Article published in:
Sex, Death & Politics: Taboos in Language
Edited by Melanie Keller, Philipp Striedl, Daniel Biro, Johanna Holzer and Benjamin Weber
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:1] 2021
► pp. 87–137

The sound of taboo

Exploring a sound-meaning association in swear words of English and French

| Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage, F-59000 Lille, France
| Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage, F-59000 Lille, France
Swear words of English and French, both real and fictional ones, significantly tend to contain the least sonorous consonants, compared to the rest of the lexicon. What can explain the overrepresentation of such sounds among swear words? This might be a case of sound symbolism, when sounds are unconsciously associated with a meaning. We examine the pragmatic vs. semantic nature of the meaning involved, as well as two explanations in terms of iconicity (plosives may be associated with “violation of hearer’s space”, or unsonorous consonants may be associated with “aggression”). This unusual sound-meaning pairing would involve an emotional-contextual, non-truth-conditional meaning, and be powerful enough that it influences a strong sociolinguistic convention – which words are swear words and which ones are not – suggesting that sounds convey meaning in yet unsuspected ways.
Keywords: swear words, taboo words, systematicity, sound symbolism, iconicity, taboo, swearing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Case study 1: Sound regularities for English and French swear words
    • 2.1Data and method
    • 2.2Results
  • 3.Case study 2: Sound regularities for English and French fictional swear words
    • 3.1Data and method
    • 3.2Results for fictional swear words
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Sound-symbolic associations
    • 4.2A conceptual or emotional/contextual meaning
    • 4.3Possible emotional/contextual meanings
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • References
Published online: 16 March 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.20021.val
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