Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about my favorite scene in the
Speaker 1: movie bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: there's never a bad time to discuss, uh that that
Speaker 1: particular interpretation of Dracula. It is a great one, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's like horrible, but it's also great. It has some
Speaker 1: wonderful design in it. I love the suit of armor,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, and I love some of the painted
Speaker 1: backdrops and stuff. But there's a great scene where so
Speaker 1: you know the basic story of Dracula. These characters are
Speaker 1: in I think late Victorian England and Dracula, Count Dracula
Speaker 1: comes to England from Transylvania and begins feeding on the
Speaker 1: locals in England. And uh, there is the character Van Helsing,
Speaker 1: the Van vampire slayer, a man of great wisdom. And
Speaker 1: in the bram Stoker's Dracula France Ford couple of version,
Speaker 1: he has played by Anthony Hopkins in a wonderfully weird,
Speaker 1: hyperactive performance. Uh. And there's a scene where the main
Speaker 1: character's friend Lucy has been turned into a vampire by
Speaker 1: Count Dracula, and Van Helsing and his associates have just
Speaker 1: come back from slaying the vampire version of their friend
Speaker 1: Lucy and the character Mina Harker played in the movie
Speaker 1: by win Owner writer. She asks how did Lucy die?
Speaker 1: Was she in great pain? And Anthony Hopkins as Van
Speaker 1: Helsing says, yes, she was in great pain. Then we
Speaker 1: cut off our head, drove a stake through her heart
Speaker 1: and then burned it. And then she found peace. And
Speaker 1: I always love that because of the last line at
Speaker 1: the end there and then she found peace. Yeah, everything
Speaker 1: else is thoroughly non euphemistic. It's pretty straightforward. These are
Speaker 1: the steps we took to to tear her corpse apart
Speaker 1: to to kill her her undead uh 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. That's
Speaker 1: it's why it's such a wonderful comic moment. 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 gonna go poop and wash my hands,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna come back, and then I'm gonna fish
Speaker 1: eater And wouldn't it be great if we could do
Speaker 1: that during dinner party? Yeah? No, no, like if an
Speaker 1: adult did that, you would just think they'd lost their
Speaker 1: mind or just we're the most uncouth first and 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 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 it. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Well that that's a weird. I've never heard
Speaker 1: anyone use that I'm gonna 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 restroom and I'll be right back visit like you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some quality time. Well, I'm keeping it vague
Speaker 1: as to what. I'm not going to give you the
Speaker 1: particulars of what's going to happen. Maybe I'm just washing
Speaker 1: my hands, maybe I need to blow my nose, might
Speaker 1: just stare in the mirror without blinking. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say I'm gonna go poop and then I
Speaker 1: will return. I bet there's a lot of stuff when
Speaker 1: you have a kid in the house that you have
Speaker 1: to do euphemistically that you you're used to talking more bluntly,
Speaker 1: maybe with your spouse or partner, but but once a
Speaker 1: kid comes along, you can't say everything the way you
Speaker 1: used to. Well, it's interesting. There's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of back and forth too with kids regarding
Speaker 1: especially euthanisms regarding the human body, because some parents will
Speaker 1: we'll fall into this habit of using like cutes here
Speaker 1: less uh less accurate terminology for parts of the body,
Speaker 1: particularly genitalia, which I always find creepy when I hear
Speaker 1: no offense to parents who do that. I'm not actually
Speaker 1: judging you, and that's just my instinctual reaction hearing like
Speaker 1: pp and stuff. It always sounds like, yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: try not to do that in our household. I mean
Speaker 1: that everyone everyone can, you know, do their own thing
Speaker 1: by all means, but yeah, we try and say, all right, penis, testicles,
Speaker 1: um et cetera. Because you know, I feel it's important
Speaker 1: for them to have an accurate understanding of their body
Speaker 1: and then to be able to describe their body, uh seriously,
Speaker 1: to say, you know a physician. Yeah, if they needed
Speaker 1: to talk to a doctor, they would need the correct terms.
Speaker 1: But but that's an area where in parenting circles people
Speaker 1: kind of go on your arguments on both sides. Do
Speaker 1: you do you ever find yourself like wanting to curse
Speaker 1: in front of the child, but you have to find
Speaker 1: an other word. Oh yeah, all the time. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: don't find that other word. Um uh this morning, even
Speaker 1: driving through traffic, and my son reminded me, said, they
Speaker 1: can't hear you. I guess the other drivers cannot hear me.
Speaker 1: That is a perceptive kid. Yeah, But but I try.
Speaker 1: I do try and use certain euphemisms or just it's
Speaker 1: almost easier for me to just come up with a
Speaker 1: nonsense word, so referring to other drivers as dumbledoors or
Speaker 1: calling them crab drivers or something like that. Crab drivers
Speaker 1: good because they're kind of scuttling around back and forth
Speaker 1: right a side and stead of going in straight lines. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like I find that easier to do because sometimes it's
Speaker 1: difficult to make a euphemism stick because if I'm if
Speaker 1: I'm really irritated with another driver, my brain really wants
Speaker 1: to use, uh, the the F word or or the
Speaker 1: or the S word, or one of these more actually
Speaker 1: profane words from a vocabulary, and there's something about a
Speaker 1: watered down version of it just will not suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to 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. Gang is not gonna not gonna got not
Speaker 1: gonna do. It's not gonna suit. Fudge is not gonna work.
Speaker 1: So euphemisms in our house, Uh, my wife Rachel and
Speaker 1: I get a lot of enjoyment out of talking about
Speaker 1: our dog in un euphemistic terms when people normally would so.
Speaker 1: One example, when our dog's legs and jaws are jerking
Speaker 1: in his sleep, you know he's having a little doggie dreams.
Speaker 1: I think many dog owners would be inclined to say, oh,
Speaker 1: he's dreaming about chasing something. But we would say, oh,
Speaker 1: he's dreaming about killing, which he is. He's definitely dreaming
Speaker 1: about killing little animals. Yeah, that's that's that, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I do a certain amount of that with
Speaker 1: our our our pet as well. I'll give one more
Speaker 1: example though, about about raising a child and euphemisms, is
Speaker 1: that sometimes you still do not succeed in really driving
Speaker 1: home the names for things, and without the proper term,
Speaker 1: sometimes the like the children's name for it is going
Speaker 1: to be totally even more unsuitable. So I don't think
Speaker 1: I drove home properly. You know what the anus is
Speaker 1: to my son. And so one day we had some
Speaker 1: people guests to the house and this is something he
Speaker 1: hadn't even met before, but he walked outside, just got
Speaker 1: it from the nap, and he probably announces, quote, uh,
Speaker 1: it itches where poop comes out on my bum and uh.
