摘要
禁忌是人类社会普遍存在的文化现象和心理现象,其中语言禁忌涉及语言灵物崇拜和语言的禁用与代用(委婉语),因此尤为引人注目。研究显示,人们的禁忌文化心理支配了英汉禁忌语的出现和使用,交际的语用需要使代用形式委婉语得以传播延续。现在,飞速发展的信息网络文化产品成为“第四媒体”,社会的价值观及经济的变化发展又促使禁忌语现象发生奇妙多彩的变化,使委婉语成为禁忌语的主要表现载体,成为社会交往中具有一定意义的润滑剂。由此可见,对英汉语言禁忌的研究不仅有益于跨文化交际研究,也有益于宏观语言研究和人类语言认知机制研究。
Language taboos concerning fetishism and prohibition or replacement（euphemism） of certain language expressions have been a particularly striking phenomenon among other taboos that prevail worldwide as a cultural and psychological phenomenon of humankind. It is not only because of the widespread existence of language taboos, but also the numerous taboos in communication and everyday life have a thousand and one links with the language medium.
The general and specific characters of Chinese and English taboos are first discussed respectively in the paper. They have something in common in the following asoects： （1） The taboo against addressing Gods and sages straightforward; （2） The taboo against bluntly talking about deaths and births, diseases and senility; （3） The taboo against using blasphemous words and curses related to sexuality and excrement; （4） The extreme of fetishism can be demonstrated by magic figures and incantations——written and spoken forms of material deification. The similarities of primitive gathering, animal husbandry and agriculture along with people＇s faith in the magic power of language may account for the phenomenon.
However, striking differences exist between Chinese and English taboos due to the different cultural traditions, psychological traits and value systems, which are mainly as follows： （1） Chinese taboos, having meticulous forms of address, considerably surpass English taboos in quantity and complexity; （2） Numerous homophones of words denoting ＂Disaster and misfortune＂ or words having the similar pronunciations are reckoned as taboos; （3） Questions about people＇s privacy generally are not taboos in Chinese due to the ＂Group-oriented Awareness＂; （4） The long Chinese literary tradition and its classic works have exerted profound influence of the magic power of language upon Chinese people, resulting in taboos with distinctive Chinese characteristics.
In contrast, English taboos differ from those of Chinese mainly in the following aspects： （1） English taboos concerning privacy are a dominant area of taboos; （2） Many euphemisms taking the place of political taboos come into existence with the increasing awareness of equality and independence of many countries.
Furthermore, for both taboos there are positive and negative functions. The positive include： （1） They may rightly guide what people say and do; （2） They are lubricants as politeness strategies in communication; （3） They can adjust personal relationships, and the relation between man and nature, man and society and further, the relation between countries.
As to the negative functions, they are： （1） Sometimes taboos can in a way facilitate ignorance and superstition; （2） English taboos may cover up and prettify some repulsive deeds especially when it comes to some dirty political deals or invasions.
Chinese and English taboos are currently undergoing intriguing changes with the changing times and conceptions. People＇s cultural psychology leads to the formation and application of Chinese and English taboos; Pragmatic needs cause them to spread and last; The emerging of ＂4th media＂ that comes with the rapid development of cultural products of information. network, along with the quick change and development of the economy and social values, have all stimulated taboos to undergo a dynamic process of change with euphemisms being the main replacements and forms of expression, which is, psychologically speaking, a cognitive process during which people make use of pure language signs and the joint force of cognitive mechanism from the angle of cognitive pragmatics theoretically.
It is therefore quite clear that research on Chinese and English taboos will definitely benefit not only the study of cross-cultural communication but also the study of macro-language and the cognitive mechanism of human languages.
出处
《浙江大学学报（人文社会科学版）》
CSSCI
2006年第4期166-173,共8页
Journal of Zhejiang University:Humanities and Social Sciences
关键词
禁忌
语言禁忌
委婉语
心理
文化
taboo
language taboos
euphemism
psychology
culture
