Avoidance in Language Production

Abstract

One of the most remarkable features of language is the fact that it is an effective force in communication. Yet, still in some situations, avoiding certain linguistic items is necessarily needed in communication among different interlocutors in order not to break communication. The current work is open to one major objective: unearthing an interesting linguistic phenomenon, namely avoidance with its two main types: verbal and nonverbal. The verbal aspects have been tackled by shedding light on five main types of avoidance, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and semantico-pragmatic avoidance, side by side with the reasons that lead to avoidance in one of the aforementioned linguistic fields or another. As for non-verbal avoidance in linguistic settings, again three main types of avoidance, viz. positive (represented by two manners) and negative avoidance have been studied in detail. The present paper ends with some concluding remarks that highlight the main points attended to in the preceding pages of the research.