Speaker 1: And I think, arguably, like this, this is a more
Speaker 1: uncouth statement. Grantedies four and a half, so nobody cares,
Speaker 1: but still it would be more accurate to say my
Speaker 1: anus itches. Right. But in a way what he said
Speaker 1: was euphemism. Really it's an anti euphemism, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a in a bit the the euphemism
Speaker 1: is actually cuter there in the situation where a kid
Speaker 1: says it. If it's true the kid had said anus,
Speaker 1: that might have been weirder. Yeah, But if an adult
Speaker 1: had said it it itches on my bum where poop
Speaker 1: comes out, then that, you know, you would call the
Speaker 1: authorities exactly. Okay, So, uh, let's zoom in on the
Speaker 1: concept of the euphemism and try to figure out what
Speaker 1: it does, what is its role in language apart from
Speaker 1: the obvious. Now we we did say that it's essentially
Speaker 1: a nice word. It's a word that takes the place
Speaker 1: of a word that, for some reason is inappropriate offensive. Uh,
Speaker 1: something people don't want to say or think about. Maybe
Speaker 1: that conjures up too concreteive an image. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: on the surface of things, it's don't say that, say this,
Speaker 1: But of course it's it's more than that. A euphemism
Speaker 1: has the power to alter the meaning of the word,
Speaker 1: or 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 creepy.
Speaker 1: It 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 that they're deflecting us
Speaker 1: from the thing we're talking about, and yet colorize it
Speaker 1: in a way that is distasteful. Okay, So there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ways that you can come up
Speaker 1: with the euphemism, right like you you can put it
Speaker 1: together in several ways. There's a word that people have
Speaker 1: instinctually felt somehow they want to start avoiding saying, but
Speaker 1: they still need the concept in everyday language. You still
Speaker 1: have to be able to refer to the thing the
Speaker 1: word refers to somehow, So you've got to come up
Speaker 1: with a different word. So where do these different words
Speaker 1: come from? Well, you can of course really go down
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole figuring out what sort of euphemisms are
Speaker 1: doing what. But here are some of the basic classifications
Speaker 1: to consider. There's a term of foreign origin, okay, like
Speaker 1: a dairy air or copulation urination, you're using a more
Speaker 1: elegant and uh and in foreign term for what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. In English. A lot of times the euphemisms
Speaker 1: kind of come from Latin constructions more so than from
Speaker 1: the Anglo Saxon constructions, where the the short straightforward word
Speaker 1: sounds kind of rude and concrete, and that the Latin
Speaker 1: origin words sounds more abstract and less like it less
Speaker 1: it's less likely to conjure an image. Another example is abbreviations,
Speaker 1: for instance, s O B or food bar. These are
Speaker 1: both examples where we we simply abbreviate a A a
Speaker 1: phrase that would otherwise be offensive to some right, and
Speaker 1: I guess in most cases you would still consider the
Speaker 1: abbreviation somewhat offensive, but maybe less so. Yeah. Uh. The
Speaker 1: one I like you made the note of this, but
Speaker 1: I like the idea of using really vague abstractions such
Speaker 1: as doing it, doing it or um. The source I
Speaker 1: was looking at mentioned like situation, like just referring to
Speaker 1: the such and such situation. One that always has annoyed
Speaker 1: me is the situation the situation room, like what what
Speaker 1: 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 lord Voldemort? Uh? And then there of course mispronunciations
Speaker 1: 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 go old? Aren't gold? Aren't?
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 did you see that?
Speaker 1: It was? In one of the papers so that we
Speaker 1: were looking at they mentioned barbecue. So I would like
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone who who says, oh, that's just
Speaker 1: a load of barbecue sauce. Barbecue, I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: It must be a regional, regional thing. What kind of
Speaker 1: barbecue sauce, especially if it's regional North Carolina, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Or beasting. Beasting would be a good one.
Speaker 1: Oh is that actually used? No? I just made that up.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think, what what, what could you
Speaker 1: that's even that even has some of the same consonants
Speaker 1: in it? Yeah? Um, how about malarkey or maybe malarkey?
Speaker 1: Is malarkey actually more offensive in in its origin? And
Speaker 1: we're just it's one of these things where we don't
Speaker 1: know what it means anymore. I have no idea where
Speaker 1: it comes from. It would be horrible to go look
Speaker 1: that up later and find out it's a deeply offensive term. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I feel like that happens a time
Speaker 1: or two as well. We we have something we think
Speaker 1: is is a euphemism, but in reality we're just using
Speaker 1: a far more offensive term than not that fewer people
Speaker 1: are familiar with. Okay, But so when you use euphemisms,
Speaker 1: how however you form the new phrase or the new word,
Speaker 1: you're essentially doing maybe three different kinds of things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you bust out euphemism, you may be employing what
Speaker 1: is called circumlocution to to speak around that which cannot
Speaker 1: be said. Yeah, circumlocution, And that's something we often use
Speaker 1: in a non euphemistic way to like we use it
Speaker 1: when we're speaking a language we're not very familiar with.
Speaker 1: If you've ever tried to speak another language, you often
Speaker 1: don't have the word for a thing, so instead you circumlocute,
Speaker 1: You say a bunch of things that are sort of
Speaker 1: explaining the concept of the word to try to get
Speaker 1: to it. But this would be a case where you
Speaker 1: do the same thing, not because you don't have the word,
Speaker 1: but because you don't want to use the word. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another example would be a taboo deformation. So we're
Speaker 1: just we're altering the spelling or pronunciation of of that
Speaker 1: which cannot be said. So go fudge yourself, um you
Speaker 1: mother effort. That would be an example of of the
Speaker 1: use of taboo defamation or gold arn't, Yeah, gold arn't.
Speaker 1: We're just take like thinking, think of the obscenity as
Speaker 1: this clay object, and we're just wrenching it into a
Speaker 1: less profane shape. But we still know what its original
Speaker 1: shape was it's still it's still echoes that form enough
Speaker 1: for us to use it, albeit in a blunted form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess the other main thing would be sort
Speaker 1: of robbing the word of its power to conjure imagery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: double speak, right, Uh, making neutral the awful. I think
Speaker 1: one of the best examples of this is to say, uh,
Speaker 1: the enemy combatant was new traalized, which sounds far nicer
Speaker 1: than we We shot Rolf to death and his his
Speaker 1: family will be without him. Now. You know, Rolf was
Speaker 1: hit with an explosive that resulted in complete body de defragmentation,
Speaker 1: which I guess is that'd be sort of that's kind
Speaker 1: of a euphanism as well, right, but defragmentation, what would
Speaker 1: it be? Rolf was hit by an explosion that severed
Speaker 1: many arteries. Yes, but you know it's not that funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm laugh No, no, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of getting it as we try to to dance
Speaker 1: around Rolf's death, and he even discussed more accurately what
Speaker 1: happened to Rolf. Are some things in life almost like
Speaker 1: too dreadful, Like there's there's no way that language, at
Speaker 1: least brief language can accurately describe something that is that horrible.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it's interesting to look at
Speaker 1: the general categories of things that we have euphemisms for.
