1182: Why Death is Euphemized Mar 5, 2018

Following the post on taboo, the reason that words are felt so powerfully is because lexicon can evoke extralinguistic responses. Ultimately all sounds are arbitrarily assigned to signs, and even when words are imitative, there is no reason that those words are and others are not. However, lexical groups (such as that of swear words) can trigger physical responses, not because of the phonetic qualities or even the meaning of the word, but because of the social significance of the word. In cultures that practice taboo, words that were the names of those who have died have become like swears only because of extralinguistic factors. For this reason, the practice of making words taboo is found to occur independently all over the world, from Africa to the Pacific to the Americas. Indeed, the cueing of death is so commonly painful—in varying senses of that word—that it is rare to not find euphemistic options such as in English 'passed on', 'no longer with us' because like any euphemism, the idea is understood, but it does not trigger the same neurological responses.
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