Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Oh Scissors.
Speaker 1: It's Saturday. Time to go into the vault. This is
Speaker 1: for a classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: from December of It's our episode on euphemisms. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a really really neat one and if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard this episode, uh, there's a lot more to it
Speaker 1: than you might think. There's this drift that occurs, so
Speaker 1: you know, obviously a euphemism is rolled out. Initially it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a you know, a replacement for a
Speaker 1: dirtier word or a less proper word. But then over
Speaker 1: time the euphemism itself becomes the dirty word and and
Speaker 1: new words have to have to be brought in to
Speaker 1: replace it. Uh. So it's yeah, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: to unpack in this episode, and I think everyone can
Speaker 1: relate to it. How come oh scissors never became super dirty? Yeah.
Speaker 1: One that we use in my household a lot, and
Speaker 1: I forget who I stole this from or picked it
Speaker 1: up from, is to just use the word cuss uh
Speaker 1: in place of an actual cuss word. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to the boy about how it's just hot
Speaker 1: as a cuss out here, or you know, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which which is silly, but then it also runs so cute, cute,
Speaker 1: but then it runs the risk in the long term
Speaker 1: of like cuss will then absorb all of the need
Speaker 1: negative energy and become like the foul word. Um so, uh,
Speaker 1: that's the world we live in, all right, let's dive
Speaker 1: right the cuss in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about my favorite scene in the movie fram Stoker's Dracula,
Speaker 1: directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Okay, well, there's never a
Speaker 1: bad time to discuss, uh that, that particular interpretation of Dracula.
Speaker 1: It is a great one, isn't it. It's like horrible,
Speaker 1: but it's also great. It has some wonderful design in it.
Speaker 1: I love the suit of armor, oh yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I love some of the painted backdrops and stuff. But
Speaker 1: there's a great scene where so you know, the basic
Speaker 1: story of Dracula, these characters are in I think late
Speaker 1: Victorian England and Dracula. Count Dracula comes to England from
Speaker 1: Transylvania and begins feeding on the locals in England. And uh,
Speaker 1: there is the character Van Helsing, the Van vampire slayer
Speaker 1: man of great Wisdom, and in the bram Stokers Dracula
Speaker 1: France Ford coupla version he has played by Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 1: in a wonderfully weird, hyperactive performance. Uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: scene where the main character's friend Lucy has been turned
Speaker 1: into a vampire by Count Dracula, and Van Helsing and
Speaker 1: his associates have just come back from slaying the vampire
Speaker 1: version of their friend Lucy, and the character Mina Harker
Speaker 1: played in the movie by Win Ower writer she asks
Speaker 1: how did Lucy die? Was she in great pain? And
Speaker 1: Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing says, yes, she was in
Speaker 1: great pain. Then we cut off our head, drove a
Speaker 1: stake through her heart and then burned it. And then
Speaker 1: she found peace. And I always loved that because of
Speaker 1: the last line at the end there and then she
Speaker 1: found peace. Yeah, everything else is thoroughly non euphemistic, pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: These are the steps we took to to tear her
Speaker 1: corpse apart to to kill her her undead, unnatural life. Right,
Speaker 1: but then you have to end it with a euphemism,
Speaker 1: So they they have these terms ready at hand. She
Speaker 1: found peace, she passed on, she went to a better place.
Speaker 1: These are the the friendly terms for death. He could
Speaker 1: have just finished as he began by saying and then
Speaker 1: she died screaming, but instead he uses the euphemism, and
Speaker 1: then she found peace. And it's a great contrast. It's
Speaker 1: it's why it's such a wonderful comic, man, But it
Speaker 1: makes you aware of the absurdity of the euphemisms that
Speaker 1: we use in everyday language. Yeah, I feel like in
Speaker 1: researching this episode, we both had to do a lot
Speaker 1: of self examination regarding our own use of euphemisms. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know just how ubiquitous euphemistic language is. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's I bet it's half of all the talk you
Speaker 1: do now. Of course, the concept of a euphemism is,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with the word, it just means
Speaker 1: using a friendlier or more acceptable term to express an
Speaker 1: idea that for some reason is taboo or uncomfortable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting thinking about it in terms of having a
Speaker 1: four and a half year old in the house because
Speaker 1: he he does not have a really a great use
Speaker 1: of euphemisms. Yet when he's very blunt, right when he'll
Speaker 1: be eating dinner and he'll say I need to go poop,
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. He'll he'll even lay out a
Speaker 1: detailed plan. I'm going to go poop and wash my
Speaker 1: hands and I'm gonna come back and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fish eater. And wouldn't it be great if we could
Speaker 1: do that during dinner party? Yeah? No, No, Like if
Speaker 1: an adult did that, you would just think they'd lost
Speaker 1: their mind or just we're the most uncouth firson imaginable, right,
Speaker 1: But but a child is completely free of this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we would use euphemism. We would say I'm need to
Speaker 1: go use the restroom, I'm going to go make use
Speaker 1: of the laboratory, or maybe we visit the water closet, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: or even I'm going to step out. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna Well that that's a weird. I've never heard anyone
Speaker 1: use that I'm going to step out, Like, what are
Speaker 1: you going to do if you're gonna step out? I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, obviously something you don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about. Um. Yeah, I tend to fall back on
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go visit the restroom, or I'm gonna use
Speaker 1: the rest room and I'll be right back visit like
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some quality time. Well, I'm keeping it
Speaker 1: vague as to what. I'm not going to give you
Speaker 1: the particulars of what's going to happen. Maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: washing my hands, maybe I need to blow my nose,
Speaker 1: might just stare in the mirror without blinking. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say I'm gonna go poop and then
Speaker 1: I will return. I bet there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: when you have a kid in the house that you
Speaker 1: have to do euphemistically that you you're used to talking
Speaker 1: more bluntly, maybe with your spouse or partner, but but
Speaker 1: once a kid comes along, you can't say everything the
Speaker 1: way you used to. Well, it's interesting. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of back and forth too with
Speaker 1: kids regarding especially euphemisms regarding the human body, because some
Speaker 1: parents will will fall into this habit of using like
Speaker 1: cutes here less uh less accurate terminology for parts of
Speaker 1: the body, particularly genitalia, which I always find creepy. When
Speaker 1: I hear no offense to parents who do that. I'm
Speaker 1: not actually judging you. I'm that's just my instinctual reaction
Speaker 1: hearing like pp and stuff. It always sounds like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we try not to do that in our house. I
Speaker 1: mean that everyone everyone can, you know, do their own
Speaker 1: thing by all means. But yeah, we try and say,
Speaker 1: all right, enis testicles, um, et cetera. Because you know,
Speaker 1: I feel it's important for them to have an accurate
Speaker 1: understanding of their body and then to be able to
Speaker 1: describe their body, uh seriously to say, you know a physician. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they needed to talk to a doctor, they would
Speaker 1: need the correct terms. Yeah. But but that's an area
Speaker 1: where in parenting circles people kind of go on your
Speaker 1: arguments on both sides. Do you do you ever find
Speaker 1: yourself like wanting to curse in front of the child,
Speaker 1: but you have to find another word? Oh yeah, all
Speaker 1: the time. Sometimes I don't find that other word. Um uh.
Speaker 1: This morning, even driving through traffic, and my son reminded me, said,
Speaker 1: they can't hear you. I guess that other drivers cannot
Speaker 1: hear me. That is a perceptive kid. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: I try, I do try and use certain euphemisms or
Speaker 1: just it's almost easier for me to just come up
Speaker 1: with a nonsense word, so referring to other drivers as
Speaker 1: dumbledoors or calling them crab drivers or something like that.
Speaker 1: Crab drivers. That's because they're kind of scuttling around back
Speaker 1: and forth, side to side instead of going in straight lines.
Speaker 1: Uh Like, I find that easier to do, because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's difficult to make a euphemism stick, because if I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm really irritated with another driver, my brain really
Speaker 1: wants to use, uh, the the F word or or
Speaker 1: the or the S word, or one of these more
Speaker 1: actually profane words from a vocabulary. And there's something about
Speaker 1: a watered down version of it just will not suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to have a power, almost a magical power.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe that goes back to some deeply
Speaker 1: rooted part of the cursed tradition in our brains, where
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of years ago, somebody issues a curse,
Speaker 1: they think that that has power. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: doing something. Yeah, the thing gang is not gonna not
Speaker 1: gonna got not gonna do. It's not gonna suit. Fudge
Speaker 1: is not gonna work. So euphemisms in our house. Uh,
Speaker 1: my wife Rachel and I get a lot of enjoyment
Speaker 1: out of talking about our dog in un euphemistic terms
Speaker 1: when people normally would. So one example, when our dog's
Speaker 1: legs and jaws are jerking in his sleep, you know
Speaker 1: he's having a little doggie dreams. I think many dog
Speaker 1: owners would be inclined to say, oh, he's dreaming about
Speaker 1: chasing something, but we would say, oh, he's dreaming about killing,
Speaker 1: which he is. He's definitely dreaming about killing little animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that, that's true. Yeah, I guess I do
Speaker 1: a certain amount of that with our our pet as well.
Speaker 1: I'll give one more example though about about raising a
Speaker 1: child and euphemisms, is that sometimes you still do not
Speaker 1: succeed in really driving home the names for things, and
Speaker 1: without the proper term, sometimes the like the children's name
Speaker 1: for it is going to be totally even more unsuitable.
