Talk:Euphemism

Notes of Frequency

There is a lot of notes on frequency of usage, but they are uncited, and perhaps very subjective. 67.175.197.150 (talk) 00:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Climate change?

Thanks to the editor Manul who added climate change/global warming to the list--because that editor footnoted the term. The source does indeed call climate change a euphamism for global warming. However, I think the source is wrong. The huge snowstorms in Boston this winter for instance, are said to be a result of warmer Atlantic ocean water vapor, meeting cold air pulled down by changing wind patterns, here. So the "warming" causes blizzards. Climate change is a better description than warming, not a euphamism. But I am leaving it in for now because of the heartening and commendable decision to footnote.

Source is wrong because global warming is the root of the problem or we should not mention it because it is euphemism? In other words you say that "climate change" does not cover up the "global warming" because it does? Please, be specific. --Javalenok (talk) 15:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

What Is the Difference Between "Climate Change" and "Global Warming"?

"Global warming" refers to the long-term increase in Earth's average temperature.

"Climate change" refers to any long-term change in Earth's climate, or in the climate of a region or city. This includes warming, cooling and changes besides temperature. --From NASA defintions here

For instance: this academic study says global warming is producing more lake-effect snow. Winters get harsher because the air is warmer, and warm air carries more moisture. Global warming may be causing climate change (including fiercer winters with more snow)--but they are two different things. One is not a euphamism for the other, despite the (one) source offering a contrary opinion.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 18:19, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Lecture us better about non-euphemistic meanings of euphemisms from your list of examples, prove that they exist in your list only by mistake. "Presence" means a lot of different things, for instance. You do not call military occupation `a presence`, therefore. You must remove this word from the list of euphemisms. --Javalenok (talk) 19:06, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

James Herriot said this?

There's a statement in here saying, "for example the author James Herriot recorded that he ran into a difficulty when, talking to an animal's owner, he wanted to refer to "putting (the animal) to sleep" literally, i.e. anaesthetising it for a while.[citation needed]". I've read all of Herriot's books and the biography by his son and have not come across this assertion at all. Where did you find it? It says "citation needed" and it does need one in order to keep this information in the article. Otherwise, it is NOT VERIFIABLE and should be removed. Why does Wikipedia even allow statements like this in an article when it has not been verified and is probably NOT TRUE?

No need to get your shorts in a bunch. If the "citation needed" tag has been there a while, and there's been no response--delete the sentence with an edit summary saying: "unverified, no citation" . As I will have done by the time you read this.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 14:51, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Ruthless insistence on citations

This page keeps getting expanded with unnecessary examples, often wrong ones, like mistaking irony or circumlocution for euphamism. At this point I am going to insist on cites, police the page for uncited examples, and start ruthlessly deleting any sentence without a footnote. Well most of them anyway. ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 12:00, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Okay, done reducing the page. Now I will police it for a while. Added euphamisms need to serve a purpose existing examples do not currently serve, and they need a cite. Or off goes their head.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 13:22, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The Nazi euphemisms, the nastiest ones of all that even make diametric lies out of words or phrases, belong in their category. The links leave no question about what Schutzhaft(protective custody -- protection of the State and Party from the continued freedom of pariahs), Evakuierung (as if people were being taken out of danger to safety but instead enslaved or exterminated), Sonderbehandlung (Nazi "special treatment", far from privileged exemption from nasty situations was typically summary execution), the rhetorically-cloudy cloudy Nacht und Nebel of disappearance of a captive, and above all the bureaucratic obfuscation Endlösung der Judenfrage for the extermination of the Jews. Unfortunate people who were greeted with the slogan Arbeit Macht Frei were more likely to die than to earn freedom. The Nazis kept the Holocaust and slave-labor system well hidden from not only the victims (who might have struck back had they known) and the German people who might have become queasy about their government. This is very different from the threat that Adolf Hitler made toward the Jews on the eve of the invasion of Poland -- that bad behavior by the Jews would result the annihilation of world Jewry. Hitler himself could be extremely blunt when he made a threat, but when he was doing his worst he preferred to seem innocent.

Surely someone could cite William Shirer or Victor Klemperer for such linguistic fraud. Need they specifically classify those words or phrases as euphemisms?

How about the usual formal sentence for persons doomed by Stalinist "justice" -- "Ten years imprisonment without the right of correspondence". Long before the ten years were over, the person so sentenced was never going to correspond with anyone -- because he was dead.