Speaker 1: It's not just arbitrary. It's like, it's not like we
Speaker 1: just have euphemisms for any thing. We have euphemisms usually
Speaker 1: for terms having to do with the inevitable processes of
Speaker 1: the human body, like like elimination of waste, uh, sex
Speaker 1: and death. Those those are the big things that you
Speaker 1: have euphemisms for, but also for culturally sensitive issues like
Speaker 1: you know, for names of marginalized groups that are discriminated
Speaker 1: against or something like that. Yeah, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as well as the way these things are shadowed. And
Speaker 1: certainly as there's a whole area of business euphemism to
Speaker 1: discussed as 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 the
Speaker 1: workplace version of death. Right. Yeah, we have. For instance,
Speaker 1: you may have heard about layoffs, downsizing, right, sizing, that's
Speaker 1: like that's a euphemism on top of a euphemism like downsizing.
Speaker 1: That's you know, we're not downsizing, we're right sizing. We're
Speaker 1: just we're just making the organization the correct size for
Speaker 1: what we're doing here. Head count adjustment or head count
Speaker 1: reduction 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 wordout
Speaker 1: feeling bad about it. The worst is let go. It's
Speaker 1: like you're free. Oh yeah, we we had we had
Speaker 1: to let we had to let you go. You should
Speaker 1: be thinking us, I think, maybe more than anywhere else
Speaker 1: I go in in my life, the business world is
Speaker 1: absolutely built out of euphemism. So I think a reason
Speaker 1: for this might be that the business relationship is essentially
Speaker 1: a cutthroat relationship most of the time. If employers can
Speaker 1: scam customers or employees out of another nickel and get
Speaker 1: away with it and keep making money, they will do
Speaker 1: it most of the time, and vice versa. You know,
Speaker 1: every everybody in the business relationship is is trying to
Speaker 1: get an extra nickel and and give as little as
Speaker 1: they can for it. But at the same time, customers
Speaker 1: and 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. 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 rev 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 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 studies in terms
Speaker 1: of businesses where corporations are essentially psychopaths. I often, and
Speaker 1: I often think of it in terms of like artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence UM beings, then various cyberpunk stories. So a corporation
Speaker 1: is essentially this, this demon, and this demon is bound
Speaker 1: by whatever chains of law and UH and policy and
Speaker 1: regulations that we can muster to keep it in check.
Speaker 1: And then we we sort of handle it with specialized gloves,
Speaker 1: often you know, composed of euphemisms that allow us to
Speaker 1: handle it and benefit from its presence. But there's no
Speaker 1: denying that it's it's horrible demonic nature. A nice analogy,
Speaker 1: it's it comes from I guess I read one too
Speaker 1: many Warhammer book and in my time, Oh, they have
Speaker 1: demon gloves for the corporations. Um, well know they have
Speaker 1: actual demons sometimes and they're chained up and they serve
Speaker 1: 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 British
Speaker 1: English versus American English, and so a lot of our
Speaker 1: reference points are going to be English, but uh, it
Speaker 1: is worth looking into the use of euphemisms maybe in
Speaker 1: other languages too. Yeah, two great examples I think come
Speaker 1: from British English and Mandarin Chinese. So the the Economists
Speaker 1: ran a great and naturally unattributed article back in um
Speaker 1: titled making Murder Respectable, and it runs through a number
Speaker 1: of examples of euphemisms that are currently uh or or
Speaker 1: sort of previously in use. I think some of the
Speaker 1: British ones have fallen out of favor. Did you notice
Speaker 1: that nice euphemism they're unattributed, where the real term would
Speaker 1: be the author's name is not listed. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: either you would either say the the author is anonymous
Speaker 1: or or not credited for their work. But I mean
Speaker 1: that's the economist business, a whole separate, separate, separate discussion.
Speaker 1: Uh so, Yeah. We have a number of course American euphemisms,
Speaker 1: which the the author in this this article points out
Speaker 1: that these of course just replaced non offensive words terms
Speaker 1: with new non offensive words in terms. We'll get into
Speaker 1: the details on this in a bit, but it entails
Speaker 1: something that's that's been referred to as the euphemism treadmill
Speaker 1: right by the linguist and general scholar Stephen Pinker. Yeah. Yeah, contemporary,
Speaker 1: very very much contemporary, still commenting on the world we
Speaker 1: find ourselves in today. British euphemisms, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they create quote a pleasant sense of of complicity between
Speaker 1: the euphemist and the individual that's listening to the euphemist.
Speaker 1: The first few examples that the author rolls outcome from
Speaker 1: British o bits, so a drunkard will be described as
Speaker 1: as convivial or cheery. That's great. Um, aniphomaniac is uh,
Speaker 1: and it has notable vivacity and in in prior times
Speaker 1: you would of course encountered a homosexual only as a
Speaker 1: quote confirmed bachelor. With all of these, it's almost as
Speaker 1: if the person using the euphemism and the person hearing
Speaker 1: it are sort of in on a joke together. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a And that's something that the author gets into
Speaker 1: here too, is you you have to be on it
Speaker 1: on the joke to really understand at least proper British,
Speaker 1: proper British conversation. You have to know the cues, otherwise
Speaker 1: you're gonna have no idea what you're talking about. One
Speaker 1: more from the o bit world, though, is that there's
Speaker 1: the mysterious burdened by occasional irregularities in his private life
Speaker 1: bit like, which is delightfully they like, what what I
Speaker 1: assume that means? Scandal scandal ridden life. But that's that's
Speaker 1: a lot sharper. So yeah. The author points out that
Speaker 1: there are a number of passive cues in sort of
Speaker 1: 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 that bless his heart. Bless his heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he bless his heart. That means sort of the opposite
Speaker 1: of what it said. Yeah. I think that's a great example. Now.
Speaker 1: The the author of this Economist piece also pointed out
Speaker 1: that there are a number of Chinese euphemisms U and these,
Speaker 1: like American euphemisms, often stem from squeamishness. It's not proper
Speaker 1: to be too direct, especially if you might offend somebody.
