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摘 要

随着经济全球化的快速发展，现代社会中人们与外国人的交流是极为普遍的。众所周知，交流主要凭借于语言，但在任何一门语言中，有些词却被赋予了魔力---触怒他人或让人尴尬。我们称这些词为禁忌语。在东西方，禁忌是一种普遍的社会现象和文化现象。就禁忌而言，英汉两种语言有其共性也有差异性。对两种文化中禁忌语的比较分析有助于人们了解不同文化中的独特价值观和伦理观，并促进不同国家之间的国际交往和文化交流。

关键词：禁忌语；文化现象；国际交流

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Definition of taboos 2

2.2 Origin of taboos 3

2.3 Development of taboos 3

3. Taboos in English and Chinese 3

3.1 Similarities between English and Chinese taboos 4

3.2 Differences between English and Chinese taboos 6

4. Taboos in spoken language 7

4.1Taboos in spoken English 8

4.2 Taboos in spoken Chinese 8

5. Implications of this study 9

5.1 Implications for English learners 9

5.2 How to avoid using taboos in cross-cultural communication 9

6. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

With close contact between peoples in the world today, intercultural communication has become an important part in international business. Cross-cultural communication refers to the communication between peoples with different cultural backgrounds. That is, people from different countries communicate with each other for the successful cooperation in the area of politics or economy. There are lots of subtle issues which people need to notice in intercultural communication. In cross-cultural communication, taboo is one of the most important problems we have to pay attention to. For to some extent different cultures have their own taboo. Nowadays, people highlight the research on taboo just because the ignorance of this problem may bring about communication barriers in the process of cross-cultural communication. Because of the economic globalization, intercultural communication has become increasingly close to the life of people who need to contact foreigners. Provided these people have a good knowledge of different connotations of the taboos in a different culture, they can make successful communications with those living in a diverse cultural environment. This article starts with discussing the origin and development of taboos, and then makes a contrastive analysis on taboos in both English and Chinese. Finally, the paper proposes some strategies about how to avoid misunderstanding in cross-culture communication. The paper aims to provide people with the chance to have a general knowledge of taboos in the West and East and help them achieve the goal of making effective communication with others from different countries.

2. Literature Review

The importance of taboos has been studying for a long time. Early researches have been done from many different perspectives. Published in 1967, the book Taboo, truth, and religion by Franz Baermann Steiner is one of the most important early researches on this issue. Steiner conducted a very comprehensive research on taboos to find the origin of the word "taboo" and its cognates. He clarifies the meaning of the taboo in Polynesia, its significance and functions in Polynesian religion and its relation to anthropological and psychological theories as well. Since 1960s, the importance of linguistic taboo has been observed by many sociolinguists when exploring the relationship between language and society. Discussions on this topic can be found in a lot of influential works, such as the work Sociolinguistics by R.A.Hudson. In this book, Hudson defined the social value of taboo words as a matter of convention and suggested that the whole area of taboo and semi-taboo language merit serious research by sociolinguists who should tell us a lot about language in relation to society (Hudson,1996:263). In China, Chen Yuan’s Sociolinguistics partially focuses on linguistic taboos. The 15th chapter of the book deals with taboos in particular. In the late mid-1980s, some scholars in China proposed to develop Chinese Cultural Linguistics. As a result, a series of relative books were published. In these books, taboos are unavoidably included. Around 1970s, when the first journal in the field of taboos in intercultural communication, MALEDICTA ( the International Journal of Verbal Aggression) emerged, people’s interest in taboo phenomenon began to grow. In 1997, into existence came another book entitled Don"t Do It: A Dictionary of the Forbidden by Philip Thody. In this book, Thody clarified how people used taboos in different ages, in different societies and in everyday life.

From the above mentioned evidence, we can see the majority of previous studies on taboos are centered around language, society as well as the relationship between them. They have done plenty of ground work for further analysis. This paper is a little different from the previous studies and mainly analyzes the taboos from the perspective of cross-culture communication in the modern society.

2.1 Definition of taboos

In China, taboo is a word with a long history, and as early as the Han Dynasty, the word “taboo” appeared in Records of Han literature. China is a society of Absolute Monarchs and taboo is a special kind of social phenomenon in China. When it comes to the meaning of taboo, China"s ancient book named Shuowen Jiezi has grasped the point. It means avoidance and disgust. In Chinese , taboo means "禁忌；忌讳；戒律". In Oxford intermediate learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, taboo is something that you must not say or do because it might shock, offend or make people embarrassed. Although taboos are varied in different cultures, they have similar effects in social communication. Taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in any society of behavior believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause their anxiety, embarrassment, or shame.

