Linguistic Taboo Revisited: Novel Insights from Cognitive Perspectives (Cognitive Linguistics Research) (Cognitive Linguistics Research [clr], 61)

Linguistic taboo has been relegated for a long time to a peripheral position within Linguistics, due to its social stigmatization and inherent linguistic complexity. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in revisiting the phenomenon, especially from cognitive frameworks. This volume is the first collection of papers dealing with linguistic taboo from that perspective. The volume gathers 15 chapters, which provide novel insights into a broad range of taboo phenomena (euphemism, dysphemism, swearing, political correctness, coprolalia, etc.) from the fields of sexuality, diseases, death, war, ageing or religion. With a special focus on lexical semantics, the authors in the volume work within Cognitive Linguistics frameworks such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, cultural conceptualization or cognitive sociolinguistics, but also at the interface of pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, cognitive science or psychiatry. This volume provides theoretical reflections and case studies based on new methods and data from varied languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gikũyũ and Egyptian Arabic). As such, it moves towards a new generation of linguistic taboo studies. Foreword Table of contents List of contributing Authors Introduction 1. Lexicon, discourse and cognition: terminological delimitations in the conceptualizations of linguistic taboo Part I: Construal 2. The axiological and communicative potential of homosexual-related metaphors 3. Metonymy-based euphemisms in war-related speeches by George W. Bush and Barack Obama 4. Ambiguity and vagueness as cognitive tools for euphemistic and politically correct speech Part II: Cultural Conceptualization 5. Old age revolution in Australian English: Rethinking a taboo concept 6. Taboo subjects as insult intensifiers in Egyptian Arabic 7. Emotion concepts in context: Figurative conceptualizations of hayâ ‘self-restraint’ in Persian 8. A Cognitive Linguistics approach to menstruation as a taboo in Gĩkũyũ 9. The socio-cognitive aspects of taboo in two cultures: A case study on Polish and British English 10. The influence of conceptual differences on processing taboo metaphors in the foreign language Part III: Cognitive Sociolinguistics 11. Why do the Dutch swear with diseases? 12. Calling things by their name: Exploring the social meanings in the preference for sexual (in)direct construals 13. The perception of the expression of taboos: a sociolinguistic study Part IV: Interdisciplinary Approaches 14. Scrupulosity, sexual ruminations and cleaning in Obsessive – Compulsive Disorder 15. Swearing as emotion acts Index Annotation Linguistic taboo has been relegated for a long time to a peripheral position within Linguistics, due to its social stigmatization and inherent linguistic complexity. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in revisiting the phenomenon, especially from cognitive frameworks. This volume is the first collection of papers dealing with linguistic taboo from that perspective. The volume gathers 15 chapters, which provide novel insights into a broad range of taboo phenomena (euphemism, dysphemism, swearing, political correctness, coprolalia, etc.) from the fields of sexuality, diseases, death, war, ageing or religion. With a special focus on lexical semantics, the authors in the volume work within Cognitive Linguistics frameworks such as conceptual metaphor and metonymy, cultural conceptualization or cognitive sociolinguistics, but also at the interface of pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, cognitive science or psychiatry. This volume provides theoretical reflections and case studies based on new methods and data from varied languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Giky and Egyptian Arabic). As such, it moves towards a new generation of linguistic taboo studies