Euphemism

Definition: The substitution of inoffensive expressions for words that may offend or suggest something unpleasant

Significance: Neutral or inoffensive words can blunt emotional reaction to what the words describe

George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945), masterpieces of political analysis, wrote an essay, “Politics and the English Language,” that points out that political speech and writing “are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Examples abound: bombarding defenseless villages is called “pacification,” killing prisoners is called “elimination of unreliable elements.” “Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them,” Orwell concludes in the essay.

In 1974 the National Council of Teachers of English established, under the direction of Rutgers University English department member William Lutz, the Quarterly Review of Doublespeak. The review annually awards the Doublespeak Award to those who have “perpetrated language that is grossly unfactual, deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory.” The term “doublespeak” is a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which uses the term to describe the deliberate use of euphemistic or contradictory language in order to make the barbarous sound civilized. Examples from the journal include calling bombing “coercive diplomacy”; referring to a fatal space shuttle accident as an “anomaly” and the astronauts’ coffins as “crew transfer containers”; labeling a bullet wound a “ballistically induced aperture in the subcutaneous environment”; and calling killing the enemy “servicing the target.” New taxes can be called “revenue enhancement”; layoffs, “workforce adjustments” or “headcount reduction” or “negative employee retention” or “downsizing.” A corporate raider becomes an “unaffiliated corporate restructurer” and an abortion, a “pregnancy interruption.” Poor people are termed “economically disadvantaged,” and poor countries can be called “developing nations.” Official lies become “press guidance”; to embezzle is to “wrongfully enrich” oneself; a recession is “negative economic growth.” A man’s beating his wife becomes “domestic abuse.” Such censorship is not unique to the United States. Orwell borrowed terms for his novel from the language of totalitarian governments of Europe. In Britain, “mixed gender relationship” has been used in place of “love affair”; in South Africa, “cultural group concept” has been used for “apartheid”; in Canada, “secure facility” has been used for “jail”; and in North Korea, a dissident suffers from “mental illness.”

Examples of Euphemisms from the Past and Present