2.2 Origin of taboos

Taboo is an inseparable part of human language and a cultural phenomenon that exists extensively in human societies. It comes into being with the development of the language. The word "taboo" (also spelled as "tapu", "tabu" and "kapu") stems from the Tongan. In 1777, James Cook, a British navigator arrived at the Tongc islands when he was exploring in South Pacific Ocean. He heard the word from the local people, which originally referred to persons, activities, or things under prohibition because on the one hand, they were considered as "sacred" and "consecrated", and on the other hand, they were known as "uncanny" and "dangerous" that can not be approached at random. Then, he recorded all kinds of the taboo phenomena and brought them back to Britain.

2.3 Development of taboos

Taboo exists for quite a long time but it does not remain the same. In the ancient East and West, taboos were usually related with Emperor, God and nature. For example, people should evade the emperor’s name, worship heaven for peace or listen to the Bible, which was because people were suffered from absolute monarchy and lacked the power to cope with natural disasters. However, with the development of science and technology, nature is not frightening any more and the concept of taboo is more general. Religious taboos have been reduced nowadays, but the taboos used to avoid doing harm to a person’s dignity have rapidly increased. With the frequent exchanges with western countries, the taboo customs influence each other. There are many immigrants in western English-speaking countries, especially in the United States, which is called the melting pot of nations. So the expressions for racial discrimination in English language have become an important part of language taboos such as Nigger, Negro, etc.

3. Taboos in English and Chinese

As we know, the existence of taboos derived from different cultures is likely to cause mutual misunderstanding in cross-culture communication. If we are ignorant of the cultural connotations of taboo words in a foreign language, we will misunderstand the meaning of relevant words. Sometimes, Chinese will offend foreign guests unintentionally because of lacking the knowledge of taboos. By making a comparison between English and Chinese taboos, we will come to realize that there are some similarities and differences between them.

3.1 Similarities between English and Chinese taboos

Taboos for religion, sex, death, disease, social bias, etc exist in both Chinese and English cultures and they, as a kind of linguistic phenomenon, are reflected in the two languages of Chinese and English respectively. The similarities between Chinese and English taboos are mainly embodied in the following aspects as follows:

3.1.1 Death and disease

Taboos  may cause people"s resentment and  people are unwilling to speak them out for  fear of offending others. In both English and Chinese, death and disease are viewed as "departing". People don’t like to use the word “死” or “die” to express the fact that one died. So in English, other words are used for “death”, such as "go to the heaven", "depart from this world", "go to a better world", "pass away" etc. It is the same with Chinese; some euphemisms are employed for “死”, such as "驾鹤西去", "与世长辞", "圆寂", "升天"etc. In English, death is compared to "sleeping", which corresponds to "寿终正寝" in Chinese. What’s more, westerners don’t like to talk about terrible diseases, either, because serious illness may be something terrible for one to face. So people in the West reply "I’m not so fine." instead of "I’m ill." when asked, “What’s wrong with you today”. Similarly, in China, people tend to say "我身体不是很舒服" instead of “我得病了”. Another example, people mention “social disease” instead of venereal disease because people are reluctant to speak out the word AIDS or syphilis. People are ashamed to discuss this topic. Moreover, mental illness is thought of as something people have to avoid mentioning directly in daily chatting. For example, when it comes to a person with mental illness, people just refer to him/her as the one with “slightly confused mind". When mentioning the topic concerning death and terrible illness, in both the West and the East, people frequently use some euphemisms for the two offensive words “death” an “disease”.

3.1.2 Race and religion

Racial and religious taboos are also one of the most important and common linguistic phenomena in both English and Chinese . As we know, people in the world don not belong to the same race and they have different religious beliefs. When we talk with a person from a different race and religion, we should be careful with the relevant racial and religious taboos. For example, in the West, people do not use the word "Negro" to address a black man in public for this appellation is an insult to the black . In China, the Han people are unlikely to treat the Hui people with pork because the latter are banned from eating the meat. So this issue is closely related to the dignity of a nation. If you don’t respect their ethnic custom, you will not be welcome. Therefore, it is necessary to get some knowledge about racial and religious taboos.

3.1.3 Physical disability

Whether in the East or in the West, one’s physical disability is a taboo which people should avoid mentioning. It is obvious that physical defect has been an everlasting pain in the heart of the person concerned, which others must not touch. In ancient times, little was known about the reason why people got sick, so a person’s physical disability was considered as the punishment from the God. Over time, some physical disabilities have become taboos in our communication. For instance, if someone is fat, we say he/she is overweight. Although such an euphemism is unlikely to make him/her look a little less fat, it is sure to bring him/her some spiritual comfort. Another example, in the book three days to see, the author Helen Keller is blind for suffering from scarlatina when she was young. Her teacher Anne Shali Mandarin is very careful not to make Helen aware that she has the physical disability. She will not move her lips in that Helen can not realize that she is different from others. Anne pays more attention to avoiding touching Anne" taboo so that she becomes the best teacher and friend of Helen.

