Taboo words are topics and concepts not used because of their common law or socio-religious unlawfulness. Such unlawfulness of the taboo words causes that people use these dirty, naughty, rude and unpleasant concepts in a good, friendly, kind, polite and far from any frankness mood. This kind of meaning assigning is referred to as euphemism.
The euphemism category has been in the focal point of Muslim philologists and critics since the beginning of literary and linguistic researches, so that most of them began to introduce, name and analyze the methods, incentives and meaning scopes of this kind of linguistic behavior. To name this kind of meaning assigning, the ancients used propositions such as "al -talattof meaning stating something softly", or sometimes they made use of the methods for coining euphemism such as "al -kinayah meaning irony". In Arabic, the semantic areas for euphemism are sexuality, disasters and tragic events like death and illness. Furthermore, observing modesty and shame, reducing the negative meaning loads of frank phrases and softening them, fear and pessimism, courtesy, amusement and innovation and respect all are the main reasons for using euphemism.
This article aims to review the position of "euphemism" in literary criticism, the use of this linguistic behavior and the ways of coining it. Depending on the situation, the authors will put forward the ancients' viewpoints.
Key words: euphemism, taboo, linguistic behavior, defamiliarization |
