smile at misfortune. If you sprain your ankle, laugh.

Fears around abuse of power, sexual harassment, and blurred boundaries have resulted in a 'touch taboo' in psychotherapy and teaching. Ordinary gestures of shaking hands, hugging, and reassuring touch are strongly discouraged due to fears of touch being misconstrued. If, as is argued here, touch is not secondary to language and concepts but is primary to our sense of self, then this touch taboo is to be lamented.

Of all the insults and jokes that Barbara observed, very few seemed to overstep people’s boundaries. Some people were never teased about their weight, for example. Barbara noticed that “fat jokes” were leveled only at people who made the same joke about either themselves or others. The backslapping, laughter, and smiles that went with these jokes meant that they didn’t appear to cause offense. In order to come off well, jocular abuse either has to stay within the boundaries that people set for themselves by making their own self-deprecating jokes first, or it has to be so outrageous that it can’t possibly be meant seriously. Barbara had expected that jibes about race, sex, and all the other modern taboos that come under the umbrella of political correctness would be treated with extreme caution but instead the insults were raucous, risqué, and reciprocal. There’s an odd effect at play with some of these racial insults—at least in theory. Research conducted in the 1970s suggests that the more outrageous the insult the more intuitively it is construed as a joke, whereas milder insults are more likely to be heard as “meant.

Professor Roger Fouts, founder of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute in Washington state, has spent his career adopting chimpanzees and studying their behavior. He taught an extended family of chimpanzees to use sign language, and watched as they passed that language on to their children in turn. It was this extended family of apes that first convinced me that chimpanzees can do more than simply communicate; they spontaneously learned to swear. These apes were taught language (and toilet trained) by Professor Fouts. In the process of picking up both language and taboos about bodily functions, the sign they used for excreta took on a special power. Like the human swear word “shit,” the sign DIRTY and the idea it conveyed became taboo. At the same time, DIRTY became a sign that the chimpanzees used emotionally and figuratively, also like the way you or I might use “shit.” If Roger made them angry they would call him “Dirty Roger,” the way we might say, “Roger, you shit.” Unlike their wild cousins, these chimpanzees would throw the notion of excrement instead of throwing the stuff itself.

Among Washoe and the other chimpanzees raised by the Gardners and their team, the DIRTY sign was consistently used by chimpanzees and humans alike for feces, dirty clothes and shoes, and for bodily functions. Double use of the word DIRTY was used to intensify the meaning, either in anger or shame. DIRTY DIRTY SORRY was a phrase used to apologize for accidents, while DIRTY GOOD was the name that Washoe used for her potty.22 This name, invented spontaneously by Washoe, shows a surprisingly nuanced understanding of the excretion taboo: pooing in a potty is necessary and acceptable, but shit out of context is shameful and wrong.

Perhaps because of the shame associated with it, DIRTY soon became an insult, used when people or other animals didn’t do what Washoe wanted. This wasn’t something Washoe was taught to do; she spontaneously began using DIRTY as a pejorative and as an exclamation whenever she was frustrated. When we internalize a taboo, chimpanzees and humans alike create an emotional connection with the concept. The words for taboo subjects don’t just cause strong emotions; they leap to mind whenever we experience strong emotions. For example Washoe signed DIRTY ROGER when Fouts wouldn’t let her out of her cage and DIRTY MONKEY at a macaque who threatened her. In fact, MONKEY became Washoe’s somewhat derogatory sign for any other primate who couldn’t sign. Somewhat depressingly, it seems as though slurs are another deeply ingrained part of our language.

