Euphemisms for Taboo Words: Iliganon’s Sociolinguistical Approach for Social Harmony

Abstract

Iliganon’s are local residents of Iligan City in Mindanao Island in southern Philippines. They are conservative and generally peace-loving. They do not provoke or start a discord or use a language that is socially unacceptable. Hence, words that have negative effect to listeners are taboo, and to push through the message they want to convey, euphemisms are used. Quota, purposive, and convenience samplings were utilized to attain the desired number of respondents classified as professionals and non-professionals, male and female. The openended questionnaire used contained a list of local taboo words which have heavy sexual meanings, repulsive dirt emanating from the body, and other words that evoked aversion to the sensibility of an ordinary person. The respondents listed the euphemisms they commonly used when speaking about these taboo words. Frequency count, percentage, ranking, and chi-square were used to interpret the data. Results showed that the respondents used 10,529 euphemisms for 62 taboo words under six groups. Both variables were found significant at .05 level of chi-square. Euphemisms were effectively utilized to conceal the socially unacceptable words in Iliganon’s speech.