Language taboos in Poland: the role of situational context and topic group in the response to taboos

Abstract

Contemporary taboo manifests itself mainly on the language surface and is linked to socio-cultural conventions; it is based on issues that should not be addressed. Taboos change over time and differ between cultures. It is a pilot of the author’s questionnaire examining the role of situational context and topic group in response to taboos. Three situational contexts were identified (family, friends, work), and four topic groups (finance, values, sexuality, diseases). Furthermore, five types of responses to taboo were distinguished; avoidance, lecturing, confrontation, discretion, and lack of taboo. People taking part in experiment were tasked with reading twelve scenes and selecting for each of them one of five proposed answers. The study was conducted online using Qualtrics. 83 people were surveyed, including 66 women, 12 men, and 5 non-binary people. The results were subjected to statistical analyses, mostly Paired- Samples T Test. Statistical analysis confirmed both hypotheses; there are statistically significant differences between the strategies of responding to taboos depending on situational context and topic group. The most frequent differences occurred between work context and the contexts of family and friends. The average number of responses based on lack of taboo was more common in scenes about sexuality, scenes dealing with the topic of values were more often responded to with avoidance strategy and confrontation strategy. Discretion was used less frequently in scenes about diseases, and lecturing was chosen more often. This is one of the first studies to address the role of situational context in responses to taboos in Poland.