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As we all know, society is a integrity in which its members interact and communicate with others according to certain rules and principles. Some of them are clear as floating on the horizontal line while others are vague in the dust. Whether they are apparent or not, people have to comply with them consciously or unconsciously. As a person, members of the society, we inevitably interact with others and develop a kind of relationship with them. It is often seen that certain words and expressions are forbidden since the difference of the culture, society, and ethnic group. Under certain society backgrounds, people apply the roundabout expression rather avoided words and expressions which we call them as linguistic taboos or just taboos in simplicity. Taboos imply two facts which include the respected objects we cannot offend and the discriminated things we cannot utilize.
Ultimately, to let the reader understand more about the difference of taboos reflected by Chinese and English culture, I would analyze the relative information at length in the following essay.
II. Information of Taboos
2.1 Orientation and Development of Taboos
Taboo is a widespread phenomenon which exists ubiquitously and contains many facets. This word regarded as the common utilization in the whole world. It derives from the dialect of the Polynesian island of Tonga meaning as “holy thing which cannot be violated”. In 1777, James Cook came and explored at he Southern of the island of the Pacific where he found many special social phenomenon in surprise. People won’t apply with some words at random which would make people feel unpleasant, embarrassed and even horrible. The local inhabitant regarded it as “taboo”. Then “taboo” was taken to the Britain which has become the most developed country and this word was acquainted by the whole world gradually. In the United States, with the emergence and development of sociolinguistics, a subject studying the relationship between language and society, since 1960s, the importance of linguistic taboo has been observed by many sociolinguists and a number of researches into linguistic taboo in varying degree have been conducted. Among those researchers, Steiner (1967) does the most comprehensive work by providing the full history of the origin of the word taboo, its cognition and its meaning in Polynesia, and its relationship to anthropological and psychological theories. In the modern times, taboo means “an inhibition or ban resulting from custom or emotional aversion”. And in western countries, avoidance of the related topics or expressions of taboo is the symbol of civilization.