A Cultural Approach to Verbal Taboos in English and Chinese(英语论文).doc

A Cultural Approach to Verbal Taboos in English and Chinese Abstract: Taboo has become a commonly used word in anthropology and the study of folk custom. Furthermore, it has been an important field of learning. According to the International English Usage, there are mainly six taboo aspects as follows, religion and god, sex, secretions and excretion, disease and death, social status, and privacy involves age, weight, and income tec. This article will make analysis of two of them in English and Chinese in details in the following passages. Religion and god In English-speaking countries, most people believe Christianity or Catholicism, so people are strictly prohibited from mentioning God’s name, Jehovah. In the third of Ten Commandments, it says “Thou shalt not speak my name in vain.” Westerners have a strong sense of religion and their thoughts are restricted by religious beliefs and superstitious concepts. They stand in arm of Gods and fear of devils and believe that some religious terms or words have a mysterious supernatural power. Thus, such religious terms or words as “Gods”,” Jesus Christ”, “heaven”, “devils”, “hell”, “dam” etc. are only mentioned in the serious religious situations, otherwise they are taboos words. However, in the course of interpersonal communication, it is inevitable to speak of “God” sometimes, then people use “All-wise”, the Creator”, “Kings of kings”, “Light of world” etc. to replace God. Therefore, people usually say “for goodness sake” or “for crying out loud” instead of “for Christ’s sake”. In English, there is an idiom saying “speak of devils and he appears”, so ordinary people use “the old boy” “old Nick” “old Poker”, “the good man” etc to refer to Satan. In Chinese, there are also similar religious verbal taboos. People tend to use complimentary address to call the Gods they admire such as “大帝”, “大圣” etc. Whereas they try various means to avoid mentioning devils. If a person wants to cite god as his or her witness while m