Speaker 1: So it's this idea of of a polite opacity. So
Speaker 1: instead of turning down an invitation, uh, And this might
Speaker 1: 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 told that that something is a boufong bion,
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, who 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 like sometimes that means 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 and you know, you might
Speaker 1: have a policy of an official inquiry with with the
Speaker 1: Chinese government official and you and you might say, oh,
Speaker 1: well it's not convenient, I'll try again tomorrow. But no,
Speaker 1: you're not getting the message. It's not convenient, it's not
Speaker 1: going to happen. Perhaps ever, Another example is uh is
Speaker 1: one might ask for an explanation of something and you
Speaker 1: might get buching chu, which means uh, I am not clear,
Speaker 1: which just means you're not going to be told like
Speaker 1: it basically means I can't tell you that or I
Speaker 1: won't tell you that. But uh, it's it's it's casting
Speaker 1: that in the guise of why I'm not really clear
Speaker 1: on the information, but it also kind of sounds like
Speaker 1: I am not clear and that I am not I
Speaker 1: am open, I am open. Yeah, So I find it
Speaker 1: interests and there examples like this in every language, and
Speaker 1: perhaps our listeners out there, if you have particular examples
Speaker 1: you're aware of in a tongue that you speak or
Speaker 1: have some history with, we'd love to hear those examples.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I always love hearing the different idioms from
Speaker 1: around the world that we get from listeners. One of
Speaker 1: my favorites was we heard from a listener and oh,
Speaker 1: now I apologize, I can't remember which language it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was Swedish or Norwegian or maybe uh,
Speaker 1: Scandinavian language, and the expression was it was an expression
Speaker 1: that means something is a miss and the term is
Speaker 1: there are owls in the moss. I love it. That's great,
Speaker 1: there are owls in the moss. That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: If you're the one who sent that to us, which
Speaker 1: I still think about that a lot, Thank you so much. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: for one other arena of of the interaction between culture
Speaker 1: and euphemism, I was thinking about what about religious euphemisms,
Speaker 1: so I sometimes see, here's just one example. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about a few different examples. One of them
Speaker 1: is the way some Christians use euphemism to talk about
Speaker 1: certain doctrines that they haven't explicitly rejected but obviously aren't
Speaker 1: comfortable talking about directly. And one example that I have
Speaker 1: encountered before is the Christian doctrine of Hell. Yes, 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 bear 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 says,
Speaker 1: when you die going to hell, is that simply essentially
Speaker 1: you are consumed. Your soul is just completely obliterated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just ceased to be. 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. Seem it's euphemistic in nature.
Speaker 1: You know, you haven't rejected the belief, but you just
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about the particulars of it. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: So they're basically they might, for instance, they might believe
Speaker 1: in this uh, this sort of torture or u revenge
Speaker 1: fantasy of Hell, but they're using the language of annihilation
Speaker 1: theology instead as a euphemism for what they actually believe,
Speaker 1: or just not being specific about what the judgment entails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are there are other terms too.
Speaker 1: That was the first one that came to my mind.
Speaker 1: But it's such a weird area to consider, right, because
Speaker 1: so many of these when you're using a euphemism for
Speaker 1: you know, your your but you're talking about a thing
Speaker 1: that has a definite reality. There's there's nothing subjective. It's
Speaker 1: not a doctrine or belief, right, there is an objective,
Speaker 1: but there's an objective their objective buttocks. There is an anus.
Speaker 1: There's no denying there no there no no no denying
Speaker 1: these things. But when you get into Hell, they are
Speaker 1: all these discussions. There's there's been, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's a broad spectrum of theologies regarding its existence or
Speaker 1: non existence. I mean, I'm I'm personally of the mind
Speaker 1: that whatever your belief about Hell is, you should you
Speaker 1: should you should speak clearly about it another type of
Speaker 1: religious euphemism, I would say, is motivated by a very
Speaker 1: different type of thing. Instead of being uncomfortable with certain
Speaker 1: concepts or not wanting to talk about certain things, it
Speaker 1: extends from a a perception of holiness or reverence. And
Speaker 1: this is the evolution of the name of God in
Speaker 1: Judaism throughout history. So it's not that the name of
Speaker 1: God has changed so much, or at least not much
Speaker 1: in recent history in Judaism, but that at certain points
Speaker 1: throughout history, usage of the name has become taboo because
Speaker 1: of beliefs about not taking the name of the Lord
Speaker 1: in vain. And thus it is required to have a
Speaker 1: new word if you want to talk about religious ideas
Speaker 1: such as your belief in God without referencing this word,
Speaker 1: that you might be using the wrong way. And so
Speaker 1: some of my info here is coming from uh book
Speaker 1: on Hebrew and Western The Hebrew and Western Christian Name
Speaker 1: of God by Robert J. Wilkinson. But in the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 1: the Jewish God has several names. You've got names like
Speaker 1: ale and ale yawn uh Eloheim, but the most common
Speaker 1: is Yahweh, the four letter word that's often called the
Speaker 1: tetragrammaton meaning four letters um. And at a certain point
Speaker 1: in the history of Judaism, and generally in that the
Speaker 1: Hellenistic period, you know, the Greek Conquest, a taboo on
Speaker 1: pronouncing the name emerged. And so, to quote one story
Speaker 1: about this origin from the Babylonian talbot, to quote the Greeks,
Speaker 1: and that's referring to the Seleucid rulers of the region
Speaker 1: at that time decreed that the name of God may
Speaker 1: not be spoken aloud. But when the hasman Ians, and
Speaker 1: it was a group of Jewish rebels, grew in strength
Speaker 1: and defeated them, they decreed that the name of God
Speaker 1: be used even in contracts. And an example of this
Speaker 1: might be something like, by the name of Yahweh, I
Speaker 1: will paint your chicken coop if you give me a
Speaker 1: tray of corn money, um and so. But then continuing
Speaker 1: from the Talmud, when the rabbis heard about this, they said,
Speaker 1: tomorrow this person will pay his debt and the contract
Speaker 1: will be thrown on a garbage heap. So they forbade
Speaker 1: its use in contracts. So it wasn't the use of
Speaker 1: the name that was necessarily inherently wrong. It was just
Speaker 1: that using it in this way for sort of everyday
Speaker 1: purposes made it vulnerable to accidental defilement. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: have in a sence, you have a very secular use
Speaker 1: of divine terminology and uh, and it's not proper to
Speaker 1: throw that around, right, to just make up a contract
Speaker 1: with the name of God, and that you'd end up
Speaker 1: throwing in the trash. It's like if you were what's
Speaker 1: the the the Clive Barker film where you say that
Speaker 1: the name three times and he shows up candy Man,
Speaker 1: candy man. So it's like candy man. Can't You don't
Speaker 1: want to say candy man all the time because he
Speaker 1: will show up and start killing people, and you've got
Speaker 1: 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 aloud 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 ad 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 aria general holiness of the name of God.
