The Correlation between Sexual Taboos in Iranian Comedy Movies and Box Office Sales

Taboo is a part of language that is studied in sociolinguistics. It means all forbidden words, expressions, and actions. Compared to other taboos, sexual taboos have always been more prohibited and their use in Iranian cinema is against the culture of Iranian society. Considering that comedy movies have a significant effect on changing the discourse of any society, the purpose of the present study was to investigate sexual taboos and their correlation with movie sales. In this research, 51 best-selling Iranian comedy movies released between 2012 and 2018 were viewed in their entirety and sexual taboos were extracted and placed under different topics. The research results showed that sexual taboos were used under the topics of sexual organs, sexual acts, sexual profanity, sexual clothing, sexual market, and physiological conditions. Also, the results indicated a positive and significant correlation between these movies and box office sales.