Taboo in Discourse: Studies on Attenuation and Offence in Communication combines cognitive, multimodal, translation and (critical) discourse-related issues with the intent of widening the field of study of taboo in communication. This volume explores the complex interplay between taboo and language in a range of social contexts, cultural settings and real-world discourse types: from political speeches to television series through cartoons, novels, oral interviews or official advertisements. Through a selection of empirical studies anchored in analyses of authentic and contextualized language data, this book examines the communicative functions of the different categories of taboo naming, from euphemism (attenuation) to dysphemism (offence).
By bringing together contrasting (yet complementary) examples of taboo-related research, this volume yields insights into the way taboo emerges in discourse and allows to have access to attitudes, stereotypes and value judgments regarding taboo which are more or less implicitly communicated in the public sphere.

Eliecer Crespo-Fernández, PhD in English Linguistics, is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Castile-La Mancha. His research interests include the semantics and pragmatics of euphemism and dysphemism from the frameworks of discourse analysis and cognitive semantics. He has authored five books and a number of research papers in major international journals.

Eliecer Crespo-Fernández: Introduction. Taboo in Discourse: An Overview - Gérard Fernández Smith/Miguel Casas Gómez: From Lexicon to Discourse in the Linguistic Expression of Taboo: Configuring New Social Realities - María José Hellín-García: Politically Tabooed Measures: Sanitizing the Economic Crisis through Metaphor and Euphemism - Rosa M. López-Campillo: Political Discourse in John Tutchin: Hedges as Euphemistic and Persuasive Devices - María Muelas-Gil: The Victim or the Cause? A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Cartoons Depicting PSOE's Internal Political Crisis - María Jesús Pinar-Sanz: Offence Strategies in Political Cartoons - Isabel Negro Alousque: Attenuation and Strengthening in Road Safety Campaigns - Andrea Pizarro Pedraza: Pardon my Spanish: Attenuation of Taboo through Metapragmatic Euphemistic Formulae - Isabel López Cirugeda: "Please, Like Me": Coming out of the Closet in the Millennial Generation - Raquel Sánchez Ruiz: Taboo in Prison: X-phemistic Language in Orange Is the New Black - Roberto Martínez Mateo: Approaching the Translation of Dysphemistic Language: Swearwords and Offensive Terms in The Catcher in the Rye - Emilio Montero Cartelle: The Discourse-pragmatic Conditions of Sexual Interdiction in La Lozana. Masculine Sex and Escape from Vagueness