Avoidance Speech

Avoidance speech, or "mother-in-law languages", is a feature of many Australian Aboriginal languages and Austronesian languages and some North American languages, some Ethiopian Highland East Cushitic languages and Bantu languages (called ukuhlonipha, "to respect", in Zulu, for example) of Africa whereby in the presence of certain relatives it is taboo to use everyday speech style, and instead a special speech style must be used.

Avoidance speech styles tend to have the same phonology and grammar as the standard language they are a part of. The lexicon, however, tends to be smaller than in normal speech, since it only needs to be used when conversation with the taboo relatives is necessary.

For instance, in Dyirbal there is the regular speech style (called Guwal) and the avoidance style Dyalngui consisting of a special set of lexical items that are substituted for Guwal words in the presence of opposite-sex parents-in-law, opposite-sex children-in-law, and opposite-sex cross-cousins. These words are fewer, however, and their meanings tend to be much more generic, e.g. the Dyalngui verb bubaman does service for the Guwal verbs baygun "shake", dyindan "wave" and banyin "smash".

Famous quotes containing the words avoidance and/or speech:

    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)

    Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet to its god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.
    Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)