Avoidance Register
In Warlpiri culture, it is considered impolite or shameful for certain family relations to converse. (For example, a woman should not converse with her son-in-law.) If such conversation is necessary, the speakers use a special style of the Warlpiri language called the avoidance register. The avoidance register has the same grammar as ordinary Warlpiri, but a drastically reduced lexicon; most content words are replaced either by a generic synonym or by a word unique to the avoidance register.
Read more about this topic: Warlpiri Language
Famous quotes containing the words avoidance and/or register:
“Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)