As for the (now void) section of the Constitution of the United States that permitted the slave trade until 1808 -- every competent civics or history teacher in the US as well as high-school kids brighter than the average know exactly what it means.

But even without murder one can discuss some of the code words for racism infamous in the American South (like "separate but equal") and Apartheid-era South Africa (like "separate development").Pbrower2a (talk) 02:24, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Footnotes documenting established and common euphemisms would avoid errors. Separate but equal, for instance, was not a euphemism. It was a legal doctrine promulgated by the US Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), enforced for decades, now discredited and overruled. German euphemisms beglong on the German language wikipedia; English translations of the most infamous ones ( like "final solution of the Jewish question") if footnoted--IF footnoted--might be useful here.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 13:44, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Metaphors

I'm not sure about the examples given for metaphors as being euphemisms, because I think these phrases could be potentially offensive in some circumstances e.g. I would not go up to a bank or post office cashier clerk and say I was "beating [my] meat" or that I liked to "take a dump". I think that would still be inappropriate and, at least potentially, offensive. As an euphemism is an "inoffensive way of referring to an offensive thing", I would not therefore define it to include examples of metaphors that are not inoffensive but, instead, at least in some circumstances, are offensive and therefore more dysphemisms rather than euphemism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aspaa (talk • contribs) 16:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Removal of "affirmative action" from Common Examples

I'm removing "affirmative action" from the list of common examples. It is controversial -- to say the least -- to call that a euphemism. The cited sources are all opinion pieces in newspapers or political blogs, which are far from authoritative on this issue.

I think politically controversial examples should really be avoided in the common examples list. Some of the other entries could also be considered for removal of that reason. Liiiii (talk) 22:35, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

On a seconds thought the Economist Style Guide (which was one of the sources) can be considered to have some authority on this issue. But it is still a controversial and therefore unsuitable example Liiiii (talk) 22:57, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Reverting becuase it is not controversial that it is a euphamism; merely the practice iteslf is controversial. The sources, and in particular the Economist are unimpeachable.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 17:13, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

The example is very unsuitable and should be removed.

1. It is a common behaviour to call a political practice which one oppose for a euphemism. Here is an academic article which say exactly that, that "euphemism" tend to be used by those who oppose the policies describes by the term "affirmative action".
2. That is in it self a sufficient reason for removing the example. Having it in the list is to take a political side. There should not be controversial examples in the list.
3. The sources are very weak, all of them are examples of the behaviour described in 1. The only one that have a slight bit of authority is the Economist Style Guide, but that is far from sufficient for establishing that it is uncontroversial to call this an euphemism.

Liiiii (talk) 12:24, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your view. I note this editor is a computer programmer in Sweden. I am curious whether Sweden has a policy akin to American affirmative action (or British 'positive discrimination,' which I would argue is not euphemistic) and if so, what it's called? As to the cited Berkely Women's Law Journal--a woman's law journal is openly partisan advocacy rather than a neutral source. Regardless, I can find no place it denies affirmative action is a euphamism. It says here: "To its critics, affirmative action is both a euphemism for discrimination against white men and a system that bureaucratizes the entire society at the cost of meritocratic decision making; it is a symbol for all that has gone wrong with American society since the sixties. To its supporters, it is a first step towards remedying the crime of slavery and eliminating the discriminatory preferences that have guaranteed white men the easiest paths to wealth and power; it is a symbol of justice, and a promise of a future of hope. . . . For all of the debate, all of the court decisions discussing affirmative action, and all of the articles and books on the subject, there is no consensus on what the term "affirmative action" means." The article goes on to explore five "models" of what it might mean or better put--what it does. To counter the six sources cited in this article's footnote, four from journalism and two from books--one book explicitly on "Neutral translations" which abjures euphamism--one would need to find reliable sources saying it is NOT a euphemism (however you define what affirmative action does, and regardless of whether pro or con).ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 15:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

PS--The cite does, however, show a shortcoming in the article's description of affirmative action: it should be "women and minorities" rather than just race-based. I will change the description accordingly. Whether to add this useful article cite to a perhaps already over-extended footnote listing citations I leave to editor Liiiii who found the interesting and informative article. I am not one who thinks partisan artciles are to be excluded just for being partisan, if the position is researched, well informed and well documented.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 15:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear about what I wanted to say with that link to the journal article. I linked to it because it said so clear, in a formal context, that opponents of "affirmative action" policies tend to claim that it is an euphemism, while supporters do not.

