Akash V

HOOMAENG20161815

LS 295 , Applied Linguistics

Prof. Hemanga Dutta

Language Taboo and the Sociolinguistic Basis of Incongruity between Written

and Spoken Malayalam

Introduction

The word 'taboo' is said to have originated from the Fijian word 'tabu' introduced into European

languages by Captain Cook in his description of his third voyage around the world, when he

visited Polynesia. In originally meant "Prohibited", "Disallowed" or

"Forbidden". The encyclopaedia of social sciences (1937) defined taboos as ‘a negative sanction

whose infringement results in an automatic penalty without human or superhuman

mediation.’ Though in context, 'taboo' is also generally employed in order to restrict the

acceptability of an action, more often than not it is used to denote the prohibition of certain

linguistic expressions – be it words or phrases or even general themes- that are considered
inappropriate or in violation of the culture of the people who practice it . The content that is

prohibited from being expressed comes to be known as 'taboo language'.

There is a universal understanding about taboo language, which is often assumed to be

manifested in the form of curse words/slang. As Caliban says in the opening act of

Shakespeare's The Tempest, "You taught me language, and my profit is, I know how to curse ."

Though greater frequency of usage as such skews the definition of taboo language in favor of

swear/cuss words, often represented as grawlix in the media (especially cartoons), the nature of

what is considered taboo in a given language or a specific society can be immensely

idiosyncratic in nature. This may depend on anything from the social and religious doctrines or

even a totally indigenous metaphysical belief system pertaining to the society in discussion .

For instance, while the word 'beef' in the Indian context works as a Pavlovian bell at one end of

the country, at almost any other, it easily spurs riots or murders . A much more vivid and clear

illustration of how irregular the concept of language taboo can be can be seen in Papa New

Guinea, which is linguistically the most diverse area on the planet, with over 850 languages

spoken within an area of 462,840 km². This particular example hails from the Harui language

speaking community, where people are generally named after natural entities i .e. Mountain,

River etc.. In their culture, it is forbidden (people believe that on breaking this taboo, your crops

will fail or children will die) to either utter the name of your cross cousin (your father's sister's

child or your mother's brother's child) or utter the name of one of your in-laws . This predicament

is often dealt with by replacing the word with its synonymous counterpart from a neighbouring

language, Kobon. As a result, the nominal lexicons of both the languages have grown so similar
that linguists initially took them to be related languages (which they are not), until they finally

identified this practice of word taboo and consequent borrowing as the cause of lexical

similarity. (Comrie,2014)

Even within a given language speaking community, the criteria that assign certain expressions as

taboo language, might not pertain to specific groups – mostly based on age, gender or caste .

Nevertheless, these iterations remain to be considered profane in mixed groups or "polite

company". This goes to show how no lexical entity in a language is inherently

considered inappropriate, but assumes its role as a taboo expression with respect to the audience .

Hence, language taboo is merely a function of cultural restraints on language, which furthermore

are changeable with time. This is mainly the reason why linguists have always had a neutral

stance on taboo language, performing only the function of documenting when and where the

phenomenon appears.

However, the practice of language taboo definitely entails sociolinguistic implications . The

restriction of certain expressions and the resultant lack of exposure to the topic for a great

division of the community is just one of the many consequent possibilities . Here undertaken is an

attempt to comprehend the discrepancy between the spoken and written forms of Malayalam, and

the stance of the Malayali community at large, through the institution of taboo in the language .
Malayalam – Speech and Prose

Malayalam is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken in Kerala, one of the southernmost

states of India. Kerala, popularly known as "God's own Country", is the state with highest

literacy rate in India with 93.91% literacy India as a whole has only 74.04%. Nevertheless,

Kerala simultaneously basks in the infamy of being home a rather conservative society. In this

paper, I hope to discover a bridge that connects this gap .

It is attested that there is a distinct and consistent incongruity between the written and spoken

forms of the language itself (which will hence be referred to as 'Prose' and 'Speech' respectively) .

By written language, signified here is not the poetic/literary form of the language(where even

word order could undergo change) but rather the 'standard' form used in prose and vocally

articulated solely by news-readers/ television presenters, but seldom conversationally . The only

circumstance that sanctions the usage of Prose in conversational speech is that of a

scholarly/professional/intellectual discussion or debate.

Similarly, Speech cannot be used freely in writing. Nevertheless, Speech turns out to be

inevitable in the written form when characters converse in literature . Some writers tend to bring

in Speech even in non-conversational portions of their writings . One such writer and pioneer to

this canon was the acclaimed Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, who was initially criticised for his

unprecedented style, until he won hearts with the originality and beauty of his language .