Speaker 1: And so then later you'd have some Jews referring to
Speaker 1: God as Hashem, meaning the name. So you you have
Speaker 1: this evolutionary process by which um a word is used
Speaker 1: to avoid disrespect, but then that word sort of becomes
Speaker 1: worthy of respect in in its own right. But then anyway,
Speaker 1: so according to the Talmud, sometimes shortly after the conquest
Speaker 1: of Alexander the Great, the high priest stopped saying the
Speaker 1: name of God when when giving blessings. And in the Mishnah,
Speaker 1: which is a work of Jewish rabbinic literature, putting down
Speaker 1: lots of Jewish oral traditions into writing. The name of
Speaker 1: God is often avoided and substituted with other words associated
Speaker 1: with God, like Heaven or the place, or the Holy One,
Speaker 1: blessed be he uh and so again. I think these
Speaker 1: ephemisms are interesting because they're not used to avoid mentioning
Speaker 1: something unpleasant or offensive, but to avoid accidental def ailement
Speaker 1: of a word that, in this religious concept context, is
Speaker 1: believed to be holy, believed to be treated with reverence
Speaker 1: and respect. That's interesting because I think it's easy to
Speaker 1: to believe that you just have all these different names
Speaker 1: for for God solely because hey, God's really cool, really
Speaker 1: important and has all these uh these these different points
Speaker 1: in time where people are considering it and therefore they
Speaker 1: need a different name for it, uh, you know. And
Speaker 1: then we see that that sort of loose interpretation reflected
Speaker 1: in our discussion of unreal deities, where so like Goes
Speaker 1: goes a 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 hell, where the devil as this
Speaker 1: real popular conception of the Western devil or even like
Speaker 1: the classical devil or the or the Miltonian devil or
Speaker 1: Dante's devil, like, these are all vastly different things, and
Speaker 1: they occur at different points in our evolving conception of
Speaker 1: the devil, and even just on a 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. It'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 um. In fact, there's often
Speaker 1: the the the opposite effort to to really cast the
Speaker 1: devil down instead and refer to refer to it as
Speaker 1: a worm or or what have you. Sometimes we should
Speaker 1: do a history of the Devil show. Oh yeah, we should.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I want to move on yet again,
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
Speaker 1: is uh, you can definitely find explored in a really
Speaker 1: lucid and fascinating way in the nineteen 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. And 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 as he attacks the use of cliches like that
Speaker 1: in his essay. But in one famous passage, Orwell translates
Speaker 1: a well verse from the King James Bible translation of
Speaker 1: the Book of Ecclesiastes into the style he's referring to
Speaker 1: in modern English. And so I just got to read
Speaker 1: this because it's too good. The King James Bible says,
Speaker 1: I returned and saw under the sun that the race
Speaker 1: is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
Speaker 1: neither yet bred to the wise, nor yet riches to
Speaker 1: men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill.
Speaker 1: But time and chance happeneth to them all. Okay, Orwell's
Speaker 1: rewriting of that in modern English is objective. Considerations of
Speaker 1: contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in
Speaker 1: competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,
Speaker 1: but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably
Speaker 1: be taken into account. Now, it does communicate the same
Speaker 1: sense basically. Yeah, I almost feel like like his translation
Speaker 1: of it is better. Maybe I think, I think maybe
Speaker 1: it just comes from reading too many, you know, god
Speaker 1: awful peer of viewed papers for work. But but I
Speaker 1: 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 consistent picking out words
Speaker 1: for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in
Speaker 1: order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in coming
Speaker 1: together long strips of words which have already been set
Speaker 1: in order by someone else and making the results presentable
Speaker 1: by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing
Speaker 1: is that it is easy, and I think there's some
Speaker 1: truth to that, like that when you use these sort
Speaker 1: of cliches and bloated phrases, is 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 re 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 Well, 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 nineteen eighty four, Robert, I assume you've read
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 novel,
Speaker 1: working under Big Brother, is engaged in the creation of
Speaker 1: a new form of English known as new speak and
Speaker 1: uh in in Politics and Language, Orwell says quote, if
Speaker 1: thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought, and new
Speaker 1: 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 and
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 concomitant 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 we're 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 say a
Speaker 1: study about ecoli in a in a lab experiment, that's
Speaker 1: perfectly that's perfectly fair, Like that's the way to do it.
Speaker 1: But of course, when you when you're getting into um,
Speaker 1: you know, affairs of politics and war, certainly, um, even
Speaker 1: domestic politics. You know, the people's lives hang in the balance,
Speaker 1: and if you distance yourself with language enough, then you
Speaker 1: don't have to deal with the the the actual flesh
Speaker 1: and blood ramifications of what you're talking about. But then
Speaker 1: the other side of that is, it's somebody's job, right
Speaker 1: to make a better killing machine. It's somebody's job to uh,
Speaker 1: to to cut how the funding of public housing, you know,
Speaker 1: so it of course they're going to try and do
Speaker 1: it in a way that makes them feel less icky, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so Orwell says political language uh And he
Speaker 1: says that this comes from both sides, from conservatives to anarchists,
Speaker 1: is designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable
Speaker 1: and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Speaker 1: And I think there is a lot of truth to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you I mean, I understand the need for it.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it has done purely out of
Speaker 1: calculating malice. There there are people who work in in
Speaker 1: government who do things that you would probably think of
Speaker 1: as bad, but who don't think of themselves as bad people,
Speaker 1: and so they have they have they've got to come
Speaker 1: up with some way of getting around this. And it's
Speaker 1: this circumlocution, or it's this neutralizing language, like we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, coming up with these abstract terminologies, naming things
Speaker 1: in terms of processes rather than of consequences. You know, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not that we killed a guy, but the enemy
Speaker 1: was neutralized and for or well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: these types of phrases and euphemisms are they're not limited
Speaker 1: to the rulers themselves, right that They're not limited just
Speaker 1: two people who want to justify themselves in tyranny and
Speaker 1: stupefy the masses with this lullaby of empty, denatured language.
Speaker 1: They're also used by people who should know better, people
Speaker 1: who who might even be critical of those in power.
Speaker 1: Euphemisms and mushy phrases are used, he emphasizes, because they're easy.
Speaker 1: They 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 various recent examples of of strong
Speaker 1: statements about about war and the use of war in
Speaker 1: a political climate. And here I'm using euphemisms already to
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But it's it's like, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you have this sentence where you're gonna say, we
Speaker 1: are going to eliminate enemy combatants, all right, and if
Speaker 1: you if you start removing some of the euphemisms there,
Speaker 1: you still have to try and make that unacceptable sentence
Speaker 1: to whoever whoever is saying or um or listening to it.
