by Ralph Keyes
Censorship in both Iraq wars was characterized as security review, one in which censored material underwent redaction. This word was easy to confuse with rendition, which referred to the forcible transport of suspected terrorists to countries where they could be freely tortured. The fact that few people knew what such terms referred to made them perfect euphemisms.
Put to the Question
To maintain the pretense that Americans don’t torture detainees (i.e., prisoners), members of the Bush administration called such tactics robust or enhanced interrogation. A CIA report given to members of the Congressional Appropriations Committee was titled “Member Briefings on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs).” American interrogators used what they called aggressive or coercive or special or professional interrogation techniques when conducting interrogation in depth, especially during the increased pressure phase. President Bush characterized such techniques as an alternative set of procedures. These procedures included: shackling hands above the head of a standing prisoner for extended periods (called a stress position or a safety position), repeated slamming against a wall (walling), and confinement in a small, covered coffinlike box (complete with bugs for one bug-phobic prisoner). This approach came under the broad heading of sensory deprivation. Sensory overload referred to blasting music at prisoners for hours on end. Food deprivation, sleep management (deprivation), and environmental manipulation (extremely cold or hot in-cell temperatures) rounded out the alternative procedures. Even though American interrogators denied inflicting pain, they did admit to applying pressure.
Somewhere, Tomás de Torquemada is smiling. Torquemada would easily have recognized this approach to interrogating suspects, both the methods and the way of depicting them. Although he may have had Jewish ancestors, as Spain’s Grand Inquisitor, this Dominican friar subjected Spanish Jews who wouldn’t renounce their faith to unspeakable torture. That wasn’t how he looked at it, of course. Even the most sadistic torturer is unlikely to say of his occupation, “I hurt people.” To Torquemada and his henchmen, they were merely having suspected heretics put to the question. “Inquisition” simply meant “inquiring.” The Grand Inquisitor thought such inquiries should be done “with all possible severity and vigor.”
One way Spain’s inquisitors encouraged suspects to admit heresy was by inserting a piece of linen in the prisoner’s throat, then gradually soaking it with water until the victim felt as though he were drowning. This procedure was called toca, literally “touch” (also the name of the piece of cloth being moistened). During succeeding centuries, similar techniques were used by other interrogators who gave this practice names of their own. U.S. soldiers who used a version of toca when suppressing an insurgency in the Philippines more than a century ago called it water cure. American interrogators who employed a similar method when encouraging suspected terrorists to divulge information after 9/11 dubbed this technique water application. Since it was first used early this century, waterboarding has been the preferred euphemism for what the Red Cross more accurately describes as “water suffocation.” That is exactly what all of these methods actually do: simulate a sense of drowning in the person being interrogated.
“Euphemism has been the leading quality of American discussions of the war in Iraq,” concluded Yale professor David Bromwich. Bromwich believes this results from “a euphemistic contract between the executive branch and many journalists.” At least one journalist agreed. Early in the war, Keith Woods suggested that members of his profession were too inclined to adopt the foggy jargon used by members of the military because doing so made them sound in the know. Woods proposed avoiding the use of loaded words such as “smart bombs” and “surgical strikes” in favor of more neutral terms like “computer-guided bombs.”
With all of its technological upgrades, modern warfare places new burdens on soldiers to soften the hard facts of what they are up to. Mass media conveys the results to the home front. As a result, the type of euphemistic discourse relied on by military men and women doesn’t just characterize the way they communicate but the way we all do. Soldiers have shown us how it’s done. The fogged words of modern war both illustrate and accelerate our increasing dependence on euphemisms in public discourse. In this discourse, the old standbys of evasive talk about bodies, their secretions, and sex take a backseat to euphemizing of a much different sort.
10
Brave New Words
THE STARR REPORT about Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky didn’t mince words. Though rather prudish himself, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr felt little need to euphemize when reporting salacious details of the president’s sexual encounters with his White House intern. “According to Ms. Lewinsky,” Starr’s 1998 report told a rapt public, “she and the President kissed. She unbuttoned her jacket; either she unhooked her bra or he lifted her bra up; and he touched her breasts with his hands and mouth.” And so on. You get the picture.
Because we’re so much less euphemistic than we used to be about sex and the body parts involved, it’s natural to assume that we’ve drastically reduced our use of euphemisms altogether. Nothing could be further from the truth. All we’ve done is shift our targets and revise our words. The supply is constant. Only the topics change, and the form.
As we’ve seen throughout this book, euphemisms speak to concerns of their time. This is as true today as it was when the Victorians considered legs too titillating to be mentioned by name. Things concern us that didn’t concern them, however. Just as we find many of our ancestors’ euphemisms amusing, some that we use would have made them giggle. “It is easy to laugh at the prudery of former generations,” wrote Peter Fryer in Mrs. Grundy: Studies in English Prudery, “it is far from easy to detect our own.”
