Taboo and Euphemism in the Religious Language

Mocanu, Mihaela

doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.75.1

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Taboo and Euphemism in the Religious Language

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Abstract:

The instrument of knowledge and communication of religious essence, the religious language is based upon the recognition of a world of sacredness, which is defined by reference to the religious dimension of the human being. From the semantic perspective, the religious language is rooted in a preexisting extra-linguistic referent, which eludes historic space-time categories, in an attempt to build a world of transcendental essence and establish a relationship between man and the sacred. In this view, the word is invested with magical powers, playing the role of a mediator between the human being living in the world of the profane and the sacred world of the Divinity. Since the word embraces the essence of the named element with the power to shape reality, the religious man pays special attention to the verbal expression not only from the desire to adapt to reality, but especially out of the care not to cause adverse changes amidst it. We propose in this paper to review the main religious taboos specific to the religious language and the description of the pragmatic valences that the euphemistic expression manifests in the religious communication.

Info:

Periodical:

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 75)

Pages:

1-9

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.75.1

Citation:

M. Mocanu, "Taboo and Euphemism in the Religious Language", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 75, pp. 1-9, 2017

Online since:

January 2017

Authors:

Mihaela Mocanu

Keywords:

Euphemism, Linguistic Taboo, Pragmatics, Religious Language, Semantics

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Distribution:

Open Access

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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