English Destruction Via Euphemisms And Rap

Throughout history speakers of the English language have struggled with representing their ideas and thoughts clearly and accurately. Many find it challenging, at times, to write down what they mean in a manner that makes sense to anyone but themselves. Politicians seem to have the opposite problem; their ideas are too clear and the general public understands them. Politicians often want to use confusing words and phrases to disguise the true meaning. Whether they are discussing an event, which represents their administration negatively, or simply hiding the truth about where tax money is going. William D. Lutz in his article "The World of Doublespeak" points out several excellent examples of political euphemisms, "in 1984 the US State Department announced that it would no longer use the word "killing" in its annual report on the status of human rights in countries around the world. Instead, it would use the phrase "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life." Is that a grotesque enough obfuscation for you? Other examples Lutz use are:

"There are no more poor people, jus 'fiscal underachievers.' There was no robbery of an automatic teller machine, just an 'unauthorized withdraw.' The patient didn't die because of medical malpractice, it was just a 'diagnostic misadventure of a high magnitude.' The US Army doesn't kill the enemy anymore, it just 'services the target' And the doublespeak goes on." (Lutz 36).

Politicians, through the use of euphemisms and political correctness are destroying the English language by inventing words and phrases to conceal the truth. These euphemisms are being invented by the intelligent leaders of our time to "protect" people from the truth, when in fact, it seems that they are harming the people and destroying the English language. At least an argument can be made that the politicians are eliminating truth from our language in a somewhat intelligent manner. The same argument cannot be made for Rap-English, which is another major destructive force in the annihilation of the English language.

Political Correctness is destroying effective communication; it seems the further we go back in time, the more simple and clear words become. There once was a time when one would be allowed to use the term "retarded" in any social atmosphere and not have to suffer the indignity of being called insensitive or ignorant. Also, and much more importantly, the word "retarded" would quickly and easily convey what the user of that word meant to the people he or she was communicating with. Somewhere along the line that word became "naughty" and began to carry with it, a negative connotation. So, instead of keeping the simple, effective word as socially acceptable we created a new term, a politically correct phrase "Mental Retard" Now we had a word that kept the word "retard" but added the word "mental" to imply some sort of medical condition instead of just a stupid or ignorant person. This was not enough though, "retard" in any form soon became unacceptable.

When the "politically correct" thinkers of the time returned from the drawing board they presented the public with three phrases "Mentally Handicapped," "Develop-Mentally Disabled," and "Learning Disabled". So now there are three politically correct words that portray a group of people in a dignified way. Besides overall confusion among the public of what to say and the ever-lengthening word now branching off and becoming three words things seem to be pretty good. Words like "disabled" and "handicapped" soon begin to become negative words and carry with them the idea of inferiority. To combat this, the politically correct thinkers come up with "mentally challenged," "differently-abled," and "special" to describe this group of people.

The concern for our fellow man here is amazing but what everyone seems to fail to realize is that some of the people they are describing are not capable of intelligent speech. Most of these "special" people could not survive on their own because they are not mentally strong enough to understand basics of human survival. So instead of conveying that you are talking about group of people who are mentally inferior and often need assistance just to survive what we do is create words that limit the honesty and clarity of the truth. Does the word "special" or better yet "different" imply what those words really mean when you are talking about the mental competence of a person? NO! "Special" and "Different" only tell a person that whatever you are talking about is unique whereas the word "retard" clearly defines that you are talking about a person and that person is mentally inferior.

This is not an isolated example, "retard," and words like it (honest words) are being phased out of the English language because of our fear of the truth. Another example: "shellshock." This word is simple; two-syllables a word used seventy years ago to describe the mental condition of a person who has been stressed beyond their limit. Shellshock does not even appear to be derogatory (as a word) until the "politically correct" get a hold of it. In WWII the term, still describing the exact same condition, was changed to "battle fatigue," can you see the blurry clouds of political correctness begin to form in front of truth and honesty, no? What about if we called it "Operational Exhaustion" like we did in Korea? Finally after Vietnam the entire meaning of the word was covered up when the name was changed again to "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." (Carlin). What do you think they will call it when the soldiers in Iraq get back?

This soft language is destroying the beauty of truth in the English language. Comedian George Carlin makes a great point that there are less important words that you would not even think of that continue to change all the time: "Toilet paper" is now "Bathroom Tissue," "False Teeth" are now "Dental Appliances" or "Dentures," "The Dump" is now "The Landfill," "Used cars" are now "Previously-Owned Vehicles," and "poor, broke people live in slums because they got fired" now "the economically disadvantaged, with a negative cash inflow, live in sub-standard housing because management wanted to curtail redundancies in the Human Resources Area creating a group of people within the company who were no longer viable members of the work force"

These euphemisms hide truth by concealing meaning. They are invented by people