摘  要

语言是文化的载体，语言禁忌不仅是一种社会现象，而且在社会中被人们认为是会带来尴尬和不适的。与语言禁忌相关的人、事都不应该谈论而应以一种迂回的方式来提及。然而，不同国家的人对语言禁忌持有不同的意见，所以对外语学习者来说学习该方面的禁忌是非常必要的。在跨文化交际中，语言禁忌无处不在，对人们有很强的约束作用。本文首先讨论语言禁忌起源，主要讨论英汉语言禁忌的相似性和差异性，及如何恰当地避免禁忌。通过互联网上搜索，阅读相关主题的书籍，和一些学者的论文，发现一些较为全面的想法。通过对语言禁忌的介绍和对比加深人们对英汉语言禁忌的理解。从而避免因语言禁忌而引起的不必要的尴尬和矛盾，增强人们在跨文化交际中的交际能力，促进不同国家人民间的相互理解，以实现跨文化交际。

关键词：语言禁忌；尴尬；交际

Abstract

Language is a carrier of culture. Linguistic taboo is not only a complex social phenomenon, but will cause embarrassment and discomfort in people’s eyes. Persons and events that are related to linguistic taboos shouldn’t be talked about, but should be mentioned in a roundabout way. However, people of different countries hold on different opinions on linguistic taboos, so it is very necessary for foreign language learners to get themselves acquainted with such things. In cross-cultural communication, taboo exists everywhere and has a strong practical binding to people. This paper first discusses the origin of linguistic taboo, and mainly focuses on the similarities and differences between English and Chinese linguistic taboos including the way to avoid it. With the method of searching on the internet, reading topic-related books, and some scholars’ papers, the comprehensive ideas and view related to taboos was found out. Through different people’s discussions from different perspectives, by comparing their opinions, some new ideas were mentioned in this paper. This paper aims at providing the readers a better understanding of English and Chinese linguistic taboos through the introduction and comparison between English and Chinese taboos. Therefore, people can avoid the unnecessary embarrassment and conflicts, develop their communicative competence cross-cultural communication.

Key words: linguistic taboo; embarrassment; communication

1 Introduction 

This paper mainly discusses something about linguistic taboos. Language is a carrier of culture. Linguistic taboos, as an integral part of language, exist in both English and Chinese. A linguistic taboo is a cultural taboo against speaking or writing. Any ignorance of taboos may arouse prejudice and conflicts in cross-culture communication. This paper discusses through comparison between English and Chinese similarities on linguistic taboos.