An Exploration into Euphemism
Gao Huan
Sometimes I wonder why human beings don��t have the natural camouflage like that of chameleons. It must be a spectacular scene if our faces can turn greenish in a forest and turn red and yellow in the McDonald��s. Nevertheless, human beings are masters of a verbal camouflage �� euphemism, an indirect, mild language used as a substitute for direct, possibly offensive, description.
If indirectness is more desirable than directness in certain cases, it follows that sometimes slyness is superior to honesty, veneer better than truth. How hypocritical Homo sapiens have been from the very beginning! Though the term ��euphemism�� was coined later, the practice had begun long before.
When people didn��t know enough about the natural environment, they invented mythology and religions to explain the unexplainable. ��Fear and a desire to placate the mysterious forces that rule the universe�� are probably the original reasons for euphemizing, since to speak the names of gods was considered identical with evoking the very divinity. 1 So people referred to gods in various tortuous ways.
The use of euphemism in this area is understandable when we take primitive men��s ignorance into consideration. But the euphemisms in other areas are often of different origins.
Indeed, why are people unwilling to say or write something explicitly? Words themselves are meaningless with the sounds and forms. It is the accumulated experiences and associations with real objects and ideas the words provoke that give them meaning. When a word is attached with psychologically unpleasant elements, people try to find an otherwise colored word to avert an unpleasant fact. When this newly-found word again acquires the unpleasant connotation after frequent use, yet another word will be found.
We may not agree with Freud when he holds that the main goal of life is basically determined by the Pleasure Principle. 2 But we still have to admit that, in a broad sense, we do prefer pleasure to pain as long as it is allowed. The masochists are no exception; they derive pleasure from inviting pain. What does civilization mean to us? According to Freud, it is a complex system as a result of the interaction between human beings and Nature, as well as an adjustment of the interpersonal relationships. 3 In a word, civilization is increased repression. ��And repression is the mother of euphemism.�� 4
Civilization has established what is proper and what is not. Decorum, though subject to gradual changes over time, is prevalent and very difficult to ignore. In this world, we find it, at least superficially, even more uncomfortable to disobey the social decorum than to let the ego unrepressed and satisfied. To minimize this displeasure from the social aspect, we use euphemism. We fear to ��flout social and moral conventions��, fear ��specific diseases�� and fear to ��offend others��. 5 We just don��t fear to whitewash the plain truth.
The human body receives an especially intense concentration of euphemizing because it tends to remind people of sex, a relatively sensitive topic to the general public. Throughout civilization, human beings have sacrificed to some degree their instinct for the building and maintaining of society. In other words, part of the energy (libido) has been sublimated and devoted to a loftier social goal. Yet this social bond is not stable enough, so the social convention usually encourages adequate restraint and discourages excessive discussion of sex. 6 Such a Freudian point of view has been criticized for its pan-sexualism, but I find it plausible in explaining the euphemisms about the human body and sex. For example, a current American phrase au naturel means ��wearing only what Mother Nature has provided��. Furthermore, this presumably elegant French expression is to substitute the coarse English counterpart. Some parts of the human body are forbidden and/or fascinating than others. So there come many euphemistic words and phrases, many of which are quite vulgar. In my opinion, they are actually stressing the discussed subjects rather than downplaying them, which is much worse than using the direct scientific terms. Discussing Uganda is fornicating, free love is sexual relations without or outside marriage, male oriented is homosexual (male) and AC/DC is bisexuality as if the one uses both alternating and direct electrical current.
Death is a taboo. But to think soberly, it actually doesn��t deserve such a negative attitude. Life is self-defined, entailing both a beginning and an end, i.e. birth and death. Moreover, Freudian thanatology has it that people have the instinct of death, a destruction impulse to return to the inorganic state from which all life evolves. Nonetheless, the ��great superstition��, the ��great distaste and a sense of social impropriety�� around the concept of death persist and propel people to attempt to ��strip death of both its sting and its pride �� in fact to kill death by robbing it of its direct and threatening name��. 7 Therefore, a coffin becomes a slumber box, an undertaker is a mortician. To drop the curtain, to join the immortals, to go to one��s long home and to pass out of the picture all mean the same thing �� to die. Suicide is the greatest sin in Christianity and there are many euphemisms of it even if it is not treated religiously. Planned termination and self-deliverance sound rather journalistic, while to shuffle off this mortal coil and to end it all come from Shakespeare.
Old age, disease and disability are somewhat similar to death. Euphemism can abate the terror and unpleasantness they provoke though they are but inevitable and natural. Old people are seasoned or well-preserved. Innocent people are mentally retarded and the Big C refers to cancer. Gork is a ��vegetable�� patient, whose coma bewilders the doctors. This acronym stands for ��God only really knows��. We fear to have the unfavorable conditions and the social rejection attached to them. We don��t want to offend those already suffering from it as well.
There are other causes for euphemism. Squeamishness is one of them. The abdominal organs are called jocularly the Department of the Interior since a too clear description offends some people��s sensitivity. Diarrhea is called the trots, which vividly describes the physical action it induces: to hurry to the toilet, or the sanctum sanctorum.
Snobbishness is another cause for euphemism. Today, ��unemployment, whether voluntary or involuntary, has a negative connotation��. 8 ��There is also an overwhelming tendency to make work seem respectable and meaningful.�� 9 So those in a consultantcy or developing a new project are perhaps out of work. A garbologist or a waste management engineer is a dustman or a street sweeper.
As for government gobbledygook and the language of war, the primary function of euphemism is to numb or distance the public without telling a downright lie yet get an almost equally desirable response. Language of this kind also serves to render itself sound or look more important. Biosphere overload is overpopulation and a tree is a reforestation unit. A source is a spy. Energy release is radiation released from a nuclear reactor. Preventive war is just war of aggression disguised as defensive action. Euphemism of this kind is particularly ugly.
Euphemism is a patent phenomenon of Homo sapiens. It is either a white lie or a ��black�� lie with various underlying motivations. It is something that blindfolds us when we look at things. This suggests that truth is not always desirable though we have always advocated it. Cover-up is a cherished practice which human beings can hardly do without. Truth is a basketball; people strive to get it but once they have it, they throw it away. (But where is the net?) My exploration into euphemism has, I believe, unpleasantly exposed the pretentious nature of Homo sapiens. Maybe this mini-paper should also be covered up by means of euphemizing.
Professor Lu Gusun's Comment: A
An interesting point is hereby established by delving into euphemism from a Freudian point of view. More praiseworthy is the fact that you've basically rendered it (the point) viable. If there's anything to be further desired, learn to write in a lean style without being overly metaphorical (e.g. basketball in the concluding paragraph).
01-12-98
Notes
Euphemisms (New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1990), pp.1-2.
Commercial Press, 1995), p.9.
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