Masaryk University Brno Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature Euphemisms Brno 2012 Author: Supervisor: Mgr. Kristýna Šebková Mgr. Radek Vogel, PhD. 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D. for revising my thesis and his helpful and friendly attitude. 2 Declaration I hereby declare that this paper is completely my own work and that I used only the sources listed in the bibliography. .............................................................. 25 July 2012 3 Annotation This paper aims to outline the bright and the dark side of euphemizing. In the increasingly complicated, globalised society, there is a rising tendency to avoid speaking directly about sensitive topics. In this atmosphere, a disturbing question arises: is the widespread overuse of euphemisms undermining our ability to recognize euphemisms used as a tool of manipulation by politicians and the media? The main focus of this thesis is exploring the use of euphemisms in public discourse and discussing the way they alter our perception of inconvenient truths. Key words Euphemisms, political correctness, doublespeak. 4 CONTENTS 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………… 6 2. Formation of euphemisms……………………………………… 8 3. Why we need to euphemize…………………………….……. 9 3.1 A euphemizing instinct……………………………………… 9 3.2 The euphemism treadmill………………………………. 10 3.3 Motives for euphemizing………………………………… 12 4. Most commonly euphemized topics……………………… 15 4.1 Religious terms ………………………………………………. 15 4.2 Death and illness…………………………………………….. 15 4.3 Sex………………………………………………………………….. 18 5. Doublespeak: The dark side of euphemisms…………. 27 5.1 Political correctness……………………………………….. 27 5.2 Doublespeak……………………………………………………. 30 5.3 Fighting back……………………………………………………. 35 6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………. 37 Works cited………………………………………………………………. 39 5 1. INTRODUCTION Euphemism is usually defined as “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant. The origin of this word is Greek euphēmismos, from euphēmos auspicious, sounding good, from eu- + phēmē speech, from phanai to speak.” (Webster 428) Therefore, it may be natural to assume that euphemizing serves good purposes and the speakers use euphemisms with honest intentions, when their aim is not to hurt or offend someone. However, this paper will show that using euphemistic expressions is much more complicated than that. As various articles, comments or blogs suggest, people are increasingly sensitive to avoiding naming things directly. This trend may have resulted from so-called doublespeak, i.e. a term that William Lutz uses to describe “language designed to evade responsibility, make the unpleasant appear pleasant, the unattractive appear attractive. Basically, it is language that pretends to communicate, but really does not. It is language designed to mislead, while pretending not to.” (Lutz “Doublespeak”) What is more, the reasons why people euphemize keep changing, together with the topics avoided, and the words used to allude to such topics indirectly. Bearing in mind the well-known metaphor that language is the vehicle of thought, one can learn a lot about a society, its knowledge, culture and values by studying euphemisms. As Keyes (30) observes, “Words originally were not considered distinct from what they named.” The superstitious need not to utter certain words that described e.g. evil spirits or things considered sacred is still echoed today in idioms or proverbs, such as “touch/knock on wood“ or “speak of the devil…”. However, it is very difficult to avoid speaking about unpleasant issues completely. That is why people have always felt the urge to find a way to speak about phenomena they feared, disliked, worshipped or considered taboo, while not naming them directly. Taking this into consideration, it could be concluded that attempts to use euphemisms are as old as our ability to use language. Keyes (30-31) claims that “euphemisms are a key indicator of increasing complexity of speech. Saying what we mean takes a high order of intelligence. It takes an even higher order to not say what we mean, while still conveying our thought.” 6 In the present paper I will examine the motives behind using euphemisms, ways to create them, I will outline the most commonly euphemized topics, and focus on the so-called bright and dark sides of euphemisms; i.e. euphemisms as a creative source of amusement on one hand, in contrast to using obscure terms in order to blur inconvenient truths and society’s reaction to this form of manipulation. 