3.1.4 Sex

People in the West and East have been very cautious of the topic of sex since ancient times, they avoid discussing this topic in public. Westerners use the phrase “make love, art of pleasure” to express the meaning of sex instead of saying the word directly and Chinese express it with the words “洞房花烛，翻云覆雨，缠绵” . Although people in the West are open-minded, they are also a little unwilling to talk about sex with others especially when the talkers are not lovers or couples. Chinese are overcautious of the topic of sex and if westerners talk about it to a Chinese couple, they will be considered rude.

3.2 Differences between English and Chinese Taboos

Although English and Chinese have some similarities in some aspects of taboos. There exist different views on what taboo is. Through these differences, people can know taboos more and then realize which words should be used cautiously in cross-culture communication.

3.2.1 Number and color

In China, people do not like the number "4" for the number "4" has the same pronunciation as the word "死(death)" which reminds them of "death". While in western countries, one taboo number is 13 according to the story of "The last supper": Judas, the person who betrayed Jesus, sat in the No.13 chair. Therefore, the number 13 is considered to be unlucky in the West.

When it comes to colors, westerners and Chinese people differ in the cognition of “red” and “white”. “White” is symbolic of death in China, people should wear white clothes on a person’s funeral, it signals "白事" and “red” is forbidden on the funeral. However, in the West, “white” means "pure and royal", so people wear white wedding dress. They will not wear red because in the West “red” represents “blood and revolution”.

3.2.2 Privacy

For cultural and religious reasons, people from different countries have different taboos on privacy. As we all know, westerns value their privacy very much. They hold the view that their individual interests shouldn"t be invaded. In the western countries, asking some questions and talking about things such as one"s life or personal affairs will be regarded as a way of prying into an individual"s privacy, therefore, these questions gradually die out and become verbal taboos including one"s age, weight, income, religion, marriage and so on. However, Chinese enjoy talking about these topics together, they talk about their salaries and marriage to show their social status.

Another example, people usually make a greeting by saying "Have you eaten?", "Long time no see, and where did you go?" in China. It seems to pry into the affairs of others. While in the West, people just say "How are you?" or "How is the weather?" for they do not care the answer of the question because the weather is uncertain. Accordingly, people should know how to greet others when we talk with foreigners.

3.2.3 Appellation and names

In the West，people like to call family members with their names directly and they can do that between generations. It is a common phenomenon that the name of the child is the same as his father’s because this shows they are proud of the name or memory of a person, like “Lincoln” or “Roosevelt”. However, we Chinese have the custom that people should respect the elder. The young can not call the elder’s name directly. The name of younger generation can not be the same as the senior’s.

What’s more, people in China usually use “老” or “小” to call somebody like "老王，小王", and it just shows respect for somebody. Yet western people do not like the word “old or young”, it may remind them of sarcasm or weak because of one’s age.

4. Taboos in spoken language

Spoken language is widely used in our daily life in cross-culture communication. To a certain degree, spoken language is more important than written language in our daily life because we talk with each other more instead of writing to express ourselves. On this condition, taboos in spoken language have played a significant role if people need to communicate with foreigners .

4.1Taboos in spoken English

The first thing people should discuss is the word “fuck”. This word seems to be very common in the West, but it is the dirtiest word in English. We can usually hear this word in some English movies like “What the fucking things!” or “Fuck you!” when somebody is of great anger. Women should be more careful when using this word because it may make people feel uncomfortable and consider you as an ungraceful and uncultivated woman. You can use the word “shoot”or the phrase “Cut the crap.” instead.

Then comes the word “bitch”. It is obvious that this word shows no respect for women and it spoils a beautiful figure of a lady. We must remember not to say this word to people especially to a woman. By the way, “jackass” has the similar meaning to a man, so do not use it, otherwise you would make your friends angry.

“Damn it!” or “shit” is also a commonly used taboo when the westerners are talking with each other. “Damn” means “go to the hell” and it is a curse to somebody. “Shit” shows the speaker’s dissatisfaction to others. These two words can sometimes be used to express one’s bad mood, however, you can not use these on some formal occasions like meetings or parties.

4.2 Taboos in spoken Chinese

In China, taboos are more difficult to understand for foreigners in that Chinese national territorial areas and population are very large and China possesses many ethnics as well. We can only present some common taboos in Chinese culture.

These taboo words in China are similar to English dirty words. As a foreigner, he should avoid using the words “cao” or “ni ma bi” when you are talking with a Chinese and it is very rude to say these words in China.

When he visits a Chinese friend at many special festivals like the Spring Festival and the Mid-autumn Festival, he mustn’t talk something about ghosts and separation because these festivals stand for family reunion, it is not proper to say these bad things on these nice occasions.