Speaker 1: So I don't think I drove home properly. You know
Speaker 1: what the anus is to my son, And so one
Speaker 1: day we had some people guess to the house and
Speaker 1: this is something he hadn't even met before. But he
Speaker 1: walks outside, just got it from the nap, and he
Speaker 1: proudly announces quote, uh, it itches where poop comes out
Speaker 1: on my bum and uh, and I think, arguably, like this,
Speaker 1: this is a more uncouth statement. Grantedies four and a half,
Speaker 1: so nobody cares, but still it would be more accurate
Speaker 1: to say my anus itches. Right. But in a way
Speaker 1: what he said was euphemism. Really it's an anti euphemism,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that in a in a bit.
Speaker 1: The the euphemism is actually cuter there in the situation
Speaker 1: where a kid says it. If the kid had said anus,
Speaker 1: that might have been weirder. Yeah, But if an adult
Speaker 1: had said it itches on my bum where poop comes out,
Speaker 1: then that, you know, you would call the authorities exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: So uh, let's zoom in on the concept of the
Speaker 1: euphemism and try to figure out what it does, what
Speaker 1: is its role in language apart from the obvious. Now,
Speaker 1: we we did say that it's essentially a nice word.
Speaker 1: It's a word that takes the place of a word that,
Speaker 1: for some reason is is inappropriate offensive. Uh, something people
Speaker 1: don't want to say or think about. Maybe that conjures
Speaker 1: up too concreteive an image. Yeah, I mean, on the
Speaker 1: surface of things, it's don't say that, say this, but
Speaker 1: of course it's it's more than that. A euphemism has
Speaker 1: the power to alter the meaning of the word, or
Speaker 1: at least the spirit and tone of the word. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like a black and white image versus a colorized image.
Speaker 1: Euphemisms allow us to colorize our our linguistic choices to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. And I think we can all think
Speaker 1: of various examples where a euphemism simultaneously makes a word
Speaker 1: less offensive and and yet creep here at the same time,
Speaker 1: such as many of these genitalia euphemisms that we've been
Speaker 1: discussing exactly Yeah pp hearing an adult say it, it's
Speaker 1: creepy even rhymes. Yeah, I would say most genitalia euphemisms, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of sound like that they have this this this
Speaker 1: vibe of being at one point they're they're deflecting us
Speaker 1: from the thing we're talking about, and yet colorize it
Speaker 1: in a way that is is tasteful. Okay, So there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of different ways that you can come
Speaker 1: up with the euphemism, right like you you can put
Speaker 1: it together in several ways. There's a word that people
Speaker 1: have instinctually felt somehow they want to start avoiding saying,
Speaker 1: but they still need the concept in everyday language. You
Speaker 1: still have to be able to refer to the thing
Speaker 1: the word refers to somehow, so you've got to come
Speaker 1: up with a different word. So where do these different
Speaker 1: words come from? Well, you can of course really go
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole figuring out what sort of euphemisms
Speaker 1: are doing what. But here are some of the basic
Speaker 1: classifications to consider. There's a term of foreign origin, okay,
Speaker 1: like a dairy air or copulation urination. You're using a
Speaker 1: more elegant and uh and in foreign term for what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. In English, a lot of times the
Speaker 1: euphemisms kind of come from Latin constructions more so than
Speaker 1: from the Anglo Saxon constructions, where the the short straightforward
Speaker 1: word sounds kind of rude and concrete, and that the
Speaker 1: Latin origin word sounds more abstract and less like it
Speaker 1: less it's less likely to conjure an image. Another example
Speaker 1: is abbreviations, for instance S O B or food bar.
Speaker 1: These are both examples where we we simply abbreviate a
Speaker 1: a phrase that would otherwise be offensive to some right,
Speaker 1: and I guess in most cases you would still consider
Speaker 1: the abbreviation somewhat offensive, but maybe less so you uh,
Speaker 1: the one I like you made the note of this,
Speaker 1: but I like the idea of using really vague abstractions
Speaker 1: such as doing it, doing it or um. The source
Speaker 1: I was looking at mentioned like situation, like just referring
Speaker 1: to the such and such situation. One that always has
Speaker 1: annoyed me is the situation the situation room? Like what
Speaker 1: what situation is the room for? Is it a war room?
Speaker 1: Because if it's a war room, let's call it a
Speaker 1: war room. Is it an emergency room? Is it let's
Speaker 1: let's call it what it is? The situation room could
Speaker 1: be about anything, okay. There would also be the concept
Speaker 1: of just saying that you don't want to say a thing,
Speaker 1: essentially like unmentionables. Yes, he who should not be named
Speaker 1: right for Lord Voldemort. Uh. And then there of course
Speaker 1: mispronunciations like freaking or god. I guess is gosh darn it?
Speaker 1: One is replacing God with gosh? Does that work? I
Speaker 1: guess it could be like gold gold darn't gold? Aren't it?
Speaker 1: That would be one? Yeah? And then their plays on abbreviation,
Speaker 1: which I really hadn't thought much of, but bull roar
Speaker 1: is one that we actually used recently in talking about
Speaker 1: bs or just to go ahead and bleet meum a bullet, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't think I've ever used barbecue sauce. I
Speaker 1: saw that one listed as well. Where'd you see that?
Speaker 1: It was in one of the papers so that we
Speaker 1: were looking at they mentioned barbecues. So I would like
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone who who says that's just the
Speaker 1: load of barbecue sauce. Barbecue has never heard that. It
Speaker 1: must be a regional, regional thing. What kind of barbecue sauce,
Speaker 1: especially if it's regional North Carolina, South Carolina, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Or beasting. Beasting would be a good one. Oh is
Speaker 1: that actually used? No? I just made that up. I
Speaker 1: was trying to think, what what what could you that's
Speaker 1: even that even has some of the same consonants in it. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: how about malarkey or maybe malarkey? Is malarkey actually more
Speaker 1: offensive in in its origin? And we're just it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where we don't know what it means anymore.
Speaker 1: I have no idea where it comes from. It would
Speaker 1: be horrible to go look that up later and find
Speaker 1: out it's a deeply offensive term yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like that happens a time or two as well.
Speaker 1: We we have something we think is is a euphemism,
Speaker 1: but in reality we're just using a far more offensive
Speaker 1: term than that fewer people are familiar with. Okay, But
Speaker 1: so when you use euphemisms, how however you form the
Speaker 1: new phrase or the new word, you're essentially doing maybe
Speaker 1: three different kind of things, right, Yeah, when you bust
Speaker 1: out euphemism, you may be employing what is called circumlocution
Speaker 1: to to speak around that which cannot be said, ye, circumlocution,
Speaker 1: And that's something we often use in a non euphemistic
Speaker 1: way to like, we use it when we're speaking a
Speaker 1: language we're not very familiar with. If you've ever tried
Speaker 1: to speak another language, you often don't have the word
Speaker 1: for a thing, so instead you circumlocute, You say a
Speaker 1: bunch of things that are sort of explaining the concept
Speaker 1: of the word to try to get to it. But
Speaker 1: this would be a case where you do the same
Speaker 1: thing not because you don't have the word, but because
Speaker 1: you don't want to use the word. Yeah. And another
Speaker 1: example would be a taboo deformation. So we're just we're
Speaker 1: altering the spelling or pronunciation of of that which cannot
Speaker 1: be said, So go fudge yourself, um you mother effort.
Speaker 1: That would be an example of of the use of taboo,
Speaker 1: defamation or gold aren't yeah called aren't it? We're just
Speaker 1: take like thinking, think of the obscenity. Is this clay object,
Speaker 1: and we're just wrenching it into a less profane shape,
Speaker 1: but we still know what its original shape was. It's
Speaker 1: still it's still echoes that form enough for us to
Speaker 1: use it, albeit in a blunted form. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: guess the other main thing would be sort of robbing
Speaker 1: the word of its power to conjure imagery. Yeah, double speak, right, um,
Speaker 1: making neutral the awful. I think one of the best
Speaker 1: examples of this is to say, uh, the enemy combatant
Speaker 1: was neutralized, which sounds far nicer than we We shot
Speaker 1: Rolf to death and his his family will be without him. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, Rolf was hit with an explosive that resulted
Speaker 1: in complete body deft defragmentation, which I guess is that'd
Speaker 1: be sort of that's kind of a euthanism as well, right,
Speaker 1: but yeah, defragmentation, what would it be? Rolf was hit
Speaker 1: by an explosion that severed many arteries. Yes, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that funny. I don't know why, I'm no, no no,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of getting it as we try to
Speaker 1: to dance around Rolf's death, and he even discussed more
Speaker 1: accurately what happened to Rolf. Are some things in life
Speaker 1: almost like too dreadful, Like there's there's no way that language,
Speaker 1: at least brief language, can accurately describe something that that
Speaker 1: is that horrible. I don't know, I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to look at the general categories of things that we
Speaker 1: have euphemisms for. It's not just arbitrary. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: not like we just have euphemisms for anything. We have
Speaker 1: euphemisms usually for terms having to do with the inevitable
Speaker 1: processes of the human body, like like elimination of waste, uh,
Speaker 1: sex and death. Those those are the big things that
Speaker 1: you have euphemisms for, but also for culturally sensitive issues
Speaker 1: like you know, for names of marginalized groups that are
Speaker 1: discriminated against or something like that. Yeah, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as well as the the way these things are shadowed.
Speaker 1: And certainly as there's a whole area of business euphemism
Speaker 1: to discussed discussed as well, oh absolutely, yeah. Of course,
Speaker 1: we have a number of different euphemisms to to to
Speaker 1: refer to firing someone, which is kind of the workplace
Speaker 1: version of death right we have. For instance, you may
Speaker 1: have heard about layoffs, downsizing, right sizing. That's like, that's
Speaker 1: a euphemism on top of a euphemism like downsizing. That's
Speaker 1: you know, we're not downsizing, we're right sizing. We're just
Speaker 1: we're just making the organization the correct size for what
Speaker 1: we're doing here. Head count adjustment or head count reduction
Speaker 1: uh an r I F or reduction enforce a realignment.
