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Forceful language

29 October 2008

Professor Kate Burridge
Professor Kate Burridge

Keeping pace with the chaos of a living language has become a life-long passion for Monash linguist Professor Kate Burridge.

More new words are being created today than in any other period in the rich history of the English language.

"You think you know where language is going and then it does this incredible about-face or does something completely different," Professor Burridge said.

"Ask a dictionary maker today and they'll say more new words are being produced than ever before.

"Grammar is evolving as well; we're not just losing words and gaining words, but we also lose and gain constructions."

A prime example is the ever-controversial "gonna", which Professor Burridge said would eventually push out the word "will", the same way that "will" is pushing out "shall".

One of the major forces behind such rapid language shift is not what is said, but what is left unsaid.

Taboos, the subject of Professor Burridge's 2006 book Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language co-authored with Monash colleague Professor Keith Allen, is responsible for some of the English language's most spectacular lexical gymnastics.

She said English speakers' unending attempts to avoid directly mentioning the unmentionable has stimulated language change and literally given new meaning to hundreds of words.

"English speakers get interested by the fact that certain languages have many words for snow or camel, but look at the lexical richness of English -- with around 2000 terms for a wanton woman," she said.

"We tiptoe around something linguistically and recruit another term that's maybe nearby."

Under such forces, general terms take on a new specific meaning, such as "insane" -- once a general term for poor physical health -- becoming a euphemism for mental illness. "Insane" has itself now become a taboo in some circumstances, its meaning too abrupt to describe mental illness.

Another example is the word '"coffin", which once described a box, but is tainted by the taboo of death. Now the only time the word is used outside the funeral industry is by bakers, who maintain a tradition of using the word to describe a container.

Professor Burridge said that while some traditional taboos concerned with topics such as sex and violence were beginning to relax, others had risen to take their place.

"Since the 1980s English speakers have become queasy about how to talk to, and about, others," she said.

"This has resulted in a rise of '-ist' taboos -- sexist, racist, ageist, religionist language."

Professor Burridge spreads the word on the dynamics of the English language through regular appearances on ABC radio and ABC television's 'Can We Help?' Professor Burridge is Chair of Linguistics in the Linguistics Program in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts.