Abstract
Obscene words have an astonishing social range: they can provoke, grind a conversation to a halt, underline fury, threaten the moral order, effect joyful emotional release, praise, bond people in joking relationships, expand the function of a ritual, mark an unusual gender identity, and more. Obscenity takes “offstage” topics – typically to do with sex, excretion, and oral, anal, and genital functions – and brings them onstage. Taboo words are those that must be avoided, either by an entire speech community or just by certain speakers in certain contexts. Not all obscene words are taboo, just as not all taboo words are obscene. There is tremendous historical, cultural, and contextual variation in what should be offstage and what can be onstage, a judgment often bound up with power struggles and gender, class, race, cross‐cultural hierarchies, even imperialism.