Speaker 1: These are also so fabulous, wonderful terms that allow UH
Speaker 1: management to do horrible things to people's lives. The words
Speaker 1: about feeling bad about it. The worst is let go.
Speaker 1: It's like you're free. Oh yeah, we had we had
Speaker 1: to let We had to let you go. You should
Speaker 1: be making us right. I think, maybe more than anywhere
Speaker 1: else I go in in my life, the business world
Speaker 1: is absolutely built out of euphemism. So I think a
Speaker 1: reason for this might be that the business relationship is
Speaker 1: essentially a cutthroat relationship most of the time. If employers
Speaker 1: can scam customers or employees out of another nickel and
Speaker 1: get away with it and keep making money. They will
Speaker 1: do it most of the time, and vice versa. You know,
Speaker 1: every everybody in the business relationship is trying to get
Speaker 1: an extra nickel and and give as little as they
Speaker 1: can for it. But at the same time, customers and
Speaker 1: employers and employees interact with one another all the time.
Speaker 1: You have to see your employer on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: I mean most people do. Uh, So they want to
Speaker 1: have pleasant relationships with the people they interact with. So
Speaker 1: you kind of live in this state of denial about
Speaker 1: the heartless, cutthroat principle at the foundation of your work relationships.
Speaker 1: And it's weird trying to be friendly with your boss
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about the fact that your boss could
Speaker 1: fire you at any time, and in some places, for
Speaker 1: any reason. So we we sort of pack our business
Speaker 1: lives with euphemisms to avoid thinking about this cutthroat reality.
Speaker 1: In addition to the euphemisms for firing. One thing I
Speaker 1: was thinking about was, Robert, have you ever noticed that,
Speaker 1: at least in my experience, maybe in years two, businesses
Speaker 1: seem to never want to talk about quote money. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So maybe I'm imagining this, but it seems like money,
Speaker 1: it's always removed to one higher level of abstraction, like
Speaker 1: revenue or returns or something like that. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: as if talking about money directly would reveal that the
Speaker 1: whole enterprise is kind of tacky at its core, or
Speaker 1: you know, not only revenue but rev ev share, Like
Speaker 1: that's the term that is thrown around a lot in
Speaker 1: our industry now. And yet you talk about rev share
Speaker 1: then it's just an item on on a sheet. But
Speaker 1: if you say, I want you to give me more
Speaker 1: of some of the money that you're getting for the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm making for you so that you can
Speaker 1: make money, uh, then it gets a little less tidy, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, why are you making it like that? It's
Speaker 1: like you've said something really mean when you're just saying
Speaker 1: in direct terms what you're talking about. Yeah. I often
Speaker 1: think about you know, we we've already the studies in
Speaker 1: terms of businesses where corporations are essentially psychopaths. I often,
Speaker 1: and I often think of it in terms of like
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, uh, beings than various cyberpunk stories. So a
Speaker 1: corporation is essentially this this demon, and this demon is
Speaker 1: bound by whatever chains of law and uh and policy
Speaker 1: and regulations that we can muster to keep it in check.
Speaker 1: And then we we sort of handle it with specialized
Speaker 1: gloves often you know, composed of euphemisms that allow us
Speaker 1: to handle it and benefit from its presence. But there's
Speaker 1: no denying that it's it's horrible demonic nature. It's a
Speaker 1: nice analogy, it's it comes from I guess I read
Speaker 1: one too many Warhammer book and in my time, Oh,
Speaker 1: they have demon gloves for the corporations. Um, we'll know
Speaker 1: they have actual demons sometimes and they're chained up and
Speaker 1: they serve the who is it the witch hunters? Yeah, excellent, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the cultural implications of euphemisms. So, yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: language here. We have multiple languages throughout the world. Every
Speaker 1: culture is it kind of emerges from its own linguistic world,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have we have different uses of euphemism
Speaker 1: in in different languages. We have different uses of euphemism
Speaker 1: in just different versions of different languages, different dialects, right,
Speaker 1: British English versus American English, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: our reference points are going to be English, but it
Speaker 1: is worth looking into the use of euphemisms may be
Speaker 1: in other languages too. Yeah, two great examples I think
Speaker 1: come from British English and Mandarin Chinese. So the the
Speaker 1: Economists ran a great and naturally unattributed article back in
Speaker 1: um titled making Murder Respectable, and it runs through a
Speaker 1: number of examples of euphemisms that are currently uh or
Speaker 1: or sort of previously in use. I think some of
Speaker 1: the British ones have fallen out of favor. Did you
Speaker 1: notice that nice euphemism. They're unattributed, where the real term
Speaker 1: would be the author's name is not listed. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can either you would even say the the author is
Speaker 1: anonymous or or not credited for their work. But I
Speaker 1: mean that's the economist business as a whole, separate, separate,
Speaker 1: separate discussion. Uh So, Yeah, we have a number of
Speaker 1: course American euphemisms, which the the author in this uff
Speaker 1: this article points out that these of course just replaced
Speaker 1: non offensive words terms with new non offensive words in terms.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the details on this in a bit,
Speaker 1: but in Hails, something that's that's been referred to as
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill right by the linguist and general scholar
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker. Yeah. Yeah, contemporary, very very much contemporary, still
Speaker 1: commenting on the world we find ourselves in today. British euphemisms,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, they create quote a pleasant sense
Speaker 1: of of complicity between the euphemist and the individual that's
Speaker 1: listening to the euphemist. The first few examples that the
Speaker 1: author rolls outcome from British oh bits. So a drunkard
Speaker 1: will be described as as convivial or cheery that's great, um,
Speaker 1: A niphomaniac is uh has notable vivacity, and in in
Speaker 1: prior times, you would of course encountered a homosexual only
Speaker 1: as a quote confirmed bachelor. With all of these, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if the person using the euphemism and the
Speaker 1: person hearing it are so sort of in on a
Speaker 1: joke together. Yeah, yeah, there's a And that's something that
Speaker 1: the author gets into here too, is you you have
Speaker 1: to be on it on the joke to really understand
Speaker 1: at least proper British, proper British conversation. You have to
Speaker 1: know the cues, otherwise you're gonna have no idea what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. One more from the oh bit world, though,
Speaker 1: is that there's the mysterious burdened by occasional irregularities in
Speaker 1: his private life. Private life, which is delightfully that like
Speaker 1: what what I assume that means scandal scandal ridden life.
Speaker 1: But that's that's a lot sharper. So Yeah. The author
Speaker 1: points out that there are a number of passive cues
Speaker 1: in sort of traditional high British conversation, such as, incidentally, incidentally, Joe, Uh,
Speaker 1: this would mean I am now telling you the purpose
Speaker 1: of this discussion, even though I'm saying incidentally, as if
Speaker 1: this is just an incidental point I want to make,
Speaker 1: I'm actually saying, all right, cut all the crap, this
Speaker 1: is the real reason we're meeting here today. Another one
Speaker 1: that the the author mentions with the greatest respect, with
Speaker 1: the greatest respect, Joe Uh, that means you are mistaken
Speaker 1: and silly, which which which seems to be the complete
Speaker 1: opposite of what you're literally saying. I can think of
Speaker 1: a Southern American equivalent, was that, bless his heart. Bless
Speaker 1: his heart. Yeah, bless his heart. That means sort of
Speaker 1: the opposite of what it said. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great example. Now, the the author of this economist piece
Speaker 1: also pointed out that there are a number of Chinese euphemisms,
Speaker 1: and these, like American euphemisms, often stem from squeamishness. It's
Speaker 1: not proper to be too direct, especially if you might
Speaker 1: offend somebody. So it's this idea of of a polite opacity.
Speaker 1: So instead of turning down an invitation, uh, and this
Speaker 1: might be like a this can be a really formal invitation,
Speaker 1: like you know, a political of a political nature. One
Speaker 1: might be hold that that something is a boufong bian,
Speaker 1: which means not convenient, when that, of course really means
Speaker 1: we're not doing that. That's not happening. So it's not
Speaker 1: like this is a bad time for me. Can we
Speaker 1: reschedule right? It's it's very reminiscent of I imagine everyone
Speaker 1: out there has some friend or acquaintance that's very flaky,
Speaker 1: very wishy washy about their appointments. You say, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to hang out this week? Let me check
Speaker 1: my calendar. Uh, let me see, I'll get back to you,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of sometimes that means that they sometimes yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing. And if you didn't, if you
Speaker 1: didn't know better, you might you know, you might have
Speaker 1: a policy an official inquiry with the Chinese government official
Speaker 1: and you and you might say, oh, well it's not convenient,
Speaker 1: I'll try again tomorrow, but no, you're not getting the message.
Speaker 1: It's not convenient, it's not going to happen. Perhaps Ever,
Speaker 1: another example is is one might ask for an explanation
Speaker 1: of something and you might get boching chu, which means, uh,
Speaker 1: I am not clear, which just means you're not going
Speaker 1: to be told like it basically means I can't tell
Speaker 1: you that or I won't tell you that. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's casting that in the guise of why I'm
Speaker 1: not really clear on the information, but it also kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like I am not clear and that I
Speaker 1: am not I am open, I am open. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I find it interests and the examples like this in
Speaker 1: every language, and perhaps our listeners out there, if you
Speaker 1: have particular examples you're aware of in a tongue that
Speaker 1: you speak or have some history with, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear those examples. Oh yeah, I always love hearing the
Speaker 1: different idioms from around the world that we get from listeners.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites was we heard from a listener
Speaker 1: and oh, now I apologize, I can't remember which language
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was Swedish or Norwegian or
Speaker 1: maybe uh, Scandinavian language, and the expression was it was
Speaker 1: an expression that means something is a miss, and the
Speaker 1: term is there are owls in the moss. I love it.