childhood reprimands and swearing are the two categories of language that are most often retained, even after strokes that rob the sufferer of all other types of speech. In their study, Professors Catherine Harris, Ayşe Ayçiçeği, and Jean Berko Gleason wired thirty-two native Turkish speakers to galvanic skin-response monitors. Importantly, none of these volunteers had learned English before the age of twelve, so all their tellings-off in childhood had been heard in Turkish. The scientists had them hear or read words that were neutral (e.g., “door”), positive (e.g., “joy”), negative (e.g., “disease”), taboo (e.g., “asshole”), and childhood scolds (e.g., “Don’t do that!” and “Go to your room!”). The scientists found that the volunteers didn’t react particularly strongly to the neutral, positive, or negative words, regardless of language. They reacted similarly strongly to the taboo words that they heard, regardless of whether they were in English or Turkish; their exposure to swearing in late adolescence had been enough to make English swearing an emotionally effective part of their language. However, the volunteers did respond very differently to the childhood reprimands depending on the language used. Even though the volunteers all understood the reprimands, their skin conductivity remained low—they showed no stress—when they heard the words in English. When they were exposed to the tellings-off in Turkish, and in particular when they heard rather than read them, their galvanic skin response went through the roof. Being told off in their native language was enough to make these volunteers (average age twenty-eight) break out in a cold sweat. This shows that understanding a word and feeling its emotional impact are two very different processes. We have to have experience of the emotional consequences of words if they are going to affect us.

is difficult for many white adults to begin to speak about race openly and explicitly. We only learn to do it and get better at it through practice. There’s no way around those awkward, challenging feelings. ​There’s no special age at which point kids are ready to hear and understand the difficult truths about race and racism. They begin to work out their racial concepts and ideas long before they can articulate them. ​We start with our children’s deepest assumptions about the world: a notion of race as visible and normal, an awareness of racial injustice, and a working presumption that people can and do take actions against racism. ​ Young children should be engaged with lots of talk about difference: skin tone and bodies, and the ways different communities of color identify. Making a commitment to normalize talk about difference preempts the pressures kids experience to treat difference as a taboo. ​Be aware that using the language of race—especially with young children—always runs the risk of reducing people to labels or implying everyone who shares that identity label is the same in some significant way (stereotyping). Be specific and nuanced. ​Race-conscious parenting for a healthy white identity development must include teaching about racial injustice and inequity as much as it does racial difference. Consider experiential learning, such as protests, for this.

There’s nothing that people rebel more against, I told Jacques, than being forced to acknowledge the secret and immediate power their fellow human beings have over them. There’s maybe nothing more common, routine. A savage power, as indifferent as a thunderbolt, where intellect, merit, beauty, language are nothing but animal electricity, a polarity that suddenly develops. Falling under the spell. Forever. We never talk about it—it’s taboo.

Unspeakable"--unspeakability?--comes in three varieties. First, that which cannot be said because one does not know it, and therefore cannot say it. Second, that which cannot be spoken because it is culturally impermissible to do so. And third, that which cannot be named because it is impossible, since the language provides no terms, no words to enable articulation.

Though I have lived most of my life with educationalists, I have little interest in educa¬ tion. I dislike schools, both for boys and girls. A child between the ages of eight and eighteen, the normal school years, is too young to form a collective opinion, children only set up foolish savage taboos. I dislike also all plans for “developing a child’s mind ”, and all conscious forms of personal influence of the younger by the elder. Let children early speak at least three foreign languages, let them browse freely in a good library, see all they can of the first-rate in nature, art, and literature—above all, give them a chance of knowing what science and scientific method means, and then leave them to sink or swim. Above all things, do not cultivate in them a taste for literature.

So even though the term “shell shock” was new, the war did not create many new symptoms. It did create a new framework in which to understand them as a pattern. Shell shock was caused not by the passions, as in women, but by physical experience. The diagnosis, historian Peter Lerner writes, “once a taboo, was not only acceptable by the middle of the war but was turned into a rallying cry, a patriotic crusade inflected with nationalistic and military language.”43 The diminishing concern about the feminine connotations of hysterical symptoms was especially pronounced in Germany, where Hermann Oppenheim said that with the term “shell shock” he could now talk about a soldier’s “nervous disturbances” without making him sound mentally diseased.44 In the United States, Thomas Salmon remarked on the tenacity with which war veterans “clung to a diagnosis of ‘shell shock.’ ”45 And with this common diagnosis came a message for the public at large: anyone, soldier or civilian, could get a neurosis, and to have one should in no way be dishonorable.