taboo words

[mark worden]

Clearly there are no universal taboo words.  What's taboo depends on custom,
culture, subculture, personal taste & so on.
Taboo is in the eye of the beholder.  Behold, among PR people one sees
certain taboos:

7 words or phrases that should never appear in a news release:
You would not be writing a news release if the product, service, or event
were not
o  Leading
o  Unique
o Cutting edge
o  Breakthrough
o  Revolutionary
o  World class
o  To enhance shareholder value
http://prdenver.com/taboo.htm

English teachers have taboo words
http://www.iloveteaching.com/Taboo/Index.htm

Taboo words are only taboo in a certain context.  Radio, TV newspapers,
magazine -- all have their lists of taboos, overlapping perhaps (no pun
intended), but not necessarily identical.  (I knew a teacher who was once
interrogated about his use of the term "bull" in class, making reference to
the herd of black angus "male cows" kept for beef by a restaurant on the
outskirts of town.)

One of the finest phrases from the Nixon Whitehouse: "expletive deleted."
Of which the Rolling Stone had this observation:

With blue pencil in hand, Richard Nixon has brought to the point of charm
the
curious inversion of priorities and moral values which has always
characterized him.

In his personally edited transcripts of many of the White House
conversations, he has, by some grotesque system of default, left in material
which demonstrates clear guilt in criminal as well as other impeachable
offenses, while carefully pruning out language which might make him seem
vulgar, or -- is it possible? -- even more culpable. The transcripts show
that he is guilty of obstructing justice, ordering the payment of "hush
money," counseling perjury, tampering with grand jury proceedings and
proposing offers of clemency in return for perjured testimony.
http://www.superseventies.com/expledel.html

Recent discussion has focused on "cunt."  Use of male "cunt" has appeared in
British movies for quite some time.  No more unusual  than Roseanne grabbing
her crotch or references to women having balls?  How about "cocksucker?"

The oddest and most inclusive lists of taboo words comes from examining
internet filters, which are often Victorian in the words banned.  And
quixotic in determining taboo websites.
==========
Peacefire created four pages, on free servers such as GeoCities, which
consisted of anti-gay quotes copied from four different conservative Web
sites: Dr. Laura, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council and
Focus on the Family. Using anonymous HotMail accounts, we then sent the URLs
of the newly created pages to six blocking software companies, recommending
that they block the newly created pages as "hate speech". After the
companies had agreed to block the sites we created, we told them that all
the quotes on those pages had been taken from the four conservative Web
sites, and recommended that they block those Web sites as well. The blocking
companies did not block those Web sites and did not respond to our
inquiries.
http://www.peacefire.org/
============

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Lower Umpqua Addictive Conundrum Institute