Speaker 1: That's great, there are owls in the moss. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. If you're the one who sent that to us,
Speaker 1: which I still think about that a lot. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Okay, Well, for one other arena of of
Speaker 1: the interaction between culture and euphemism, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: what about religious euphemisms? So I sometimes see, here's just
Speaker 1: one example. I want to talk about a few different examples.
Speaker 1: One of them is the way some Christians use euphemism
Speaker 1: to talk about certain doctrines that they haven't explicitly rejected,
Speaker 1: but obviously aren't comfortable talking about directly. And one example
Speaker 1: that I have encountered before is the Christian doctrine of hell. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: there are many doctrines of hell, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to paint all believers with the same view, but one
Speaker 1: common interpretation throughout the history of the Church is the
Speaker 1: sort of Dante's Inferno interpretation, saying that Dante is more
Speaker 1: or less correct. After death, people who are non Christians
Speaker 1: or people who are unrepentant sinners go to a place
Speaker 1: of eternal torture and agony in fire. And some modern
Speaker 1: Christians explicitly deny that premise. They just don't believe that
Speaker 1: in that or they don't interpret the references to Hell
Speaker 1: that way. Right. Yeah, we actually have an older Stuff
Speaker 1: to Wear your Mind episode on this that that goes
Speaker 1: through some of the theologies, and I think we have
Speaker 1: a we have a list or gallery that I can
Speaker 1: link to on the landing page for this episode of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Bring your Mind dot com. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: have everything from this literal interpretation to annihilation theology, which
Speaker 1: says when you die going to Hell is that simply
Speaker 1: essentially you are consumed. Your soul is just completely obliterated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just ceased to be. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: as you allude to, some some do accept and embrace
Speaker 1: it and say explicitly what they mean, you know, Hell
Speaker 1: is a place of torment, depart from me and everlasting fire.
Speaker 1: But there are some people who at least rhetorically seems
Speaker 1: stuck in the middle. I hear this fairly often. They
Speaker 1: don't reject the doctrine, but they don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about it bluntly. So you get phrases that are things
Speaker 1: like the the unrighteous or the unbeliever will suffer divine
Speaker 1: judgment or something like that. It's euphemistic in nature. You know,
Speaker 1: you haven't rejected the belief, but you just don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about the particulars of it. That's interesting. So
Speaker 1: they're basically they might, for instance, they might believe in
Speaker 1: this uh, this sort of torture uh revenge fantasy of hell,
Speaker 1: but they're using the language of annihilation theology instead as
Speaker 1: a euphemism for what they actually believe, or just not
Speaker 1: being specific about what the judgment entails. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there are there are other terms too. That
Speaker 1: was the first one that came to my mind. It
Speaker 1: ha's such a weird area to consider, right, because so
Speaker 1: many of these when you're using a euphemism for you know,
Speaker 1: your your but you're talking about a thing that has
Speaker 1: a definite reality. There's there's nothing subjective. It's not a
Speaker 1: doctrine or belief, right, there is an objective, but there's
Speaker 1: an objective their objective buttocks, there is an anus. There's
Speaker 1: no denying there no, there no, no, no denying these things.
Speaker 1: But when you get into Hell, they are all these discussions.
Speaker 1: There's there's been, there's a there's a there's a broad
Speaker 1: spectrum of theologies regarding its existence or non existence. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm personally of the mind that whatever your belief
Speaker 1: about Hell is, you should you should, you should speak
Speaker 1: clearly about it. Another type of religious euphemism, I would say,
Speaker 1: is motivated by a very different type of thing. Instead
Speaker 1: of being uncomfortable with certain concepts or not wanting to
Speaker 1: talk about certain things, it extends from a perception of
Speaker 1: holiness or reverence. And this is the evolution of the
Speaker 1: name of God in Judaism throughout history. So it's not
Speaker 1: that the name of God has changed so much, or
Speaker 1: at least not much in recent history in Judaism, but
Speaker 1: that at certain points throughout history, usage of the name
Speaker 1: has become taboo because of beliefs about not taking the
Speaker 1: name of the Lord in vain. And thus it is
Speaker 1: required to have a new word if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about religious ideas such as your belief in God
Speaker 1: without referencing this word, that you might be using the
Speaker 1: wrong way. And so some of my info here is
Speaker 1: coming from a book on Hebrew and Western the Hebrew
Speaker 1: and Western Christian Name of God by Robert J. Wilkinson.
Speaker 1: But in the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish God has several names.
Speaker 1: You've got names like ale and ale yawn Uh, Eloheim,
Speaker 1: but the most common is Yahweh, the four letter word
Speaker 1: that's often called the tetragrammaton meaning four letters um. And
Speaker 1: at a certain point in the history of Judaism, and
Speaker 1: generally in that the Hellenistic period, you know, the Greek Conquest,
Speaker 1: a taboo on pronouncing the name emerged. And so, to
Speaker 1: quote one story about this origin from the Babylonian Talbot, quote,
Speaker 1: the Greeks, and that's referring to the Seleucid rulers of
Speaker 1: the region at that time, decreed that the name of
Speaker 1: God may not be spoken aloud. But when the Hasmanians,
Speaker 1: and it was a group of Jewish rebels, grew in
Speaker 1: strength and defeated them, they decreed that the name of
Speaker 1: God be used even in contracts. And an example of
Speaker 1: this might be something like by the name of Yahweh,
Speaker 1: I will paint your chicken coop if you give me
Speaker 1: a tray of corn money um and so. But then
Speaker 1: continuing from the Talmud, when the rabbis heard about this,
Speaker 1: they said, tomorrow this person will pay his debt and
Speaker 1: the contract will be thrown on a garbage heap. So
Speaker 1: they forbade its use in contracts. Uh. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: the use of the name that was necessarily inherently wrong.
Speaker 1: It was just that using it in this way for
Speaker 1: sort of everyday purposes made it vulnerable to accidental defilement. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have, in a sense, you have a very
Speaker 1: secular use of divine terminology and uh and it's not
Speaker 1: proper to throw that around, right, to just make up
Speaker 1: a contract with the name of God, and that you'd
Speaker 1: end up throwing in the trash. It's like if you
Speaker 1: were what's the the the Clive Barker film where you
Speaker 1: say that the name three times and he shows up,
Speaker 1: candy Man, candy Man. Yea, So it's like candy Man.
Speaker 1: Can't you don't want to say candy man all the
Speaker 1: time because he will show up and start killing people.
Speaker 1: You've got a limited number of times you can invoke that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we need to have another name for candy Man.
Speaker 1: You call him like, you know, sweet guy, sweet guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then after a while, like there's still a candy
Speaker 1: man is just so magical and so potent that he's
Speaker 1: going to creep into that term as well and start
Speaker 1: popping up when you say that words, So you gotta
Speaker 1: come up with another one. Yeah, But so anyway, going on,
Speaker 1: in the same spirit of avoiding accidental defilements, some Jews
Speaker 1: throughout history have avoided saying the tetragrammaton name out loud,
Speaker 1: even in context where I would think one would assume
Speaker 1: it was probably not being defiled, such as in reading
Speaker 1: of the Torah. So you might have readings allowed from
Speaker 1: the Torah where the reader would come to the four
Speaker 1: letter name of God, and then instead of saying it,
Speaker 1: the reader would substitute something like the word ada and i,
Speaker 1: which means lord or master. But then in time, the
Speaker 1: originally euphemistic ad and i, which was just substituted to
Speaker 1: avoid saying the original name, also came to be charged
Speaker 1: with the original holiness of the name of God. And
Speaker 1: so then later you'd have some Jews referring to God
Speaker 1: as Hashem, meaning the name. So you have this evolutionary
Speaker 1: process by which um a word is used to avoid disrespect.
