Taboos and Euphemisms in Sex-Related Signs in Asian Sign Languages

Yim Binh Felix Sze

The Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) network (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/home), an international and interdisciplinary network whose primary aim is to promote work on slurs, pejoratives, expressives and evaluative terms from less studied languages, invites you to the eight talk of the 2025-2026 academic year. The invited speaker is Yim Binh Felix Sze (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), who will give a talk  entitled "Taboos and Euphemisms in Sex-Related Signs in Asian Sign Languages" (see the abstract below). The event will take place online on Monday, MAY 18, 14:30-16:00 Central European Summer Time (CEST), and is part of the of STAL network seminar series (program here: https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/seminar). If you want to participate, please write to [email protected] for the Zoom link.

All welcome!

ABSTRACT:

This talk presents findings from my earlier paper on sex-related euphemisms in four historically unrelated Asian sign languages: Hong Kong Sign Language, Jakarta Sign Language, Sri Lankan Sign Language, and Japanese Sign Language. The central research question is whether direct visual reference to sex-related body parts or concepts is taboo among Deaf signers, and, if so, what strategies they use to form euphemistic expressions. I will present evidence showing that, although Deaf signers are accustomed to the visual explicitness of the signing modality, the highly iconic nature of some sex-related signs can still be offensive, thus giving rise to euphemistic expressions. While some of these euphemistic strategies aim to reduce the visual iconicity associated with taboo signs, most closely resemble strategies used in spoken languages, suggesting that verbal politeness strategies may be universal across language modalities.