"Negotiating the Unspeakable: A Discourse Analysis of Euphemisms in Fouzia Saeed’s Taboo"

Abstract

Fouzia Saeed's (2011) book Taboo: The Hidden Culture of a Red-Light Area examines the strategic use of euphemism, focusing on how unintentional expressions, silences, and substitutes navigate gendered violence, stigma, and power in Pakistan's patriarchal society. The research problem focuses on how euphemistic language in South Asian feminist diaries obfuscates and challenges dominant discourses, primarily exclusive frameworks of socio-religious restrictions and sensual labor standards. By unveiling the philosophical significance of these euphemisms, Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework aims to examine how they parallel and fight against gendered domination disparagingly. The study's methodology evaluates textual aspects, discursive practices, and extensive sociocultural contexts using a qualitative, interpretive approach based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model.By using Kamila Shamsie's Kartography as a guide, nearby readings of Taboo reveal that euphemisms become rhetorical tools of confrontation and revolt, exposing universal inequalities while creating avenues for dissent and intervention. The results demonstrate that euphemism is a strategy of exchanging experience and uniqueness rather than merely evading. In South Asia and Pakistan, the consequences extend to feminist literary studies, helping to clarify how discourse shapes representations of gender, resistance, and postcolonial trauma.