The Language of Taboo This idea of what we consider taboo in todays society is based heavily on ones own opinion or beliefs, its just a matter of where you chose to draw the boundary which you are not willing to cross, I think It can be agreed that the most extreme of taboos are unforgivable, even too the most open minded of people. But with the modern attitudes to breaking social convention, it may be best to review what we find acceptable in todays culture, because who is to say what is acceptable or not to an individual. We speak the unforgiven words like a second nature, a natural intensifier to situations or emotions, whether we have control or not, profanity is part of our everyday lives, for better and for worse. Its one thing to speak the unforgiven, its another to expose ourselves to its visual form, over time words designed to shock and offend have had its edges softened by societies desire to break this taboo. Perhaps the possibility that society has become so desensitized to life that this taboo just no longer creates fear among people, but has in fact become the normal behaviour of a modern culture. Our society may have evolved to accept profanities place in our language, we still find the need to protect and censor ourselves from this apparent evil, which suggest not all are willing to break this taboo. One of the oldest taboos around this that of language, in particular, profanity, especially with todays relaxed attitude to profanity. As you look upon these set of words, you will find that you have drawn up a conclusion in your mind as to which is acceptable to you or not. Your probably looking at these words thinking that the majority of them are perfectly normal, which of course they are if they are within your boundary, and that there are worse words, more offensive words, and yes you would be correct. However, the work created here is not designed to cause offence, it was design to expose peoples relaxed attitude to this linguistic taboo and how its become a social norm. These words were chosen for their non–subjective nature, this work was not designed to cause offence, just to open up to our relax attitudes to profanity, so I had to choose words that would not cause offence. I had to choose words that didn’t subject or target themselves to individuals, words to do with ethinicity, race, sexuality or disability target themselves to things that people have no control over, singling individuals out and creating offence, the words chosen are a generalization, non of these words link themselves to a single meaning and get used for many reasons, meaning they aren’t the target of any individuals. I also wanted to see peoples reactions to seeing such words written out, as appose to saying the words, linguistically the swearing taboo no longer exists to most people, such words are used diversely across all medias, but as a written expression, we don’t see profanity used on this scale. I think that these words said in conversation lose their shock appeal as words can quickly be forgotten, but seeing the words written out, whether they would resonate with people, because these words are being forced upon people, without choice, does that make these words more offensive.