禁忌语的“言有所指”刍议

On the Locutionary Sense of Language Taboos

语言学家奥斯汀在他的言语行为理论中把施为句分成三种:以言指事、以言行事和以言成事。我们借用奥斯汀的以言指事之称,认为语言中的禁忌语也是"言有所指",指代的是客观世界中人们所避讳的事物和理念,因此被禁忌。禁忌语的"言有所指"大致可以分为人称代词指称语类、专有名词指称语类、普通名词指称语类三个类别。人们之所以禁忌这些言语,是混淆了"能指"和"所指"之间的关系。

Austin, in his Speech Act Theory, classified per-formative sentences into three kinds： locutionary act, illocutionary act and per-locutionary act. Some language fragments are tabooed just because they signify or refer to something, such as the things and ideas that people consider as taboos in real world. Language taboos of this kind can be generally classified into three kinds： personal pronoun reference, proper noun reference and common noun reference. The reason why these languages fragments are tabooed is that language users are confused by the relationship between the signifier and the signified.