The Semantics and Pragmatics of Taboo Words

禁忌语呈现出一个有趣的矛盾：尽管禁忌语被禁止使用，但在日常交流中，可能在所有语言和文化中都有人故意使用禁忌语。这可能表明，当某人使用一个禁忌词时，他们实现了即使使用具有相同参考的非禁忌词也无法实现的东西，并且这个“东西”抵消了禁止的责任。许多作者提出，禁忌语能够传达的“某种东西”是关于情绪状态和态度的信息。然而，这些信息不能用传统的语义和语用理论来描述;相反，它属于一个内涵层面的意义，仍然没有得到充分的探讨。鉴于情感在人类心理中不可否认的作用，这一维度对于理解交际的认知本质至关重要，因此，禁忌语本身就成为探索交际这一基本方面的完美候选者。然而，它们并没有得到足够的重视，从语义学和语用学，主要是集中在描述他们的使用或起源的社会文化环境的角度来探讨。因此，对禁忌语的语义和语用特征的理论描述仍然是不够的。这是本项目的目标：发展的禁忌词的性质，其交际内容，特别是在内涵层面的意义，和他们的解释的认知过程的贡献。通过语言学和心理学的方法对本文的主要研究成果进行实验验证，如果成功的话，将有助于揭示禁忌语在交际中潜在的普遍作用，并为其语义和语用特性奠定坚实的基础，从而有助于更好地理解意义的内涵维度和情感在交际中的作用。

Taboo words present an interesting contradiction: despite the prohibited status that characterise them, they are intentionally used in everyday communication in probably all languages and cultures. This might indicate that when someone uses a taboo word, they achieve something that cannot be achieved otherwise even with a non-taboo word with the same reference, and this "something" offsets the liability of the prohibition. Many authors have proposed that this "something" that taboo words are capable of conveying is information about emotional states and attitudes. This information, however, cannot be described in the traditional formats used by semantic and pragmatic theories; rather, it belongs to a connotative dimension of meaning that is still insufficiently explored. In view of the undeniable role of emotion in human psyche, this dimension is essential to understand the cognitive nature of communication.Thus, taboo words present themselves as a perfect candidate to explore this fundamental aspect of communication. And yet, they have not received enough attention from Semantics and Pragmatics, being mainly approached from perspectives focused on describing the sociocultural circumstances of their use or origin. Therefore, an adequate theoretical description of the semantic and pragmatic properties of taboo words is still to be provided. This is the goal of this project: to develop an account of the nature of taboo words, their communicative content, especially in a connotative dimension of meaning, and their contribution to cognitive processes of interpretation. The main outcomes of this analysis will be experimentally tested to corroborate their validity using linguistic and psychological methods.If successful, this account will shed some light on the potentially universal role of taboo words in communication and establish solid foundations about their semantic and pragmatic properties, which could contribute to a better understanding of the connotative dimension of meaning and the role of emotions in communication.