7 2. FORMATION OF EUPHEMISMS There have been many attempts to divide the ways of forming euphemisms into several categories. It is not the aim of this paper to suggest its own categorization. Nevertheless, I consider it useful to mention a few examples of different ways to euphemize. The processes by means of which euphemisms are created include: a. borrowing words from other languages (Williams, Allan and Burridge): in English, Latin and French terms are preferred, e.g. Latin terminology for body parts used by educators, medical terms, e.g. “halitosis” (bad breath)< Latin halitus for breath; “au naturel” < French for naked, “lingerie” < women’s underwear b. semantic changes (Williams, Allan and Burridge, Rawson, Keyes): this category is very wide and may include circumlocution, i.e. using longer expressions, e.g. “little girl’s room” < toilet, “postconsumer secondary material” < garbage, “terminological inaccuracy” < lie; widening, i.e. increasing the level of abstraction, e.g. “growth” < cancer, “foundation” < girdle, “solid human waste” < feces, “the situation” < pregnancy, “do it” < have sex; metaphorical transfer, e.g. “blossom” < pimple, “the cavalry’s come” < menstruation c. phonetic distortion (Allan and Burridge, Keyes): this category includes clippings and abbreviation (e.g. “ladies” < ladies’ room, “vamp” < vampire (a seductive woman), “BS” or “bull” < bullshit, “ED” < erectile dysfunction) , reduplication (e.g. “pee-pee” < piss, “jeepers creeper” < Jesus Crist), distortion of pronunciation (e.g. “shoot” or “shite” < shit, “fudge” < fuck, “cripes” or “crust” < Christ) The ways to euphemize are even more varied than the categories above suggest. Nevertheless, how expressions are euphemized only arises from a more essential issue, which is discussed in the following chapter: the need to actually do so. 8 3. WHY WE NEED TO EUPHEMIZE This seemingly simple question has been asked and answered hundreds of times. For instance, Cumming cites Allan and Burridge who claim: "A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one's own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or of some third party." (Cumming) 3.1 A euphemizing instinct If anyone starts thinking about when they last used a euphemistic expression rather than a word that might cause offence or make someone feel uncomfortable, they will probably not find it difficult to remember; it may have been a few minutes ago, when talking to a colleague and excusing themselves saying “I need to wash my hands”, or “powder my nose”, or “use the restroom”. However, if the motive for using such expressions is analyzed, the answer may no longer be so simple; unless, of course, “everybody says that” is considered a sufficient reason for this behavior. Although the rules by which our society functions seem to be the obvious explanation, the question remains: how does the society create these rules? Who decides what is appropriate and what is not? If this question is narrowed to language, namely the expressions that are considered polite and suitable, the answer might have been given by the University of Chicago linguist Joseph Williams, who said: "Euphemism is such a pervasive human phenomenon, so deeply woven into virtually every known culture, that one is tempted to claim that every human has been pre- programmed to find ways to talk about tabooed subjects." (Walker) Ralph Keyes calls this a “euphemizing instinct” and uses medical research conducted by Valerie Curtis as evidence. Curtis claims that our need for euphemisms originates in the newer parts of our brain, where complex thoughts are created. By contrast, spontaneously uttered words emerge from the limbic brain. Keyes agrees with Curtis’s theory which suggests that creating euphemisms may have contributed to developing our ability to think, since the brain and our ability to speak have been evolving concurrently. (Keyes 247) 9 3.2 The euphemism treadmill As mentioned above, euphemisms help everyone to talk about subjects that the society considers taboo. What can help to understand the ever-changing essence of euphemisms is the process of automatization: “If we examine the general laws of perception, we see that as it becomes habitual, it also becomes automatic.”(Shklovsky 4-5) When this principle is applied to euphemizing, it could be argued that “some words undergo pejoration because of a taboo against talking about the things they name; the replacement for a taboo term is a euphemism…Euphemisms, in their turn, are often subject to pejoration, eventually becoming a taboo. Then the whole cycle starts again.” (Algeo and Pyles 214) The process, known by linguists as pejoration or semantic change, has also been given another term: the euphemism treadmill. As the feminist author Germaine Greer (298) notes, “It is the fate of euphemisms to lose their function rapidly by association with the actuality of what