And that is my point: That it is politically controversial to call it an euphemism. And that controversial examples should not go in the "Common Examples" list. I am not trying to establish whether the term is an euphemism or not, just that this question is controversial.

About the sources: Four of them are opinion pieces in newspapers, they have no authority whatsoever on this issue and should be removed whatever the fate of the "affirmative action" example. If anything, they exemplify my point about opponents calling the term an euphemism. This is also the case with the book by Reza el al, which is markedly opposed to such polices. Left with no apparent rhetoric reasons for the calling "euphemism" are The Economist Style Guide and book by Darwish. And I really don't think they are sufficient for establishing that it is uncontroversial to call the term an euphemism.

Even if most people didn't consider the term to be an euphemism it would be hard to find examples of them explicitly stating this. They would just use the term without mentioning anything about euphemisms. And you don't doubt that there are hundreds of such texts, do you?

I care about this issue because there is a constant risk of editors' personal political opinions affecting things like the choice of examples. Such things should really be uncontroversial. I think that is can be established that calling "affirmative action" an euphemism is controversial. It should therefore not go in "Common Examples".

PS: In Sweden a term which translates to something like "positive special treatment" is used. To me this sounds at least a bit less nonsensical than "affirmative action".

PPS: I think a section about how political forces try to introduce euphemisms, while also calling terms their opponents use for euphemisms, would be very interesting! In such a section I think "affirmative action" as well as the other controversial entries in the "Common Examples" list would be great examples. But I don't think they belong in the list, where you can't explain the complexity of these issues.

PPPS: The reason things are called euphemisms in political rhetoric is that an euphemism is not just a silly or overly positive term. It is a pleasant term for something unpleasant or offensive (Source: Merriam-Webster). This is also why it is controversial to call a term for a political policy an euphemism, even if the term is very silly.

Liiiii (talk) 21:05, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Having given this a bit more thought I realise that I have missed the most important point in this issue.

The most important point is this:

Claiming that something is a euphemism is not a factual statement. It is a value statement. Because claiming that a term is an euphemism implies a claim that the "true" term for that same thing would be something unpleasant or offensive. (See e.g. Merriam-Webster or Cambridge Dictionaries.)

This is why it is so common to claim that terms are euphemisms in political rhetoric. And this is why it doesn't matter how many such claims you can find. They express only a value held by the author, not a fact.

And this is also why it is totally inappropriate to have terms that are used for controversial political policies in "Common Examples". They should be removed for this article to have a neutral point of view.

Liiiii (talk) 10:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for an interesting exegesis. Though I do not agree that all use of euphamism implies a perjorative, a belittling by the user of the euphamism. I leave to philosophers the distinction between fact and values--if there is a meaningful distinction when we are talking about a descriptive word like euphamism. A euphamism is an unwillingness to look something in the face, and call it what it is. "Positive special treatment," the rough translation of the Swedish equivalent policy (for which I am grateful to editor Liiiii) is not a euphamism. It is a direct statement, it says what's going on. Special treatment, for positive purposes. Likewise the British version "positive discrimination," also not a euphamism. It says what it is: discrimination, for positive purposes. Contrast these with the American "affirmative action." The six sources have it right: affirmative action is a euphamism because it avoids direct statement; avoids looking it in the face. To the point about excluding politically sensitive euphemisms, to the contrary: they are useful exactly because political sensitivities these days seem to be so much more acute than any others. As acute as sexual sensitivities once were. In Victorian times no writer would write and no publisher would print the anatomical term penis, or the slang term cock. "Male member" was a Victorian euphamism, from the Latin membrum virile (used so often it became a substitution in its own right). Victorians could not talk about sexual matters without euphemism--but race? Joseph Conrad titled a novel "The Nigger of the Narcissus," a word which now offends us more than cock would have offended a Victorian. Rudyard Kipling wrote without embarassment about the "White Man's Burden." So today the situation is reversed. We are fairly open about all things sexual, but acutely embarassed about racial distinctions. Perhaps one might step back and ask oneself if we are too embarassed to look a certain euphamism in the face, and call it what it is? ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 14:56, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

PS--I forgot to add the important point that this is not about conservatives calling it a euphamism becuse they don't like it. Americans cannot call it what it is--well intentioned discrimination-- because if we did, it would violate the American Constitution 14th Amendment. The British and Swedes do not suffer that inhibition. It was not conservatives who invented the euphemism affirmative action: it was proponents of the policy. The jurisprudential and linguistic twists and turns to dodge our constitutional prohibition on discrimination are discussed to some extent here.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 15:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)