Speaker 1: So if if you replace eliminate with kill, if you
Speaker 1: replace eliminate with with you know, um, carpet bomb or
Speaker 1: something like that, and if you were then you're still
Speaker 1: going to have to try and make it a sentence
Speaker 1: that you can live with. And sometimes that comes. So
Speaker 1: what else can you change in that sentence? You can
Speaker 1: change enemy combatants to barbarians, you can, or or any
Speaker 1: other various form that also dehumanizes what's going on. But
Speaker 1: 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.
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 and gives it bad connotations. Well,
Speaker 1: what's a good example here of a dyspimism 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: it goes, and to take it a step further, they
Speaker 1: would say, oh I got screwed. Yeah, I really got
Speaker 1: screwed in that deal. Did you really get quote unquote
Speaker 1: screwed in any of the various interpretations there? No, you
Speaker 1: just bought something and you you later regretted how much
Speaker 1: you spent on it or something. But they have to
Speaker 1: use the screws on my hands and my fingers, and
Speaker 1: now I have lost the ability to write, oh is
Speaker 1: that for thumbscrews? And 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 dysphemism. It's it's substituting a more negative connotation word
Speaker 1: for this originally, you know, more direct 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 that
Speaker 1: there are just like there are lots of euphemisms in
Speaker 1: political language, there's some dysphemisms in it too. Like you
Speaker 1: might find an establishment language the government itself and and
Speaker 1: the bureaucracies that exist, and to speak in euphemisms to
Speaker 1: kind of make everything a little a little uh smoothed
Speaker 1: over and a little soothing. But meanwhile you might have
Speaker 1: sort of agitators and radical factions tending to speak in dysphemisms,
Speaker 1: talking about fairly normal things that you could express in
Speaker 1: a fairly straightforward way in these just grandly negative terms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think, especially in his Facebook age, everybody can think
Speaker 1: of of strong examples of this. You know, what, how
Speaker 1: is saving New York Times uh explaining the situation? And
Speaker 1: 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 totalitarian is
Speaker 1: them and they're they're the threat that they represented to
Speaker 1: a free social democracy. So my question is, was Orwell's
Speaker 1: belief in the totalitary and potential of vocabulary correct? In
Speaker 1: some ways I'm sort of inclined to agree with him
Speaker 1: because the examples he gives very much makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: By by using this sort of d natured, sanitized language
Speaker 1: to talk about killing people and you know, doing things
Speaker 1: that are very harsh and cruel and have real bloody
Speaker 1: realities and you know, down in the dirt of reality,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it makes it easier for people to assent
Speaker 1: to these things, to to sort of just go along
Speaker 1: with it, we've we've found some nice words for it.
Speaker 1: But then again, um, there are other strong arguments that
Speaker 1: sort of go against the idea that vocabulary has this
Speaker 1: much power over our thinking. And I guess we can
Speaker 1: maybe address these after a break. Do you want to
Speaker 1: take a break. Let's take a quick break and we
Speaker 1: come back. We'll talk about the euphemism treadmill as well
Speaker 1: as the the war Fian view, uh and the work
Speaker 1: of Stephen Pinker. So we were talking about whether this
Speaker 1: totalitarian potential of vocabulary control is correct. Do words really
Speaker 1: have this much power to control the way we think?
Speaker 1: Does language determined thought? So, as linguist Stephen Pinker has
Speaker 1: pointed out, the Orwellian view is really kind of based
Speaker 1: in what's referred to as the war Fian view. This
Speaker 1: is the work of American linguists Benjamin Lee Wharf, no
Speaker 1: relation to the kling on that different spell like I believe,
Speaker 1: also often known as the Sappier Wharf hypothesis. Yes, and uh,
Speaker 1: he to give you a timeline for him, he was
Speaker 1: through one. That's when he was alive. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So his his argument and then therefore or Will's argument
Speaker 1: is yes, language, Uh we we language is how we
Speaker 1: think we think in language. This is the like the
Speaker 1: bare bones languages, the operating for the operating system for
Speaker 1: the human brain view. But a lot of cognitive neuroscience
Speaker 1: now says, I don't know if that view is correct.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's probably not. Right now, I will say this, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is an important fact that to keep in mind
Speaker 1: about language is that while spoken language comes to us
Speaker 1: naturally or expose who are growing up, we simply absorb
Speaker 1: the words that fill our world multiple languages even, Um,
Speaker 1: it's not the same with written language. Written language takes work.
Speaker 1: We have to trick our brains early on in order
Speaker 1: to avoid backwards letters. The dB confusion because our brains
Speaker 1: inherently try to decipher symbols and letters is three dimensional objects.
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. Yeah, it's a I was
Speaker 1: reading 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 of these attempt to to
Speaker 1: chain that which is free, to solidify the inherently fluid
Speaker 1: nature of language. Uh. Certainly humans have been saying the
Speaker 1: same things for a very long time and will continue
Speaker 1: to say, say the same horrible things, but how we
Speaker 1: say them changes the individual words the cultural weight of
Speaker 1: those words. Um and I often think of think of
Speaker 1: this in terms of weighted stones placed upon a sheet, Okay,
Speaker 1: like a sheet that's held talk by yeah. Um. This
Speaker 1: is an exercise that's frequently used to demonstrate how massive
Speaker 1: planetary objects bend uh an exert gravitational forces, like the
Speaker 1: sheet of space time and and a rock is an
Speaker 1: object with mass. But instead of each stone being um,
Speaker 1: you know, planet, each stone is a word. And unlike
Speaker 1: actual stones and i'm, unlike words as we might experience
Speaker 1: them in a dictionary, the weights change. So this is
Speaker 1: where we get into this idea that the Stephen Pinker
Speaker 1: gives us, the idea of the euphemism treadmill, the linguistic
Speaker 1: process by which euphemisms often become taboo or a So
Speaker 1: a euphemism is originally created in order to avoid having
Speaker 1: to say the taboo or offensive or uncomfortable thing, but
Speaker 1: then in time, the euphemism itself takes on the properties
Speaker 1: of that original word you were trying to avoid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you ever played a platform video game where your
Speaker 1: character has to jump onto a pillar and once you
Speaker 1: stand on the pillar, it begins to sink down. You
Speaker 1: have to jump to the next pillar, and that starts
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. And this is how you have
Speaker 1: to cross this entire expanse of muck. You've got to
Speaker 1: keep moving. Yeah, that's basically what's going on here with
Speaker 1: the euphemism treadmill. Polite language, you have to keep moving,
Speaker 1: Pinker says. Quote. The euphemism treadmill shows that concepts, not words,
Speaker 1: are in charge. Give a concept a new name, and
Speaker 1: the name becomes colored by the concept. The concept does
Speaker 1: not become freshened by the name. So he gives examples
Speaker 1: of like the progression of terminology for people with disabilities. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he starts with the idea that crippled. Originally that
Speaker 1: was not an offensive term. That was a polite term
Speaker 1: right to describe somebody who had a disability, But it
Speaker 1: took on negative connotations. People began to use it as
Speaker 1: a mean word to say about people. So then that
Speaker 1: was moved on and so so we no longer say that,
Speaker 1: and now we have handicapped. But then that also eventually
Speaker 1: became perceived as sort of like stale as a euphemism.