Speaker 1: But then that word sort of becomes worthy of respect
Speaker 1: in in its own right. But then anyway, So, according
Speaker 1: to the Talmud, sometimes shortly after the conquest of Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great, the High Priest stopped saying the name of
Speaker 1: God when when giving blessings. And in the Missionah, which
Speaker 1: is a work of Jewish rabbinic literature putting down lots
Speaker 1: of Jewish oral traditions into writing, the name of God
Speaker 1: is often avoided and substituted with other words associated with God,
Speaker 1: like Heaven or the place, or the Holy One, blessed
Speaker 1: be he uh and so again, I think these euphemisms
Speaker 1: are interesting because they're not used to avoid mentioning something
Speaker 1: unpleasant or offensive, but to avoid accidental defilement of a
Speaker 1: word that, in this religious concept context, is believed to
Speaker 1: be holy, believed to be treated with reverence and respect.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because I think it's easy to to believe
Speaker 1: that you just have all these different names for for
Speaker 1: God solely because hey, God's really cool, really important and
Speaker 1: has all these uh, these these different points in time
Speaker 1: where people are considering it, and therefore they need a
Speaker 1: different name for it, uh, you know. And then we
Speaker 1: see that that sort of loose interpretation reflect did in
Speaker 1: our discussion of unreal deities, where so like Goes, Goes
Speaker 1: or the Ghazarian has several different names and Ghostbusters, Um,
Speaker 1: probably just because Goes are is cool and needs a
Speaker 1: number of names, right, Yeah, it's true like you've lost
Speaker 1: the original, uh, the original rationale for all this diversification,
Speaker 1: but you've still got the process. It's a cargo cult
Speaker 1: of naming deity. But I was just wondering, are there
Speaker 1: similar euphemisms and other religions too, for for either one
Speaker 1: for talking about concepts that might be uncomfortable to some believers,
Speaker 1: yet they haven't been fully rejected or talking about things
Speaker 1: that cannot be named out of respect. Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: briefly talked about this before we came in here, and
Speaker 1: we had a hard time nailing down another example. We
Speaker 1: we talked about the devil a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: think that's not exactly the same. It's not because there's
Speaker 1: this there's this timeline in our development of of of
Speaker 1: the devil as a concept that's really kind of similar
Speaker 1: to our concept of l where the devil as the
Speaker 1: sort of popular conception of the western devil or even
Speaker 1: like the classical devil or the or the Miltonian devil
Speaker 1: or Dante's devil, Like, these are all vastly different things,
Speaker 1: and they occur at different points in our evolving conception
Speaker 1: of the devil, and even just been a biblical basis. Uh,
Speaker 1: you go back to say the Book of Job, like,
Speaker 1: that's not the devil, that's that's some guy who works
Speaker 1: for God. That's called Satan that I believe stems from
Speaker 1: the Hebraic Hasitan, which was just a court role. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But then I think we've also not, um, we've not
Speaker 1: had the same kind of evolution because the devil is
Speaker 1: not really considered holy. So yeah, in fact, there's often
Speaker 1: the the the opposite effort to to really cast the
Speaker 1: devil down instead refer to refer to it as a
Speaker 1: worm or or what have you. Sometimes we should do
Speaker 1: a history of the Devil show. Oh yeah, we should.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I want to move on yet and
Speaker 1: from one totally on uncontroversial subject religion to another one politics. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there is definitely a strong cultural import of euphemism in politics.
Speaker 1: And this is this probably won't come as a surprise
Speaker 1: to you, but exactly how it works out, you might
Speaker 1: be a little fuzzy on. And this is something that is, uh,
Speaker 1: you can definitely find explored in a really lucid and
Speaker 1: fascinating way in the nineteen forty six essay by George Orwell,
Speaker 1: the English journalist and critic called Politics and the English Language.
Speaker 1: And in this essay, which by the way, is a
Speaker 1: lot of people might have read it in college as
Speaker 1: sort of just like a writing style essay. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a great read. It's just fun to read.
Speaker 1: He's got a great writing style, uh. In anyway, In
Speaker 1: this essay, Orwell lays out a series of criticisms as
Speaker 1: what he saw as the deterioration of the quality of
Speaker 1: published writing in English in his time. So he's coming
Speaker 1: right out of World War Two. You know, You've you've
Speaker 1: got a you've got a victorious Soviet Union to deal with.
Speaker 1: You've just you've just had the fall of the Nazi regime.
Speaker 1: The world has been in chaos for a while. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he so he's talking about in this in this climate,
Speaker 1: the English language has really been put through the ringer.
Speaker 1: Oh and I just used a cliche that he would
Speaker 1: aborre because he attacks the use of cliches like that
Speaker 1: in his essay. But in one famous passage, or Well
Speaker 1: translates a well written verse from the King James Bible
Speaker 1: translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes into the style he's
Speaker 1: referring to in modern English. And so I just got
Speaker 1: to read this because it's too good. The King James
Speaker 1: Bible says, I returned and saw under the sun, that
Speaker 1: the race is not to the swift, nor the battle
Speaker 1: to the strong, neither yet bred to the wise, nor
Speaker 1: yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor men
Speaker 1: of skill. But time and chance happeneth to them all. Okay,
Speaker 1: Orwell's rewriting of that in modern English is objective. Considerations
Speaker 1: of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure
Speaker 1: in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with
Speaker 1: innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable
Speaker 1: must invariably be taken into account. Now it does communicate
Speaker 1: the same sense basically, right. Yeah, I almost feel like
Speaker 1: like his translation of it is better. Maybe it I
Speaker 1: think maybe it just comes from reading too many, you know,
Speaker 1: god awful peer of viewed papers for work. But but
Speaker 1: I feel like that when kind of drove home a little,
Speaker 1: a little, a little easier for me. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: can't agree with you here, Robert. That is awful. Come on, yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: you know okay, Well anyway, so so Orwell goes on
Speaker 1: to say in in his main characterization that quote modern
Speaker 1: writing at its worst does not consist in picking out
Speaker 1: words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images
Speaker 1: in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in
Speaker 1: coming together long strips of words which have already been
Speaker 1: set in order by someone else, and making the results
Speaker 1: presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of
Speaker 1: writing is that it is easy, and I think there's
Speaker 1: some truth to that, like that, when you use these
Speaker 1: sort of cliches and bloated phrases, it writing comes very naturally.
Speaker 1: You don't have to think as much about the images
Speaker 1: or the words you're choosing as you do when you
Speaker 1: try to write things in a simpler, uh more concrete way. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's this second example. I was. I instantly
Speaker 1: thought of peer of viewed papers because there is this
Speaker 1: this often very specific, clinical, technical discussion of what's going on. Often,
Speaker 1: you know, not not all the time, but sometimes this
Speaker 1: can feel a bit soulless, but you can you can
Speaker 1: read it and you you basically you basically know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about in in great detail, and there's less
Speaker 1: interpretation involved. And so yeah, it's it's a less creative venture, uh,
Speaker 1: either to to write or to read. But is it
Speaker 1: more exact? I don't know if it is. And I
Speaker 1: think Well or Well might disagree with you, but I
Speaker 1: would like to hear what you think. When season so,
Speaker 1: I want to get to his main argument. Then maybe
Speaker 1: you can come back and flog or Well for me.
Speaker 1: So for Orwell, the decline in the quality of writing
Speaker 1: was not just an esthetic concern. It's not just bad
Speaker 1: writing that is less enjoyable to read. It is actually
Speaker 1: a threat against truth, freedom and social democracy. English quote
Speaker 1: becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but
Speaker 1: the slovenly of our language makes it easier for us
Speaker 1: to have foolish thoughts. And so if you've read Orwell's
Speaker 1: novel novel nine or Robert, I assume you've read in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, Yeah, you'll recall that at the time
Speaker 1: of the story takes place, the totalitarian government in the
Speaker 1: novel working under Big Brother is engaged in the creation
Speaker 1: of a new form of English known as new speak
Speaker 1: and uh. In In Politics and Language, Orwell says quote,
Speaker 1: if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. And
Speaker 1: new Speak in in nineteen eighty four very much embodies this.
Speaker 1: It reflects. I think what Orwell saw is the political
Speaker 1: power of language. Essentially, control the use of language, and
Speaker 1: you control how people think, control how people think, and
Speaker 1: you command them to your purpose. Uh. And So I
Speaker 1: want to read one long ish quote from Politics in
Speaker 1: the English Language where he really gets to how euphemisms
Speaker 1: are used in political writing and political journalism. So here's
Speaker 1: the quote, with a few abridgements for length. In our time,
Speaker 1: political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
Speaker 1: Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question, begging,
Speaker 1: and sheer, cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air.
Speaker 1: The inhabitants are driven out into the countryside, the cattle
Speaker 1: machine gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets.
Speaker 1: This is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of
Speaker 1: their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
Speaker 1: more than they can carry. This is called transfer of
Speaker 1: the population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for
Speaker 1: years without trial, shot in the back of the neck,
Speaker 1: or sent to die of scurvy and arctic lumber camps.
Speaker 1: This is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is
Speaker 1: needed if one wants to name things without calling up
Speaker 1: mental pictures of them. Consider, for instance, some comfortable English
Speaker 1: professor defending Russian totalitarianism, and he's talking about Stalinism. There
Speaker 1: he cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your
Speaker 1: opponents when you can get good results by doing so. Probably,
Speaker 1: therefore he will say something like this, while freely conceding
Speaker 1: that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features with which the
Speaker 1: humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, i think,
Speaker 1: agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political
Speaker 1: opposition is an unavoidable concommitant of transitional periods, and that
Speaker 1: the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon
Speaker 1: to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of
Speaker 1: concrete achievement. The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism.
Speaker 1: A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like
Speaker 1: soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
Speaker 1: So what do you think about that, Robert No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I agree with that. It's it guess it comes
Speaker 1: down to like this kind of this kind of writing
Speaker 1: they were talking about, is it's essentially writing like a
Speaker 1: machine and and inviting the reader to think about the
Speaker 1: the topic like a machine with sort of this with
Speaker 1: without any of these human touches. That that that add
Speaker 1: humanity to the subject matter, which in a I think
Speaker 1: in a scientific environment like or certainly, and then say
Speaker 1: a study about E. Coli in a in a lab experiment,
Speaker 1: that's perfectly that's perfectly fair. Like that's the way to
Speaker 1: do it. But of course, when you when you're getting
Speaker 1: into um, you know, affairs of politics and war certainly,
Speaker 1: um even domestic politics. You know, the people's lives hang
Speaker 1: in the balance, and if you distance yourself with language enough,
Speaker 1: then you don't have to deal with the the the
Speaker 1: actual flesh and blood ramifications of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But then the other side of that is it's somebody's
Speaker 1: job right to make a better killing machine. It's somebody's
Speaker 1: job to uh to to cut how the funding of
Speaker 1: public housing. You know, so of course they're going to
Speaker 1: try and do it in a way that makes them
Speaker 1: feel less ikey, right, I mean so Orwell says political language.
