The Roles of Metaphor in Naming the Unspeakable: An Interpretation of Diachronic Variation in a Taboo Lexical Field

Some of the main sexual taboo words are said to have thousands of names in the Spanish popular tradition, like those of “prostitute” or “penis” (Cela). What lay people acknowledge as a fun fact has been explained by the academics as a constant need of lexical renovation in the taboo field, due to the quick process of stigmatization of the euphemistic substitutes, who very fast get contaminated by the taboo meaning, becoming transparent and thus losing their veiling function (e.g. Senabre). The need of replacing them by other euphemistic terms, that allow socially accepted communication, forces the introduction of other ways of naming the taboo, and contributes to the constant renovation that characterizes these lexical fields. It has been studied that many of these substitutes are existent items from other fields that metaphorically refer to the taboo item (Chamizo Domínguez). Considering that particular metaphors may be based on “historically and culturally specific sources” (Geeraerts: 249), the diachronic study of a field would bring us to face different elements whose social and cultural background is made apparent through the words. In the case of sexual taboo words, the hypothesis would be, then, that the history of sexual life and behaviors, and the cultural patterns related to it, leave a trace on the metaphors and other ways of naming the taboo. In this paper, I study qualitatively the evolution of the taboo lexical field of “menstruation”, focusing on the different metaphors that have been used through times, in CORDE -the historical corpus of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española-. The question of menstruation is particularly interesting, because it is probably one of the taboo concepts that has changed the most, which is strongly related to the importance of women’s voices in society. I dig on the possible motivations for the changes in the naming of “menstruation” by interpreting socio-cultural components of the data, and I argue that, in this field, not only the particular ways of referring to the concept, but the very role of metaphor has evolved through times, from having a veiling function to acquiring a playful one, far from euphemistic, as a response to a dramatic change in the conceptualization of women’s physiology, and in the attitudes towards it