Speaker 1: I guess, and this I guess it started to take
Speaker 1: on some of the negative connotations that crippled had acquired,
Speaker 1: and then moved on to disabled, and so you've got
Speaker 1: differently abled is is more of the current version, Like
Speaker 1: we've moved on again to another pillar in the right.
Speaker 1: So you can so on one hand, just if you're
Speaker 1: looking from the outside, you'd be like constantly moving words around.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of ridiculous, but it's not when you
Speaker 1: consider how usage of words happens and how language works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean people, if people are using a word with
Speaker 1: negative connotations, eventually people who want to use that word
Speaker 1: with positive connotations will want a different word. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: great example of this that's so asided is the use
Speaker 1: of idiot or moron. These used to be neutral terms.
Speaker 1: They weren't insults, right, but over time they became they
Speaker 1: became insults, and now they are very much an insult.
Speaker 1: And because someone an idiot or moron, you're using an insult.
Speaker 1: You're not using a neutral term. So we went from
Speaker 1: that to retarded, which at for like, it feels weird
Speaker 1: to say it because it now it is the R
Speaker 1: word unless you're you know, using it in very particular circumstances. Um.
Speaker 1: But but this was this was neutral, and then it
Speaker 1: became an obscene term. Uh. And then from here we
Speaker 1: went to mentally mentally challenged and special. But even these
Speaker 1: I feel are degraded, uh to a large degree, especially special,
Speaker 1: like to say someone special. I can I can't think
Speaker 1: of any specific examples, but I believe I've heard that
Speaker 1: used at least flippantly, if not as an outright offense.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it is the thing mean kids say. Now,
Speaker 1: like a mean kid wants to they'll they'll call another
Speaker 1: kids special children. If you're out there listening, I don't
Speaker 1: know why children are listening to, but you should not
Speaker 1: see the children. That's not very nice. But yeah, again,
Speaker 1: it shows that as soon as so you come up with.
Speaker 1: And I'd be interested to see if somebody could create
Speaker 1: a a like time lag model of this, like how
Speaker 1: long after a new non offensive term is introduced does
Speaker 1: it take before that term takes on some unpleasant connotations
Speaker 1: people start using it as a term of insult or abuse,
Speaker 1: and people who want to speak politely feel like they
Speaker 1: need a new term, Like how long does it generally take?
Speaker 1: Another example of this I think would be in business.
Speaker 1: So we already talked about the robust use of euthanisms
Speaker 1: in the business environment. But also think about the buzzwords, right,
Speaker 1: those buzz words. They gotta have buzz or they're not buzzwords,
Speaker 1: and buzzwords inherently lose their buzz. So you know, everybody
Speaker 1: might be talking about the I can't. I can't even
Speaker 1: think of what the most recent one has been in
Speaker 1: our circles. But to take an older one, like there
Speaker 1: was a time when when innovation, innovation or storytelling, we
Speaker 1: are all story storytelling is the one. I hate that
Speaker 1: these words have been completely destroyed, but I believe they have.
Speaker 1: 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 storytelling, I'm like, well, okay, we can't. We can't
Speaker 1: describe it like that anymore. Yeah, yeah, because it it
Speaker 1: ends up losing that. It loses it's it's punch, it
Speaker 1: loses its value, and since it loses its holiness, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does lose its holiness. And it also comes to
Speaker 1: stop referring to the thing it originally referred to when
Speaker 1: it basically just means like any talking in any talking
Speaker 1: or writing or or any kind of communication can be storytelling.
Speaker 1: That's not storytelling, right, 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 are going to spend the bad coins
Speaker 1: if they're gonna keep the good ones for themselves. So
Speaker 1: what do you know? Yeah, so that that makes sense
Speaker 1: 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 disphemisms. There is a dispiphemism 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 us statement
Speaker 1: that 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's on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network during the
Speaker 1: day when children are watching, but they're they're not going
Speaker 1: to say what something is sucking. Yeah. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I remember saying that sucks, thinking it was
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, it was 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. It's we get we get all our sexual
Speaker 1: politics wrapped up in in in how you feel about
Speaker 1: the latest X Men movie. Another one I can think
Speaker 1: of that we can edit this out if it's way
Speaker 1: more offen ti than I think. But I think one
Speaker 1: is the British exploit British English expression bloody, which I
Speaker 1: think used to be considered incredibly offensive, like a highly
Speaker 1: offensive expletive, and now is an incredibly mild expletive that's
Speaker 1: so much so that it can appear in Harry Potter
Speaker 1: books and stuff. Yeah, I wonder I've never looked into it,
Speaker 1: but I've often wondered, like, to what extent is it
Speaker 1: still a little more offensive in British circles than it
Speaker 1: is an American because so much American usage of it,
Speaker 1: we're just aping British usage of it without really having
Speaker 1: a strong cultural understanding maybe of what is being said.
Speaker 1: That's a good question again, maybe we're we're yet again
Speaker 1: doing the cargo cult of euphemism. Yeah, and you kind
Speaker 1: of get a guess into the like the currency equivalences
Speaker 1: of of different insults or sorry, this wouldn't be of euphemism.
Speaker 1: Is the cargo cult of explotives? Okay, but let's come
Speaker 1: back to what we started talking about with the idea
Speaker 1: of the war fian view and or well, so we've
Speaker 1: got this this other argument from Pinker and from you know,
Speaker 1: cognitive neuroscience and all this. Who says they say, you know,
Speaker 1: 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 I actually found a paper that gets
Speaker 1: into this a bit. It's very good as available is
Speaker 1: readily available online. Two thousand and eight paper by um
Speaker 1: By Stanford's daniel U Casa Santo has published in the
Speaker 1: journal Language Learning. Uh. And the title is Who's afraid
Speaker 1: of the Big Bad warf Cross linguistic differences in temporal
Speaker 1: language and thought. So this is addressing the Wharfian view
Speaker 1: that language in some way determines or influences thought. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because he I'm not gonna say he
Speaker 1: takes a middle of the road approach. It's definitely more
Speaker 1: in Pinker's direction. He's not saying that the Warfian view
Speaker 1: is valid completely, but that there that we can't. But
Speaker 1: but what are you saying is that we can't completely
Speaker 1: dismiss the power of this this war Fian 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 linguistic cognitive differences could be a
Speaker 1: step toward charting the boundaries of human biological and cultural diversity.
