hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2022-06-20

■ #4802. 絶対的タブーは存在しない [taboo][sociolinguistics][anthropology]

　昨日の記事「#4801. タブーの源泉」 ([2022-06-19-1]) で引用した Allan and Burridge は，序章で「絶対的タブーは存在しない」と言い切っている (9--11) ．

     There is no such thing as an absolute taboo
Nothing is taboo for all people, under all circumstances, for all time. There is an endless list of behaviours 'tabooed' yet nonetheless practised at some time in (pre)history by people for whom they are presumably not taboo. This raises a philosophical question: if Ed recognizes the existence of a taboo against patricide and then deliberately flouts it by murdering his father, is patricide not a taboo for Ed? Any answer to this is controversial; our position is that at the time the so-called taboo is flouted it does not function as a taboo for the perpetrator. This does not affect the status of patricide as a taboo in the community of which Ed is a member, nor the status of patricide as a taboo for Ed at other times in his life. Our view is that, although a taboo can be accidentally breached without the violator putting aside the taboo, when the violation is deliberate, the taboo is not merely ineffectual but inoperative.
   Sometimes one community recognized a taboo (e.g. late eighteenth-century Tahitian women not eating with men) which another (Captain Cook's men) does not. In seventeenth-century Europe, women from all social classes, among them King Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria, commonly exposed one or both breasts in public as a display of youth and beauty. No European queen would do that today. Australian news services speak and write about the recently deceased and also show picture, a practice which is taboo in many Australian Aboriginal communities . . . .
. . . .
We are forced to conclude that every taboo must be specified for a particular community of people, for a specified context, at a given place and time. There is no such thing as an absolute taboo (one that holds for all worlds, times and contexts).

　絶対的タブー，すなわちすべての人々，時間，状況において有効なタブーというものは存在しない．しごく当たり前のことではあるが，特定の文化の特定の時代に身を置いている私たちにとって，そこで有効なタブーが他のどこでも，いつでも通用するものだろうと信じ込んでしまう恐れは常にある．古今東西のタブーを知っておくことは，自らの属する社会のタブーを相対化するのに役立つだろう．

　・ Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

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