Imagine your great-grandparents visiting Montgomery Woods in northern California. At its entrance a sign warns that “State Parks staff will be intermittently conducting feral pig depredation…. Depredation may involve hunting and live-capture enclosures for humane dispatch.” In other words, a lot of wild pigs are going to die. This message reflects a modern squeamishness about killing animals or at least about referring to this act directly. When the federal government gassed seven million chickens to try to curb a flu outbreak in Pennsylvania, they said they’d “depopulated” the flocks. Cull is another euphemism for killing animals, sometimes done as part of a population management program. So are euthanize and harvest. Hunters themselves have picked up on the latter. An Idaho resident licensed to shoot wolves said he hoped to “harvest” such an animal at least once in his lifetime. Try to picture a colonial Pilgrim saying he was going out to harvest a wild turkey for dinner.
The words we use and those we avoid illustrate what we care about most deeply. Euphemisms are the press secretary of values. But values change, taking euphemisms with them. Our euphemizing ancestors devoted a lot of effort and ingenuity to creating stand-ins for blasphemous terms, as well as vague allusions to the body and its functions. We have other things on our minds.
Although contemporary euphemisms have been noted throughout this book, this chapter focuses on what makes modern verbal evasions unique: how they differ from those in the past, and, especially, what today’s euphemisms tell us about who we are, what bugs us, and why. Some concerns are perennial, though in many cases the rationales for being concerned about them have changed. Even though crude expressions may be heard in public more often today than a century ago, they remain euphemism-eligible for new reasons. Such references are now considered more insensitive than profane, and even a form of harassment. Thus, if a man today were to call a coworker a bitch, he’d be in more trouble for the misogyny of his insult than for its vulgarity. When White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said a group of liberal activists were “fucking retarded,” he was roundly condemned for dropping an R-bomb that way.
Name and Frame
The changes in which words we use freely and which ones we avoid reflect a broader semantic shift. Especially when it comes to pub
lic discourse, modern euphemisms have points to make. Those points are frying bigger fish than merely hiding the body or avoiding swear words. Euphemisms have become an integral part of political and social agendas. Politicians of every stripe compete to portray their positions in the most benign language available. Liberals no longer “spend” money on government programs but do invest it. Conservatives have reintroduced the clearly named “trickle-down” approach to economics with a more vaguely labeled supply-side version. Conservative and liberal politicians alike call their own negative advertisements contrast ads. Those used by opponents are dubbed attack ads. (This suggests an adage: Your euphemism obfuscates; mine clarifies.)
Politicians continue to muddy our linguistic waters this way for the simple reason that it works. Words matter. As political figures like to say, “Name it and frame it.” A survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that 24 percent of those polled opposed spending more money on “welfare,” but 68 percent favored greater assistance for the poor. National defense was more popular than “the military,” and assistance to other countries sounded better to far more than “foreign aid” did.
Based on his testing of word associations in focus groups, political consultant Frank Luntz recommended that Republican candidates refer to opportunity scholarships for students instead of “vouchers,” and exploring for energy rather than “drilling for oil.” In a 2003 memo, Luntz advised White House staffers that “The terminology in the upcoming environmental debate needs refinement. While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.” Since then, climate change has become the preferred terminology not just among Republicans but among the press and the public as well.
In recent decades, conservative Republicans have worked aggressively, creatively, and effectively to ensure that we debate the issues on their terms. Tax cuts become tax relief. Changes in legal codes are tort reform. George W. Bush’s proposed easing of environmental regulations was called the Clean Air Act. Bush touted increased logging in national forests as the fire-preventing Healthy Forest Initiative. These are calculated ploys to call something what it isn’t. William Lutz, who’s spent decades collecting examples of such “doublespeak” in several books on this subject, calls it “language that only appears to communicate.” Not coincidentally, our ability to deal with the topics involved is degraded. Rather than debate real issues on actual terms, we discuss them with words that divert our attention from what’s really being considered. That’s the whole idea. “Verbicide” is what linguist Geoffrey Hughes calls this process.
Democrats are no less inclined than Republicans to frame their positions euphemistically. Bill Clinton called his opportunistic three-pronged political strategy triangulation. (Not a great choice of word, actually; it suggests “strangulation.”) As part of this strategy, Clinton backed a bill allowing banks to merge with investment firms that was titled the Financial Modernization Act. During the financial crisis that resulted in part from this modernization, Barack Obama’s Treasury Department called its proposed plan to buy toxic assets from banks a Legacy Securities Program.
As soon as they entered the White House, members of Obama’s administration began polling the efficacy of certain terms before using them. Thus, the program of financial assistance that most called a “stimulus plan” they called an economic recovery plan (prompting representative Barney Frank [D-MA] to caution that “Most people would rather be stimulated than recover”). What members of the Bush administration called a “war on terror,” their Democratic successors termed an overseas contingency operation. Attacks by terrorists became man-caused disasters. With the euphemistic shoe now on the other foot, former Bush speechwriter David Frum charged that a “National Euphemism Initiative” had been launched by the new administration.