Speaker 1: If this is the goal, then the war Fian effects
Speaker 1: most worth findings should be extreme instances in which differences
Speaker 1: between languages produced radically different experiences of reality in their speakers. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: cross linguistic cognitive differences could be tools for investigating how
Speaker 1: thinking works, and in particular, for investigating the role of
Speaker 1: experience and the acquisition and representation of knowledge. If people
Speaker 1: who talk differently from correspondingly different mental representations as a consequence,
Speaker 1: then mental representations must depend in part on these aspects
Speaker 1: of linguistic experience. If discovering the origin and structure of
Speaker 1: our mental representations is the goal, then cross linguistic cognitive
Speaker 1: differences can be informative, even if they are subtle, and
Speaker 1: even if their effects are largely unconscious. Whether or not
Speaker 1: they correspond to radical differences in speakers conscious experiences of
Speaker 1: the world, Warpian effects can have profound implications for the
Speaker 1: study of mental representation. Okay, so yeah, he is taking
Speaker 1: maybe I would call that a mental view. Even if
Speaker 1: even if he's saying, like the war Fian 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 do we just have
Speaker 1: to It's just to what extent and in which cases
Speaker 1: it's most transformative. Interesting. Well, so I wanted to end
Speaker 1: by thinking about a little more about what is the
Speaker 1: effect 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 assistance,
Speaker 1: and then welfare and then cash assistance. Where each time
Speaker 1: there's a new term, it sort of starts to take
Speaker 1: on mean classist connotations, and then you need a new
Speaker 1: term because it starts to be used as a term
Speaker 1: of abuse. But for mcwarter, this he says, this treadmill
Speaker 1: is not only inevitable but pretty 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 he
Speaker 1: says basically that thought changes more slowly than word usage,
Speaker 1: but it eventually catches up. And this requires that in
Speaker 1: a civilized society, people are going to frequently want to
Speaker 1: change their euphemisms. It's an inevitable thing, and it reflects
Speaker 1: people's desire to be polite and civilized toward one another,
Speaker 1: except of course, on the Internet, where one does not
Speaker 1: have to be polite or ciful. But that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of 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 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 the 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 painkiller or also being a lubricant, and in the
Speaker 1: sense it might be both of those things. Maybe euphem
Speaker 1: is UM's uh, or or finding a nicer new word
Speaker 1: for a word that is taken on negative connotations. If
Speaker 1: that's what a euphemism is, I guess um. It might
Speaker 1: not solve the underlying problem. It might not fix people's attitudes,
Speaker 1: but it might just be exactly what it seems like.
Speaker 1: It's a lubricant. It's a painkiller. 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 to replace various other terms
Speaker 1: for uh, you know, black American citizens, uh has it?
Speaker 1: You know it? It drives home the fact that this
Speaker 1: is your fellow American, This is a this is an American,
Speaker 1: and they have a particular origin, just as you and
Speaker 1: your uh you know, Caucasian or or Asian or what
Speaker 1: have you, just as as your your family has an
Speaker 1: origin somewhere else as well, like they are. These individuals
Speaker 1: are are not that different from you. So do you
Speaker 1: think that that term actually helps people change their way
Speaker 1: of thinking? Or is it just this just this lubricant
Speaker 1: that makes it easier to live in a polite society
Speaker 1: and get along with each other. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess I hope. I like to think I would prefer
Speaker 1: to live in a world where the language changes the
Speaker 1: way you think that in in in in having to
Speaker 1: call an individual something more humanizing that eventually you will
Speaker 1: see them in more human terms. But then again, I
Speaker 1: don't think any of us believe that language alone is
Speaker 1: the sole operator here, like that it has to has
Speaker 1: to come as part of a larger suite of of
Speaker 1: of social change instruments. So yeah, I think i'd agree
Speaker 1: with that, and with what mcwardour is saying. But I
Speaker 1: guess the flip side of it is that we're accepting
Speaker 1: some truth of what Orwell is saying. And in many
Speaker 1: cases euphemisms are also going to corrupt clarity of thought,
Speaker 1: may guess sort of dull and irresolute, and and make
Speaker 1: it harder for us to resist evil. And so maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the case is not about whether euphemisms are good
Speaker 1: or bad, but just that some euphemisms are more worthy
Speaker 1: than others. I think. So yeah, I mean words are powerful,
Speaker 1: and the right euphemisms are also powerful. So all you
Speaker 1: can do is hope that uh, you know, whoever is
Speaker 1: in a position of power has the best words at
Speaker 1: their disposal and that cheerful note. Let's let's end by
Speaker 1: just discussing a few favorite euphemisms. What are some of yours, Joe?
Speaker 1: I love how you'll see this a lot in Europe.
Speaker 1: The bathroom, which is itself a euphemism. Is the WC
Speaker 1: that has just been reduced to a couple of letters,
Speaker 1: like not even water closet. I like that, like w C.
Speaker 1: Fields Um. I don't know if it's quite a euphemism,
Speaker 1: but I have always been fond of the I believe.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he invented the phrase, but it
Speaker 1: certainly shows up in Shakespeare's Othello, making the beast with
Speaker 1: two backs as a euphemism, or or perhaps the opposite
Speaker 1: for sexual intercourse. I don't know if that's a euphemism.
Speaker 1: That's fairly expressive, it's it's it's expressive, but it all,
Speaker 1: but it definitely changes the meaning of the thing, like uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it comes down to would
Speaker 1: you are there cases where you would say making the
Speaker 1: beast with two backs and it would be more polite
Speaker 1: than saying they were having sexual intercourse, they were having sex.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the case. It's there must be
Speaker 1: another word for whatever. That type of thing is where
Speaker 1: you have a word or a phrase that means the
Speaker 1: same thing as something else and it's not more polite,
Speaker 1: but it's just like more I don't know, funnier, like
Speaker 1: making whoopie. I think that would be an example, because
Speaker 1: whoopi is like whoopee. It's it's fun. It's fun like
Speaker 1: if you were just okay here. The three choe us
Speaker 1: is imagine you're in a roommate scenario and you have
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, I walked in on my roommate
Speaker 1: and um, he and his partner were making the beast
Speaker 1: with two backs like that, or if you were to say, well,
Speaker 1: I walked in on my my roommate and he and
Speaker 1: his partner were making whoopie. Like which of the two,
Speaker 1: But the two summoned vastly different images. They're both highly polite, yes,
Speaker 1: incredibly generous. Al Right, Well, uh, I know everybody out
Speaker 1: there has their favorite euphemisms and uh and certainly some
Speaker 1: some cross cultural examples we'd love to hear, so you
Speaker 1: should definitely reach out to us about them. You can
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