Speaker 1: Uh and he says that this comes from both sides,
Speaker 1: from conservatives to anarchists. Is designed to make lies sound
Speaker 1: truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
Speaker 1: solidity to pure wind. And I think there is a
Speaker 1: lot of truth to that. Yeah, that you I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand the need for it. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: it has done purely out of calculating malice. There there
Speaker 1: are people who work in in government who do things
Speaker 1: that you would probably think of as bad, but who
Speaker 1: don't think of themselves as bad people. And so they
Speaker 1: have they have they've got to come up with some
Speaker 1: way of getting around this. And it's this circumlocution, or
Speaker 1: it's this neutralizing language, like we talked about earlier, coming
Speaker 1: up with these abstract terminologies, naming things in terms of
Speaker 1: processes rather than of consequences. You know, Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: that we killed a guy, but the enemy was neutralized
Speaker 1: and for or well, you know, I think these types
Speaker 1: of phrases and euphemisms are they're not limited to the
Speaker 1: rulers themselves right, that they're not limited just two people
Speaker 1: who want to justify themselves in tyranny and stupefy the
Speaker 1: masses with this lullaby of empty, denatured language. They're also
Speaker 1: used by people who should know better, people who who
Speaker 1: might even be critical of those in power. Euphemisms and
Speaker 1: mushy phrases are used, he emphasizes, because they're easy. They
Speaker 1: make writing easier, and they make thinking about concepts easier.
Speaker 1: Euphemisms are like a lubricant that just allows you to
Speaker 1: easily insert your mind into a conversation without struggling with
Speaker 1: the most difficult implications of it. And for or well,
Speaker 1: this is not just applicable to these political euphemisms, you know,
Speaker 1: for killing and and and these horrible acts, but it
Speaker 1: goes into everyday conversation. So he writes quote phrases like
Speaker 1: a not unjustifiable assumption leaves much to be desired, would
Speaker 1: serve no good purpose, A consideration which we should do
Speaker 1: well to bear in mind. Are a continuous and he says,
Speaker 1: those are a continuous temptation, A packet of aspirins always
Speaker 1: at one's elbow, And I really do like that idea
Speaker 1: of the euphemism as a painkiller. Yeah, it makes me think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm instantly thinking of of of various recent examples of
Speaker 1: of strong statements about about war and the use of
Speaker 1: warm in a political climate. And here I'm using euphemisms
Speaker 1: already to to talk about it. But it's it's like,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you have this sentence where you're going
Speaker 1: to say, we are going to eliminate enemy combatants a right,
Speaker 1: and if you if you start removing some of the
Speaker 1: euphemisms there, you still have to try and make that
Speaker 1: unacceptable sentence to whoever whoever is saying or um or
Speaker 1: listening to it. So if if you replace eliminate with kill,
Speaker 1: if you replace eliminate with with you know, um, carpet
Speaker 1: bomb or something like that, and if you were put
Speaker 1: then you're still going to have to try and make
Speaker 1: it a sentence that you can live with. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that comes. So what else can you change in that sentence?
Speaker 1: You can change enemy combatants to barbarians, you can, or
Speaker 1: any other various form that also dehumanizes what's going on.
Speaker 1: But by point should by changing the direction of the dehumanization, right, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be what was what is known as a dysphemism. R.
Speaker 1: There's that. How you pronounce it? A euphemism would be
Speaker 1: you know it's euphemism comes from you meaning good and
Speaker 1: female female meaning speech. So a dysphemism is the opposite. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you're you're taking a concept that's inherently neutral and applying
Speaker 1: a term to it that is a bad filtering terms.
Speaker 1: It essentially filters out the good imagery or things you
Speaker 1: might associate with a thing and gives it bad connotations. Well,
Speaker 1: what's a good example here of a dispimism for our listeners?
Speaker 1: How about? How about somebody is not happy with a
Speaker 1: deal that they made. You know, they bought a car
Speaker 1: or something, and they say I got ripped off. Oh,
Speaker 1: And to take it a step further, they would say,
Speaker 1: oh I got screwed. Yeah, I really got screwed in
Speaker 1: that deal. Did you really get quote unquote screwed in
Speaker 1: any of the various interpretations there? No, you just bought
Speaker 1: something and you you later regretted how much you spent
Speaker 1: on it or something. But they they have used the
Speaker 1: screws on my hands and my fingers, and now I
Speaker 1: have lost the ability to write. Oh is that for
Speaker 1: thumb screws. Yay, I'm thinking of a very medieval interpretation. Okay,
Speaker 1: but either way, ripped off you didn't ripped off means
Speaker 1: you got robbed. You didn't get robbed. You you made
Speaker 1: a deal that you're that you later regretted. But that's
Speaker 1: a dispilimism. It's it's substituting a more negative connotation word
Speaker 1: for this originally, you know, more wrecked term, and I
Speaker 1: guess that would be kind of on the outskirts of hyperbole,
Speaker 1: Like you're not going as far to say this was
Speaker 1: highway robbery, but you're getting close. Yeah. But so there
Speaker 1: are just like there are lots of euphemisms in political language,
Speaker 1: there's some dysphemisms in it too. Like you might find
Speaker 1: an establishment language, the government itself and and the bureaucracies
Speaker 1: that exist, tend to speak in euphemisms to kind of
Speaker 1: make everything a little a little uh smoothed over and
Speaker 1: a little soothing. But meanwhile you might have sort of
Speaker 1: agitators and radical factions tending to speak in dysphemisms, talking
Speaker 1: about fairly normal things that you could express in a
Speaker 1: fairly straightforward way in these just grandly negative terms yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, especially in this Facebook age, everybody can think
Speaker 1: of of strong examples of this. You know what, how
Speaker 1: is say, the New York Times, uh explaining the situation?
Speaker 1: And how is your your your uncle Jim explaining the situation?
Speaker 1: Where how is the article that he's linking explaining it?
Speaker 1: Very likely, I'd say the New York Times is probably
Speaker 1: being a little euphemistic. I mean, even even their good writers,
Speaker 1: they tend to be a little euphemistic, just not putting
Speaker 1: things in very blunt, harsh terms. They might say, go
Speaker 1: to the restroom. It's the going to the restroom of politics.
Speaker 1: But there's plenty of dysphimism out there on the web.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I want to come back to Orwell. So
Speaker 1: the question is sort of, uh so Orwell had these
Speaker 1: concerns about euphemisms, about their potential for enabling totalitarianism, and
Speaker 1: they're they're the threat that they represented to a free
Speaker 1: social democracy. So my question is, was Orwell's belief in
Speaker 1: the totalitary and potential of vocabulary correct? In some ways?
Speaker 1: I'm sort of inclined to agree with him because the
Speaker 1: examples he gives very much makes sense to me. By
Speaker 1: by using this sort of d natured, sanitized language to
Speaker 1: talk about killing people and you know, doing things that
Speaker 1: are very harsh and rule and have real bloody realities
Speaker 1: and you know, down in the dirt of reality. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it makes it easier for people to assent to
Speaker 1: these things, to to sort of just go along with it.
Speaker 1: We've we've found some nice words for it. But then again, um,
Speaker 1: there are other strong arguments that sort of go against
Speaker 1: the idea that vocabulary has this much power over our thinking.
Speaker 1: And I guess we can maybe address these after a break.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take a break. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we come back. We'll talk about the
Speaker 1: euphemism treadmill as well as the the war Fian view,
Speaker 1: uh and the work of Stephen Pinker. So we were
Speaker 1: talking about whether this totalitarian potential of vocabulary control is correct.
Speaker 1: Do words really have this much power to control the
Speaker 1: way we think? Does language determined thought? So as Ling
Speaker 1: with Stephen Pinker has pointed out, the the or Willian
Speaker 1: view is really kind of based in what's referred to
Speaker 1: as the war Fian view. This is the work of
Speaker 1: American linguists Benjamin Lee Wharf, no relation to the klingon
Speaker 1: that different spell like I believe, also often known as
Speaker 1: the sapiar wharf hypothesis. Yes, and uh, he to give
Speaker 1: you a timeline for him, he was through one. That's
Speaker 1: when he was alive. And uh yeah, so his his
Speaker 1: argument and then therefore or Will's argument is yes, language,
Speaker 1: Uh we we language is how we think. We think
Speaker 1: in a language is the like the bare bones, language
Speaker 1: is the operating for the operating system for the human brain. View,
Speaker 1: But a lot of cognitive neuroscience now says, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that view is correct. In fact, it's probably
Speaker 1: not right now, I will say this, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: an important fact to keep in mind about language is
Speaker 1: that while spoken language comes to us naturally we're exposed
Speaker 1: who are growing up. We simply absorbed the words that
Speaker 1: fill our world multiple languages even Um, it's not the
Speaker 1: same with written language. Written language takes work. We have
Speaker 1: to trick our brains early on in order to avoid
Speaker 1: backwards letters. The dB confusion because our brains inherently try
Speaker 1: to decipher symbols and letters is three dimensional objects. I
Speaker 1: never thought about that. Yeah, it's uh, I was reading
Speaker 1: or listening to something about that recently. Uh. The point, however,
Speaker 1: here is that that written language is kind of a lie.
