Active tasks

InThinking Revision Sites

INTHINKING REVISION SITES

Own your learning

Why not also try our independent learning self-study & revision websites for students?

We currenly offer the following DP Sites: Biology, Chemistry, English A Lang & Lit, Maths A&A, Maths A&I, Physics, Spanish B

"The site is great for revising the basic understandings of each topic quickly. Especially since you are able to test yourself at the end of each page and easily see where yo need to improve."

"It is life saving... I am passing IB because of this site!"

Basic (limited access) subscriptions are FREE. Check them out at:

www.StudyIB.net

Euphemisms

  • /
  • The old course /
  • Part 2 (2020 exams)/
  • Key concepts/
  • Euphemisms

How are people, at times, manipulated through language? Have you ever noticed how politicians can make something sound nicer that it really is? They do this by using euphemism. We don't tell people that a family member 'died'. We say they 'passed away'. Soldiers do not accidentally kill fellow soldiers. Instead we refer to 'friendly fire'. The world is full of euphemisms like these. 

What is the harm in using euphemisms? In this lesson we will explore the role of euphemisms and war, reading an extract from an essay and viewing an interview with a NATO strategist. Euphemisms relate well to the second learning outcome for Part 2, where we become more aware of the potential for political influence of the media. 

War of words

The following essay title 'Words and Behaviour' by Adolus Huxley describes the effects of using euphemisms during war time. Read the following extract and answer the questions below.  

  1. What is Huxley's main concern?

  2. Why should we care about the language used to describe war?

Words and Behaviour
Aldous Huxley
1930

Consider, for example, the case of war. War is enormously discreditable to those who order it to be waged and even to those who merely tolerate its existence. Furthermore, to developed sensibilities the facts of war are revolting and horrifying. To falsify these facts, and by so doing to make war seem less evil than it really is, and our own responsibility in tolerating war less heavy, is doubly to our advantage. By suppressing and distorting the truth, we protect our sensibilities and preserve our self-esteem. Now, language is, among other things, a device which men use for suppressing and distorting the truth. Finding the reality of war too unpleasant to contemplate, we create a verbal alternative to that reality, parallel with it, but in quality quite different from it. That which we contemplate thenceforward is not that to which we react emotionally and upon which we pass our moral judgments, is not war as it is in fact, but the fiction of war as it exists in our pleasantly falsifying verbiage. Our stupidity in using inappropriate language turns out, on analysis, to be the most refined cunning.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual human beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own, to inflict upon the innocent, and innocent themselves of any crime against their enemies, to suffer cruelties of every kind.

The language of strategy and politics is designed, so far as it is possible, to conceal this fact, to make it appear as though wars were not fought by individuals drilled murder one another in cold blood and without provocation, but either by impersonal and therefore wholly non-moral and impassible forces, or else by personified abstractions. [...]

Find the euphemisms

Listen to the following interview with Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman on the Kosovo War in 1999. Notice how he uses the euphemisms listed below. What do these words really refer to? There are more euphemisms than given in this list. Make a longer list as you listen to the interview and answer the discussion questions below.

 Euphemisms

Word used concept intended
through thick and thin
While people were being killed in war
throw in the towel
lose the war, retreat
in the wake of
During a lot of violence and destruction
no-brainer
A decision made without much thought
collateral damage
Loss of civilian life

 Interview with Jamie Shea
NATO community

Check for understanding

After viewing the interview answer the following questions to check for understanding. 

  1. Why did Jamie Shea believe that the NATO operation in Kosovo would have been a success?

  2. Why was the Kosovo war particularly significant for NATO?

  3. Why did NATO believe the public would support the war?

  4. How does Shea view the media's role in wartime?

  5. What effect does following international law have on the effectiveness of airstrikes?

  6. Were there any other euphemisms you could find?

Towards Assessment

Written Task 1 - Write a letter from Aldous Huxley to Jamie Shea persuading him to leave his job for ethical reasons. Provide Jamie Shea's response as if he were writing during the war, or ten years later.

Further oral activity - Read these articles on euphemism and war. Design a presentation in which you explore both the good and bad effects of using euphemisms in the media during war time.