ABSTRACT
Why are chopsticks called kuài in Chinese? Why do etiquette books advise us not to give clocks as presents in China? And why are tourism promotional slogans such as Wǒ-kàoChóngqìnɡ and Yī-zuò-jiào-chūn-de-chéngshì criticized for transgressing common decency? The key to answering these questions lies in the notion of taboo and related concepts such as euphemism. In principle, anything can be taboo, including persons (e.g. pregnant women), acts (e.g. incest) and things (e.g. blood), for example. This chapter, nevertheless, aims to provide an introduction to Chinese taboo, past and present, including taboo words and expressions, euphemisms, motivations, functions and means to avoid punishments and sanctions for taboo violations. In what follows, I first contextualize this article by delineating the key concepts, historicizing the milestones of Chinese taboo development and reviewing very briefly relevant literature, in a somewhat streamlined and simplified form. Then, after outlining the structure of this chapter, I proceed to present Chinese taboo in detail.