Speaker 1: So grammar rules, dictionaries, all these attempt to chain that
Speaker 1: which is free, to solidify the inherently fluid nature of language. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly humans have been saying the same things for a
Speaker 1: very long time and will continue to say say the
Speaker 1: same horrible things. But how we say them changes the
Speaker 1: individual words, the cultural weight of those words. Um, and
Speaker 1: I often think of think of this in terms of
Speaker 1: weighted stones placed upon a sheet. Okay, like a sheet
Speaker 1: that's held taught by into Yeah. Um. This is an
Speaker 1: exercise that's frequently used to demonstrate how massive planetary objects
Speaker 1: bend uh An exert gravitational forces. It's like the sheet
Speaker 1: of space time and a rock is an object with
Speaker 1: massy But instead of each stone being um, you know, planet,
Speaker 1: each stone is a word. And unlike actual stones, and
Speaker 1: unlike words as we might experience them in a dictionary,
Speaker 1: the weights change. So this is where we get into
Speaker 1: this idea that Stephen Pinker gives us, the idea of
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill, the linguistic process by which euphemisms often
Speaker 1: become taboo or offensive. So a euphemism is originally created
Speaker 1: in order to avoid having to say the taboo or
Speaker 1: offensive or uncomfortable thing. But then in time the euphemism
Speaker 1: itself takes on the properties of that original word you
Speaker 1: were trying to avoid. Yeah, have you ever played a
Speaker 1: platform video game where your character has to jump onto
Speaker 1: a pillar and once you stand on the pillar, it
Speaker 1: begins to sink down the muck. You have to jump
Speaker 1: to the next pillar and that starts doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: And this is how you have to cross this entire
Speaker 1: expanse of muck. You've got to keep moving. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: basically what's going on here with the euphemism treadmill. Polite language,
Speaker 1: you had to keep moving, Pinker says. Quote. The euphemism
Speaker 1: treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give
Speaker 1: a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored
Speaker 1: by the concept. The concept does not become freshened by
Speaker 1: the name. So he gives examples of like the progression
Speaker 1: of terminology for people with disabilities. Uh. So he starts
Speaker 1: with the idea that crippled. Originally that was not an
Speaker 1: offensive term. That was a polite term right to describe
Speaker 1: somebody who had a disability, but it took on negative connotations.
Speaker 1: People began to use it as a mean word to
Speaker 1: say about people. So then that was moved on and
Speaker 1: so so we no longer say that, and now we
Speaker 1: have handicapped. But then that also eventually became perceived as
Speaker 1: sort of like stale as a euphemism, I guess, And this,
Speaker 1: I guess it started to take on some of the
Speaker 1: negative connotations that crippled had acquired, and then moved on
Speaker 1: to disabled, And so you've got thinking differently. Abled is
Speaker 1: is more of the current version, Like we've moved on
Speaker 1: again to another pillar in the right. So you can
Speaker 1: so on one hand, just if you're looking from the outside,
Speaker 1: you'd be like constantly moving words around. That seems kind
Speaker 1: of ridiculous, but it's not when you consider how usage
Speaker 1: of words happens and how language works. Yeah, I mean people,
Speaker 1: if people are using a word with negative connotations, eventually
Speaker 1: people who want to use that word with positive connotations
Speaker 1: will want a different word. Yeah. Another great example of
Speaker 1: this that's a cided is the use of idiot or
Speaker 1: more on. These used to be neutral terms, right, They
Speaker 1: weren't insults, right, but over time they became they became insults,
Speaker 1: and now they are very much an insult and also
Speaker 1: an idiot or moron. You're using an insult, you're not
Speaker 1: using a neutral term. So we went from that too retarded,
Speaker 1: which at for like, it feels weird to say it
Speaker 1: because it now is the R word unless you're you know,
Speaker 1: using it in very particular circumstances. Um. But but this
Speaker 1: was this was neutral, and then it became an obscene term. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then from here we went to mentally mentally challenged
Speaker 1: and special. But even these I feel are degraded, uh
Speaker 1: to a large degree, especially special, like to say someone special.
Speaker 1: I can I can't think of any specific examples, but
Speaker 1: I believe I've heard that used at least flippantly, if
Speaker 1: not as an outright offense. Oh yeah, it is the
Speaker 1: thing mean kids say. Now, like a mean kid wants
Speaker 1: to they'll they'll call another kid special. Children if you're
Speaker 1: out there listening, I don't know why children are listening to,
Speaker 1: but you should not see the children. That's not very nice.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, it shows that as soon as so
Speaker 1: you come up with. And I'd be interested to see
Speaker 1: if somebody could create a a like time lag model
Speaker 1: of this, like how long after a new non offensive
Speaker 1: term is introduced, does it take before that term takes
Speaker 1: on some pleasant connotations, people start using it as a
Speaker 1: term of insult or abuse, and people who want to
Speaker 1: speak politely feel like they need a new term. How
Speaker 1: long does it generally take? Yeah? Another example of this,
Speaker 1: I think would be in business. So we already talked
Speaker 1: about the robust use of euthanisms in the business environment,
Speaker 1: but also think about the buzzwords, right, those buzz words.
Speaker 1: They gotta have buzz or they're not buzzwords, and buzzwords
Speaker 1: inherently lose their buzz. So you know, everybody might be
Speaker 1: talking about the I can't. I can't even think of
Speaker 1: what the most recent one has been in our circles.
Speaker 1: But to take an older one, like there was a
Speaker 1: time when when innovation, innovation or storytelling, we are all
Speaker 1: story storytelling is the one. I hate that these words
Speaker 1: have been completely destroyed, but I believe they have. We
Speaker 1: need we need we need new words and storytelling. Come on,
Speaker 1: I love stories. Stories are like my favorite thing on earth.
Speaker 1: But when I hear when I hear business leaders talking
Speaker 1: about story to telling, I'm like, well, okay, we can't,
Speaker 1: we can't describe it like that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, because it,
Speaker 1: it ends up losing. It loses it's it's punch, It
Speaker 1: loses its value in a sense, it loses its holiness.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Yeah, it does lose its holiness. And it
Speaker 1: also comes to stop referring to the thing it originally
Speaker 1: referred to. Yeah, when it basically just means like any
Speaker 1: talking in any talking or writing or or any kind
Speaker 1: of communication can be storytelling. That's not storytelling. What is storytelling? Yeah, exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: to come back to the euphemism treadmill real quick, I
Speaker 1: also want to point out that I have seen it
Speaker 1: argue that this is essentially, uh, this essentially lines up
Speaker 1: with Gresham's law Gresham's law in economics, which states that
Speaker 1: bad money drives out the good. This is a name
Speaker 1: for Sir Thomas Gresham, the financial agent of Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the First and the idea here was that if some
Speaker 1: coins in circulation are pure pure silver and others are
Speaker 1: less pure, people they are going to spend the bad
Speaker 1: coins if they're gonna keep the good ones for themselves.
Speaker 1: So what do you know? Yeah, so that that makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. Yeah, that that correlation with the euphemism treadmill.
Speaker 1: But also you have a note here Robert about a
Speaker 1: different kind of treadmill that I found interesting. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: already mentioned dispihemisms. There is a dispipanism treadmill as well.
Speaker 1: And the example that that comes up is that sucks.
Speaker 1: That sucks stems from a a more specific statement that
Speaker 1: is also still in use, but a more offensive one.
Speaker 1: You can say something sucks and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: in kids TV shows, but you know it's it's on
Speaker 1: you know, whatever is on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network during
Speaker 1: the day when children are watching, but they're they're not
Speaker 1: going to say what something is sucking. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I remember saying that sucks, thinking it
Speaker 1: was a totally non offensive phrase, and having a teacher, Uh,
Speaker 1: tell me, you know, if I had said that word,
Speaker 1: it would have been like I said a word that
Speaker 1: rhymes with it. That was what Uh. He was saying
Speaker 1: that that that is a really really offensive term. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that to me, and it was that
Speaker 1: it had lost its dysphemistic qualities. Yeah, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those two when you start peeling out apart, it's like,
Speaker 1: why is that a stay? Why is that bad? I
Speaker 1: don't know's we get, we get all our sexual politics
Speaker 1: wrapped up in in in how you feel about the
Speaker 1: latest ex Men movie. Another one I can think of
Speaker 1: that we can edit this out if it's way more
Speaker 1: offensive than I think. But I think one is the
Speaker 1: British exploit British English expression bloody, which I think used
Speaker 1: to be considered incredibly offensive, like a highly offensive expletive,
Speaker 1: and now is an incredibly mild expletive that so much
Speaker 1: so that it can appear in Harry Potter books and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder I've never looked into it, but I've often wondered, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent is it still a little more offensive
Speaker 1: in British circles? And it is an America because so
Speaker 1: much American usage of it were just aping British usage
Speaker 1: of it without really having a strong cultural understanding maybe
Speaker 1: of what is being said. That's a good question. Again,
Speaker 1: maybe we're yet again doing the cargo cult of euphemism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you kind of get a guess into the like
Speaker 1: the currency equivalences of of different insults or sorry, this
Speaker 1: wouldn't be of euphemism is the cargo cult of explodives? Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's come back to what we started talking about
Speaker 1: with the idea of the Wharfian view and Orwell, so
Speaker 1: we've got this this other argument from Pinker and from
Speaker 1: you know, cognitive neuroscience and all this. Who says they say,
Speaker 1: you know, the words don't really matter actually all that much. Um,
Speaker 1: words don't have this power. But I I don't feel that.
