Andrea Hawkins
Bold Talk

People use them so much sometimes it is almost hard to identify whether they are being used or not. A politician may say, “I will not raise taxes to anyone who makes $250,000 or less.” What he’s really saying is, “I am going to take more from the upper class who already pay the highest amount of taxes, and I’ll give it to the lower classes.” So for everything said there is a back story, and every story has a plot.
Euphemisms are largely used in language to soften up speech. Instead of saying, “I’m sorry your grandma died,” we usually say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” or, “So sad that your grandma passed away.” Died is a harsh word to our ears, it brings up imagery, and people don’t like using it when something softer can be used.
Some euphemisms aren’t as nice though, some just stupefy our language, and people use them to soften up situations. An example of this is the Obama administration changing the name of the Iraq war to “Overseas Contingency Operation,” or better yet the new stimulus they are touting is going to be called a “Jobs Bill.” Bush was just as guilty, calling a plan to take away our privacy the “Patriot Act.” This bill passed with support of both parties. No one wants to be unpatriotic, right?
The current presidency isn’t the first to use soft language to dumb down its audience, and it won’t be the last. Clear, concise words with concrete meaning aren’t used in Washington at all. I tried to read a small part of the health care bill a while back. It was like swimming in sludge. The language was so colorless and tone deaf that you’d have to go through with a metal detector to find anything that jump out as a clear thought.
The language used is clearly there as a stumbling block to Americans who don’t talk legal jargon. Why do we stand for our leaders writing bills in language that could mean one thing today, and something completely different tomorrow?  We don’t want our laws to be living, ever evolving. At least I don’t.
The elite don’t want us to have a clear picture of what they are putting into our legislation. It’s eaProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

er for them to be the translators between us and the new laws they are thinking up. It sounds almost like priests back in the day when the Bible was only printed in Latin. So if you wanted to know about God and what the Bible had to say, you would have no other choice, unless you understood Latin, but to trust what your priest had to say.
Smells fishy to me. Oh wait I’ll use language only someone from Harvard would understand, it has a dubious tang. Anyone can use a euphemism, so when you hear one an alarm bell should be ringing in your brain. Why are they trying to dumb me down? The first choice is that most people just like sounding smart at the expense of you feeling dumb; another reason is that they don’t want to offend you, and the third is they are outright trying to trick you.
Language is so important to how we live. Everything we do has some sort of communication attached to it. There are so many examples of euphemisms. They can be used for job titles, or even for firing people. Instead of saying “you’re fired,” employers may say, “You’re laid off,” or “We’re down-sizing.”
Our only line of defense is to get a shovel and start digging through the double speak, euphemism rich dirt our leaders throw at us. There is a motivation behind everything you hear, even this article. But I’ll come right out and tell you that I want you to be aware of the danger of speech and the power it holds in our life.
u
apitchfo@mesastate.edu