However, Speech is still considered inferior to Prose in many respects, and this hierarchy has

major implications in their social functions. For now,we shall see how Prose and Speech vary .
Phonological Variation

The most obvious cause of difference between these two modes of Malayalam is phonological,

as the spoken form is sure to value ease of articulation over inherent structure .

A few of the most common examples of how components of Prose are modified to Speech in

Malayalam are given below:

(1) Vowel lowering for vowel harmony

Prose Speech Gloss

cila cela Some

cita ceta Funeral pyre

puɻa poɻa River

kuLam koLam Pond

muyal moyal Rabbit

(2) Deletion of intervocalic nasal ‘m’ (before question particle), and insertion of glide ‘w’

NB: ‘.’ Used to denote morpheme boundary

 Prose po:kum.o varum.o

Gloss will go. Question Particle will come. Question Particle

Speech po:kuwo varuwo

(3) Deletion of ‘u’ from the end of verb stem, when followed by subourdinating conjunction for

‘in order to’ construction. (‘w’ insertion between stem and subourdinate conjunction for ease of

articulation in the surface representation of prose form is not taken into consideration)

Prose Gloss Speech

parayu.a:n say. In Order To parayaan

ka:Nu.a:n see. In Order To ka:Na:n

cintikku.a:n think. In Order To cintikka:n

It is to be noted that these examples have been selected from the huge number of variations

between Prose and Speech, as these are some of the few that vary uniformly irrespective of

dialect. Other cases, such as the ‘was’ construction [ a:yirunnu], could have multiple
manifestations. The above case has at least three variations – [a:Rnnu], [a:runnu] and [e:nu] –

depending on the dialect of the speaker. Therefore, (1), (2) and (3) are used in Speech throughout

Kerala, and as can be seen, are distinctly aberrant from Prose.

Example (3) illustrates a different aspect of flux between Prose and Speech . It is an instance for

how when an entity of Speech is used very frequently by the users of the language gets inducted

and attested in the Prose of Malayalam. Therefore, it is not considered inaccurate to use the

Speech forms from (3) in writing. However, Examples (1) and (2) are exclusive in Speech . This

also gives us some insight into how the corpus of a language undergoes change over time .
Sociolinguistic Variations

Malayalam has very often been studied for how people speak differently from what is written .

Most of the curious candidates are sent back with full-fledged phonological explanations and are

happy. It is probably here that the role of language taboo should be brought in . Let us begin by

assuming that Malayalam, like most other languages, subscribes its own idiosyncratic criteria of

taboo language.

On examination of data, a salient point that we seem to miss is that Malayalam at large does not

follow a criteria of taboo. Rather, we have separate specificities of taboo for Prose and Speech .

Having said so, the above mentioned specifics are anything but something that emerged straight-

forwardly for each of these distinct manifestations of the language . It has an evident pattern,

hierarchy and dynamic to itself.

Taking first the case of Prose, it by no means displays any aversion towards the expression of

any concept or theme whatsoever. In fact, the written vocabulary of Malayalam displays a rich

culture of derivational semantics and morphology that readily creates lexical items for concepts

that did not originally exist in the language. For example, the term for ‘homosexual’ happens to

be [swavarga:nura:gi], which can literally be translated as ‘own group lover’; carrying a neat,

neutral connotation. When a word of equivalent semantic content cannot be coined, Prose does

not mind borrowing from another language as well, a prime example being the word feminism .

In short, Prose does not impose restrictions on the expression of any concept that can be

conceived in one’s mind, and is very encouraging of constructive word formation or even

borrowing in case the lexicon does not provide terms for the same .
Speech, on the other hand, has an entirely different history. In “polite” conversational speech, it

is forbidden in all respects to mention or discuss a large variety of concepts . Most of these

pertain to acts of sex, genitalia and sexual identity. Do remember that the term conversation here

does not include scholarly/intellectual discourse – which is conducted strictly in Prose .

Therefore, a healthy discussion of any of the above mentioned themes is not possible in Speech .

As a result, many children often go until their adolescence (and in some cases even into

adulthood) with no knowledge of how they can refer to genitalia to someone outside their

immediate family.

At this point, one must be left wondering whether there are no means at all to communicate

Concepts such as those mentioned above. It is at this point that Slang, which can be called a

corollary of Speech, comes in. It solves the problem of lacking vocabulary by means of bringing

with it a variety of alternatives for each lexical item pertaining to the above mentioned

“forbidden” themes of conversation. The only thing that remains to be said is that it comes with a

huge catch. More or less all of these words also happen to function as potent swear words or

abuses, assuming rather vulgar connotations at their best .

Therefore, any conversation involving Slang renders the themes under discussion with an

extremely ignoble subtext. The alternatives that Speech and Slang offer are that of no

conversation or an extremely uncouth one, which reduces the value of any theme conversed to

one undesirable and practically deleterious.

