First of all, at the border between taboo and impossibility, we should identify the laws that govern the linguistic code (the things that are called, so clearly, language faults); and then, within the code, and among the words or existing expressions, those whose articulation is forbidden (the religious, sexual, magic series of blasphemous words); then the statements that are authorised by the code, licit in the act of speech, but whose meaning is intolerable for the culture in question at a given moment: here a metaphorical detour is no longer possible, for it is the meaning itself that is the object of censorship.