In general, conservatives have been better at semantic hocus-pocus than liberals, particularly when it comes to the taxes they swear never to raise. Ever since the distinguished Athenian leader Solon called taxes “contributions” more than twenty-five hundred years ago, the T-word has sparked a lot of impressive verbal tap-dancing. Some modern counterparts of Solon have called it revenue enhancement. Assessments is another alternative, or levies. But no synonym for taxes has proved more functional than fees. To take a single example, vehemently anti-tax governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) imposed all manner of “fees” on Minnesotans, including a seventy-five-cents-a-pack health impact fee on cigarettes. Not to be outdone, liberal linguist George Lakoff suggested membership fees as a way for Democrats to refer to taxes without naming them.
Lakoff calls this reframing, itself a bit of a euphemism for fooling around with terminology. He’s been instrumental in pushing Democrats to take a leaf from the Republican playbook and choose their words more carefully. Pointing out that “climate change” could evoke images of palm trees and warm breezes rather than of hurricanes and floods, Lakoff suggests climate crisis as a more apt alternative. Words such as these don’t just communicate; they take stands. Liberals who refer to an underserved community are not only using a euphemism but making a statement. Conservatives who talk of minerals being extracted from the ground (not “mined”), and trees being harvested (not “logged”), are doing the same thing. Those who substitute genital cutting or genital mutilation for the act long known as “female circumcision” denounce this practice with their choice of words. Others, such as University of Chicago anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu, defend it with their own terminology. After she voluntarily had her clitoris removed in her ancestral home of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ahmadu called the procedure an excision. At a forum on female circumcision the anthropologist said, “I am not ‘mutilated.’ ” Calling this “the M-word,” Ahmadu contended that those who referred to the ritual removal of young women’s clitorises this way were insulting her ancestors’ culture as much as if they used the N-word to describe their race.
ETHIOPIANS IN THE FUEL SUPPLY
When Britain competed with Holland for dominance on land and at sea, disparaging references to Dutchmen were ubiquitous. Many of these terms migrated to the New World. Not just Dutch courage, for bravado fueled by alcohol, or a Dutch treat in which both parties share the cost, but a Dutch concert for a drunken ruckus and do the Dutch, which at one time referred to committing suicide. In chilly England, the hot-water bottles so often taken to bed were Dutch wives. Diaphragms used for birth control were Dutch caps.
We reveal our stereotypes and biases when requisitioning the names of nationality groups this way. A onetime euphemism for farting was talking German. A Turkish ally was one considered unreliable. Desertion from military service used to be called taking French leave.
The French have been particularly vulnerable to having their good name applied to sexual practices considered deviant, by English speakers, anyway. At the benign end is tongue-to-tongue French kissing. Oral sex was considered a French practice. (GIs in France called baguettes cocksucker bread.) Pictures considered pornographic were French prints or postcards. Condoms were French letters, French devices, or French safes. The French themselves called this form of birth control capotes Anglaises (“English overcoats”). On the eve of World War I, however, they began calling condoms capotes Allemandes (“German overcoats”).
On the continent, English was long an integral part of euphemisms for sadomasochistic sexual activity. English guidance alluded to sadism. English education involved lots of flogging. Pederasty has historically been called a Greek predilection, anal intercourse Italian. During a French court proceeding, Benvenuto Cellini was accused of having sex with his mistress in the Italian manner.
The names we use for minority groups, and those they use for themselves, can be at the mercy of headlines. Following 9/11, some Middle Eastern restaurants began to call their cuisine Mediterranean, as did some Americans of Arab descent, in the same way that my mother’s ancestors who migrated to America from Romania a century ago
said they were European. Ironically, Arabs was sometimes used as a euphemism for Jews at that time. Alternatively, in a misguided attempt to be respectful, some called them Hebrews. Thus, Hebrew holidays, Hebrew businessmen, Hebrew comedians, even Hebrew rabbis.
Before the Civil War, American residents of African origin were commonly called blacks. After that war ended and slavery was abolished, this gave way to the softer term colored among those who didn’t want to give offense, then to the more genteel Negro. Black soldiers who fought Indians on the frontier were known as brunettes. (A cavalry squadron commanded by Major Guy Henry was called “Henry’s Brunettes.”) Other long-lost alternatives include ebony, dusky, chocolate, coffee, café au lait, sepia, and bronze. Nonwhite was a nonstarter. Moor, Abyssinian, and Ethiopian were sometimes used for anyone of African descent. In My Little Chickadee, W. C. Fields satirized the demeaning catchphrase nigger in the woodpile when he said, “Hmm. There’s an Ethiopian in the fuel supply.”
No Offense
An increasingly multicultural world has euphemism issues unheard of in years past. Our ancestors felt far less need for today’s types of verbal nicety because (1) their world was more homogeneous than ours, and, (2) minding each others’ sensitivities wasn’t considered a high priority. Today it is.