Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne

Are euphemisms a plague upon our language or are they a tool of socialisation? Well one thing is for sure they've helped me start off this paragraph. I guess the answer to this question depends on who you asked, if you asked a politician or a comedian I'm sure they'd tell you that euphemisms are the dogs bollocks yet if you asked your typical socially paranoid sociologist they would give you a 5,000 word dissertation on how euphemisms were ruining the naïve public's views on reality.

                In George Orwell's book 'Politics and the English Language' he writes that euphemisms in politics are used "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable". One example of how euphemism sugar coats news is when politicians talk about 'collateral damage'; 'collateral damage' sounds far more acceptable than 'civilian deaths'. So the ethical issue with making murder respectable is whether it is right to try and be sensitive by making tragedies seem less catastrophic or is it disrespectful to brush such awful news to one side? However It's not just semantically that we feel the need to soften tragedy. Phonologically speaking some words are just unpleasant to say. There was actually a very interesting experiment carried out on this. Some participants were shown two shapes and told that one was a 'kiki' and one was a 'bouba' 90% of participants decided that the round curvy shape was a bouba and the pointy one was a kiki. 'The hot word' is a blog on language and the word they identified as the most unpleasant sounding word was 'Moist' and I have to admit even typing it I have a scowl on my face.

Throughout my research I will return to this question and try to study how different people use euphemisms and at what extent, if any, euphemisms become unacceptable. Edgy comedians such as Frankie Boyle and Micky Flannigan, (that is if you can class him as a comedian) rely on breaking the taboo we hold to those who refrain from using euphemisms to be polite and so opinion is divided on whether they are funny or not. It's at this point that you can see where the sociologist is coming from; Ashley Montagu famously wrote that "There are people who see nudity in the crotch of every tree". By this he is saying that euphemism is beginning to cloud meaning due to the ambiguity of euphemism. From this we could say that the media is using this ambiguity to brainwash the public but at that point the sociologist must hang up his hat and admit defeat as he is wrong.

The question still rises when we come to medicine, both doctors and patients will use euphemisms to make the truth less painful. Nurses will not say that someone had died they would refer to them as having 'Passed away'. Everybody knows that said patient has died but they feel more comfortable with hearing someone has passed away. However, patients' expressions for genitals can get rather vague as often the slang they use is based on many factors including age, gender and region so it is often difficult for foreign nurses to understand. Men have hundreds of words for their member including tallywacker, Mr happy, disco stick and peeper to name but a few. All of these expressions would be incomprehensible to a nurse from Russia, Germany or Greece. Here is the link to many other names for one's pee pee that I was too sensitive to post

Because euphemisms are constantly changing it is very difficult to educate foreign speakers in how to understand and use euphemisms in the workplace. Even native speakers will struggle to always understand what people are trying to describe so you can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who's second language is English.

There are some useful references to linguists' thoughts on euphemism some of which I have mentioned in this post http://linguistlist.org/issues/4/4-264.html

                In conclusion I will leave you with a quote from American singer Robert Gentry "Euphemism is a euphemism for lying"

 By Jack Tucker-Feltham