Speaker 1: I feel very strongly that Orwell was onto something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and actually found a paper that gets into
Speaker 1: this a bit. It's very good as available is readily
Speaker 1: available online. Two thousand and eight paper by UM by
Speaker 1: Stanford's Daniel uh Casa Santo has published in the journal
Speaker 1: Language Learning. Uh And the title is Who's Afraid of
Speaker 1: the Big Bad Wharf Cross Linguistic differences in temporal language
Speaker 1: and thought. So this is addressing the war Fian view
Speaker 1: that language in some way determines or influences thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it's interesting because he I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: he takes a middle of the road approach. It's definitely
Speaker 1: more in Pinker's direction. He's not saying that the Warfian
Speaker 1: view is valid completely, but that there that we can't
Speaker 1: But but what are you saying is that we can't
Speaker 1: completely dismiss the power of this this Wharfian uh relationship
Speaker 1: between thoughts and words. Okay, so maybe that words don't
Speaker 1: totally determine thoughts, but they have some kind of influencing relationship. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'll read a just a quick quote from
Speaker 1: this article to to really drive this home. Why should
Speaker 1: we continue to do war Fian research? One possible reason
Speaker 1: is that cataloging cross linguist to cognitive differences could be
Speaker 1: a step toward charting the boundaries of human biological and
Speaker 1: cultural diversity. If this is the goal, then the Warpian
Speaker 1: effects most worth findings should be extreme instances in which
Speaker 1: differences between languages produced radically different experiences of reality in
Speaker 1: their speakers. Alternatively, cross linguistic cognitive differences could be tools
Speaker 1: for investigating how thinking works, and in particular, for investigating
Speaker 1: the role of experience and the acquisition and representation of knowledge.
Speaker 1: If people who talk differently from correspondingly different mental representations
Speaker 1: as a consequence, then mental representations must depend in part
Speaker 1: on these aspects of linguistic experience. If discovering the origin
Speaker 1: and structure of our mental representations is the goal, then
Speaker 1: cross linguistic cognitive differences can be informative, even if they
Speaker 1: are subtle, and even if their effects are largely unconscious,
Speaker 1: whether or not they correspond to radical differences and speaks
Speaker 1: conscious experiences of the world, Warpian effects can have profound
Speaker 1: applications for the study of mental representation. Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he is taken. Maybe I would call that a middle view.
Speaker 1: Even even if he's saying, like the Warfian hypothesis that
Speaker 1: language determines thought is wrong, Uh, there's still influences that
Speaker 1: are worth investigating. Yeah, yeah, well I would say that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's the that's the point, like that, essentially
Speaker 1: that language is still too powerful, it's too ubiquitous, it's
Speaker 1: playing some sort of role. It's we just have to.
Speaker 1: It's just to what extent and in which cases it's
Speaker 1: most transformative. Interesting. Well, so I wanted to end by
Speaker 1: thinking about a little more about what is the effect
Speaker 1: of using euphemisms on our minds and on our culture,
Speaker 1: Because when you come up with terms like, you know,
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill, I'm not saying Pinker necessarily meant it
Speaker 1: this way. I detect a little bit of amusement on
Speaker 1: his part, but I'm not saying he definitely meant it
Speaker 1: to be a term of derision. But you do get
Speaker 1: this idea of a treadmill being a thing that's sort
Speaker 1: of like useless cycle. Uh. And it's not necessarily useless
Speaker 1: according to some thinkers. And I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: an essay UH done for aon magazine in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: by the Columbia University linguistics professor John mcwarder. And so
Speaker 1: he starts by recognizing Pinker's concept of the euphemism treadmill,
Speaker 1: and he gives a lot of really great examples of
Speaker 1: these types of treadmills throughout history. Like we talked about.
Speaker 1: He he talks about the evolution of the concept of
Speaker 1: welfare UM welfare originally being like uh, you know, home
Speaker 1: assistance and then welfare and then cash assistance, where each
Speaker 1: time there's a new term, it sort of starts to
Speaker 1: take on mean classist connotations, and then you need a
Speaker 1: new term because it starts to be used as a
Speaker 1: term of abuse. But for mcward this, he says, this
Speaker 1: treadmill is not only inevitable but much good in in
Speaker 1: his words, a healthy process necessary in view of the
Speaker 1: eternal gulf between language and opinion. UH. And He says,
Speaker 1: basically that thought changes more slowly than word usage, but
Speaker 1: it eventually catches up. And this requires that in a
Speaker 1: civilized society, people are going to frequently want to change
Speaker 1: their euphemisms. It's an inevitable thing, and it reflects people's
Speaker 1: desire to be polite and civilized toward one another, except
Speaker 1: of course, on the Internet, where one does not have
Speaker 1: to be polite or civil But that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's a whole separate discussion right there. Right, of course,
Speaker 1: you're always going to have people who want to defy.
Speaker 1: But it near his conclusion, he says, quote, the euphemism treadmill, then,
Speaker 1: is neither just a form of bureaucratese nor of identity politics.
Speaker 1: It is a symptom of the fact that, however much
Speaker 1: we would like it to be otherwise, it's easier to
Speaker 1: change language than to change thought. In a sense, it's
Speaker 1: like you're you're simply asking someone, look, I know you're
Speaker 1: not going to stop being awful anytime soon, but if
Speaker 1: you could at least use language that doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: wear your awfulness on your sleeve, and that would be great,
Speaker 1: and maybe in time that outward decency will will bleed
Speaker 1: through to some semblance of interdecency. Right, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess so. Like again, earlier, we talked about euphemisms being
Speaker 1: a pain killer or also being a lubricant, and in
Speaker 1: the sense it might be both of those things. Maybe
Speaker 1: euphemisms or or finding a nicer new word for a
Speaker 1: word that is taken on negative connotations. If that's what
Speaker 1: a euphemism is, I guess um. It might not solve
Speaker 1: the underlying problem. It might not fix people's attitudes, but
Speaker 1: it might just be exactly what it seems like. It's
Speaker 1: a lubricant, it's a pain killer. It makes interacting in
Speaker 1: society easier, makes people get along a little bit better.
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of the term African American.
Speaker 1: The adoption of that term m H to replace various
Speaker 1: other terms for uh, you know, black American citizens uh
Speaker 1: has that you know it. It drives home the fact
Speaker 1: that this is your fellow American, This is a this
Speaker 1: is an American, and they have a particular origin, just
Speaker 1: as you and your uh you know, Caucasian or or
Speaker 1: Asian or what have you, Just as as your your
Speaker 1: family has an origin somewhere else as well, Like they
Speaker 1: are these individuals are are not that different from you.
Speaker 1: So do you think that that term actually helps people
Speaker 1: change their way of thinking? Or is it just this
Speaker 1: just this lubricant that makes it easier to live in
Speaker 1: a polite society and get along with each other. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess I hope. I like to think
Speaker 1: I would prefer to live in a world where the
Speaker 1: language changes the way you think that in in in
Speaker 1: in having to call an individual something more humanized, uh,
Speaker 1: that eventually you will see them in more human terms.
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't think any of us believe
Speaker 1: that language alone is the sole operator here, like that
Speaker 1: it has to has to come as part of a
Speaker 1: larger suite of of social change instruments. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think i'd agree with that and with what mcwardour is saying.
Speaker 1: But I guess the flip side of it is that
Speaker 1: we're accepting some truth of what Orwell is saying, and
Speaker 1: that many cases euphemisms are also going to corrupt clarity
Speaker 1: of thought, make us sort of dull and irresolute, and
Speaker 1: and make it harder for us to resist evil. And
Speaker 1: so maybe maybe the case is not about whether euphemisms
Speaker 1: are good or bad, but just that some euphemisms are
Speaker 1: more worthy than others, I think so. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: words are powerful, and the right euphemisms are also powerful.
Speaker 1: So all you can do is hope that you know,
Speaker 1: whoever is in a position of power has the best
Speaker 1: words at their disposal. And on that cheerful note, let's
Speaker 1: let's end by just discussing a few favorite euphemisms. What
Speaker 1: are some of yours, Joe, I love how you'll see
Speaker 1: this a lot in Europe. The bathroom, which is itself
Speaker 1: a euphemism, is the WC that has just been reduced
Speaker 1: to a couple of letters, like not even water closet W.
Speaker 1: I like that, like w C. Fields Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's quite a euphemism, but I have always
Speaker 1: been fond of the I believe. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he invented the phrase, but it certainly shows up in
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's Othello making the Beast with two backs as a euphemism,
Speaker 1: or or perhaps the opposite for sexual intercourse. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's a euphemism. That's fairly expressive. It's it's
Speaker 1: ex expressive, but it all, but it definitely changes the
Speaker 1: meaning of the thing. Like uh, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess it comes down to would you are there cases
Speaker 1: where you would say making the beasts with two backs
Speaker 1: and it would be more polite than saying they were
Speaker 1: having sexual intercourse, they were having sex. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the case. It's there must be another word for
Speaker 1: whatever that type of thing is where you have a
Speaker 1: word or a phrase that means the same thing as
Speaker 1: something else, and it's not more polite, but it's just
Speaker 1: like more I don't know, funnier, like making whoopie. I
Speaker 1: think that would be an example, because whoopy is like whoopy,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun. It's like if you were just okay,
Speaker 1: here the three choices. Imagine you're in a roommate scenario
Speaker 1: and you have to say, oh, I walked in on
Speaker 1: my roommate, and um, he and his partner were making
Speaker 1: the beast with two backs like that, or if you
Speaker 1: were to say, well, I walked in on my my
Speaker 1: roommate and he and his partner were making whoopie. Like
Speaker 1: which of the two. But the two summoned vastly different images.
Speaker 1: They're both highly polite, yes, incredibly generous. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I know everybody out there has their favorite. You've mis
Speaker 1: ms and uh, and certainly some some cross cultural examples
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear, so you should definitely reach out
Speaker 1: to us about them. You can find us in a
Speaker 1: number of places, but the best starting point is to
Speaker 1: just go head on over to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com because that's where you'll find this podcast episode,
Speaker 1: all the other podcast episodes. You will find blog post videos,
Speaker 1: and links out to our various social media accounts such
Speaker 1: as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, uh, Tumbler. Wherever you do your
Speaker 1: social media media being, you will find us. And if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us directly, you
Speaker 1: can always email us that blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Love My the Bus is a busy many joint to
Speaker 1: four joint part par part Far Far