As a wholesome example for all factors deliberated so far, any discussion on the topic of

transgender individuals held in a professional discourse like that of an interview or a debate can

be executed by usage of the term ‘bhinnaliŋgar’ which is attested in the Prose of Malayalam

(Prose has word for transgender that one might find pejorative too) . However, when it comes to

Speech, the above term is not sanctioned to be used in day to day conversation . So, she/he would

have to resort to Slang in order to communicate the idea of a transgender individual in casual

speech. Unfortunately, the terminology provided by the Slang lexicon contains only words like

‘poTTa’ (translates as fool/impotent) or ‘a:Num peNNum keTTa’ (neither man nor woman) .

This more often than not leads to an individual intentionally or unintentionally issuing an

insulting remark at the transgender community as a whole.

Similarly, any discussion on the matters of sex ensues only with the help of discourteous

euphemisms such as ‘kaLi’(play) for sex and ‘va:Nam’ (rocket) for masturbation, and all terms

for genitalia such as ‘aNDi’, ‘kuNNa’ (penis), ‘pu:Rə’ (vagina), ‘mairə’ (pubic hair) etc . function

more as abuses or swear words than what they signify as body parts . The term for homosexual

(male), ‘kuNDan’ is extremely derogatory, with its meaning bordering on that of ‘pervert’ . It can

also be noted how female sexual autonomy has not been acknowledged through the absence of a

word synonymous to lesbian even in a uncomplimentary sense within the Slang . This clearly

depicts how all the biases of the Malayali society have been encoded in their day to day

language.
We had also seen in the beginning how audience groups determined what was taboo and not . It is

evident that there is a very wide disparity between the audience for Prose and Speech . Since the

“polite” audience here is that of Prose, Slang is considered solid taboo for the same . As a result,

Slang is never used in Prose, and the two of them exist as mutually exclusive subsets of the

language.
Code-switching and Code-mixing in bilinguals (English)

Thanks to a high percentage of education in the state, a fair share of Malayalis develop bilingual

faculty owing to an equivalent degree of proficiency in English . Such individuals are saved the

trouble of having to painstakingly switch from a casual conversation (Speech) to an intellectual

discourse (Prose) when encountered by an issue that is taboo in Speech . Instead, they just have to

switch from Malayalam to English, where discussion of topics pertaining to sex and sexuality in

casual conversation is sanctioned.

However, if the interlocutor does not sanction the switch from Malayalam to English, the

conversation in all likeliness has met a roadblock. This happens very often when either the

interlocutor is either not proficient enough in English, or as a consequence of language attitude,

wherein the peer group perceives speaking in English to be elitist . In comparison, it can also be

said there is a matter of intra-lingual language attitude between Speech and Prose within

Malayalam itself, where using Prose in conversation is considered uncalled for .

In the case of code mixing, it is also a commonality to use words from English within Speech,

where there is no eligible candidate in Speech or Slang.

Eg; ‘avan ge: a:Nə’

he gay be .PRESENT

“He is gay.”

Thus, code-switching and code-mixing between Malayalam and English play a major role in

resolving the taboo anomaly for bilinguals.

Conclusion

Albeit top ranked in the country for literacy, Kerala still continues to be a conservative society

that is scarcely open to ideas to anywhere their own tradition and culture . This paper, working as

a heavy proponent of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, attempts to draw a correlation between this

predicament and the language used by a majority of the Malayali population and the institution

of language taboo practiced in it.

Furthermore, a resolution has been for the above mentioned quandary that advocates of a

progressive society find themselves in, which includes gaining proficiency in a language that

does not practice this taboo. The more suggestible option would be to bring about a shift in the

language itself wherein Prose plays a more complementary role to Speech and eliminates the

taboo present in Speech.

It is hereby acknowledged that the data presented as evidence in favour of the hypothesis is

extremely rudimentary and requires further extensive work in order to be rendered valid and

binding. Nevertheless, it turns out fulfilling in being able to propose this vantage point on the

possible causes for an educated yet narrow-minded society.

References

1.Johnson, Alvin Saunders (1937) Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences .. Macmillan Company

2. Qanbar , Nada (2011) A Sociolinguistic Study of The linguistic Taboos in the Yemeni Society

by Nada [Pdf File] Retrieved from

http://www.mjal.org/removedprofiles/2013/8.A%20Sociolinguistic%20Study%20of%20The%20

linguistic%20Taboos%20in%20the%20Yemeni%20Society(1).pdf

3.[Polyglot Gathering]. (2014, July 14). From Languages to Linguistics and Back Again - Prof.

Bernard Comrie. [Video File]. Retrieved

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whMdAXIiUfU

4.Chandler, Daniel. "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." ABER. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.