5. Implications of this study

There are several factors bringing about the misunderstanding in using taboos in cross-cultural communication. The main factors can be classified into three areas: national culture, social factors, the personal status of participants. People should know more about these taboos and then can easily make friends with people in other countries. Not knowing the cultures of other countries, it is possible for people to make mistakes in cross-cultural conversations. This paper is beneficial for English learners and people who need to get well with the foreigners.

5.1 Implications for English learners

Taboo is not only a common social phenomenon, but also a common linguistic and cultural one. A comparative study of English and Chinese taboos will make people well understand their respective cultural connotations. As an English learner, we should know these taboos very well to avoid barriers when we communicate with foreigners. When you know a nation’s taboos, you may get well with those people easily for taboos are related to a nation’s history and customs.

5.2 How to avoid using taboos in cross-cultural communication

5.2.1 Having a good knowledge of the taboo

Cross-cultural communication is more and more important in modern society. The cross-culture communication includes religions, architecture, custom, diet, etiquette, folk communication and other aspects. Taboo is also involved in the international communication. We should have a good knowledge of taboos of different cultures in order to avoid violating taboos. People can read books or search on the Internet to know different taboos in different countries. For example, if you receive a friend’s invitation, what should you do? In the West, you should get a bunch of flowers or a bottle of red wine. Then you can arrive at his home later or on time, but not ahead of time. In China, you should know the Chinese taboo, that is, the guest should not be late for the dinner. If you are late for a long time, it might cause the dissatisfaction of the host. So, we need to know the knowledge of taboo by reading books, searching for the information concerned in the Internet, talking with your foreign teachers, and being an observant and conscientious person in your daily life.

5.2.2 Using euphemism

In Collins Dictionary of the English Language, euphemism is defined as an inoffensive word or phrase substituting for one considered offensive or hurtful, esp. one is concerned with religion, sex, death or excreta. From the explanation above, people can infer that euphemism is just the complementary to taboos, so using euphemism is a good way to avoid the conflicts caused by taboos in cross-culture communication. Most taboos can be avoided by the employment of euphemisms. Euphemism means the use of indirect words or phrases to take the place of taboo words. In other words, euphemism is a means of expressing the words or things that are prohibited. In Chinese , it means "委婉语". For example, we constantly say "passed way" for "died", and "exceptional students" for "dull children" in the West. Another example, if a boy shows his love to a girl, the girl does not love the boy for he is short, but she could not mention it. In this case, she is likely to use an euphemism like “you are a good person, but we don"t match each other”. As a result, she turns down the boy’s proposal and does not hurt his pride as well.

5.2.3 Doing in Rome as Romans do

As a Chinese old saying goes "Learn about customs and habits of the country wherever one goes ", it shows the importance of "do in Rome as Romans do."In extreme cases, people who do not know about another country’s culture might end up doing or saying things that are otherwise considered as insulting or offending the foreign country’s practices and beliefs. That’s why we are often advised with the saying, “Do in Rome as Romans do. ” This statement is a popular expression that means when you are visiting a foreign country, you should also act as people in that country do, which can avoid conflicts or arguments that could arise in the course of the journey.

First, people should respect the taboos in other countries, then they can communicate with foreigners more freely and comfortably. With the development of our country, Chinese people have more chances to communicate with foreigners. If we Chinese know much more about the taboos in question and show respect for these taboos from the bottom of our heart, we will make a successful cooperation with foreigners without offending them unintentionally. For example, when we have a meal in a restaurant in America, we should try to use forks and knives to eat the meal instead of using chopsticks, which is sure to assist us in fusing into the country’s culture. If an English person goes to a noodle shop in China, he or she had better use chopsticks, rather than forks. Only in this way can people become welcome persons when they make friends with foreigners.

6. Conclusion

This paper begins with stating the origin and development of taboo and then makes a brief comparison between the similarities and differences of taboo in English and Chinese. To deal with the problems caused by misusing taboos, it is important to find the solutions to avoid mistakes in people’s communication with foreigners. First of all, people should be open to the developing world and accept the various taboos of different countries. Secondly, People can use euphemism when there is something inconvenient to say directly. Although this paper has analyzed many aspects of taboos, there would be some deficiencies due to the author"s limited knowledge.

Generally speaking, taboo, as a special language phenomenon, is the result of the deposit of culture. It is necessary for people to hand down these taboos from generation to generation. We can find that both Chinese and English taboos reflect people’s wishes for good future, luck, fortune and safety through the analysis of this article. Comparative analysis of English and Chinese taboo is to understand the connotations of taboos in different historical periods of different countries. The main purpose is to make people improve their communicative competence and avoid making mistakes in cross-culture communication.

Works Cited

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