Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature

avoidance. Thus, the 2nd example -Where can I powder my nose? implies “where is the toilet?. The psychological
euphemisms, such as restroom, part with the baby, harvest wildlife; in Bulgarian: водни пъдпъдъци (literally: “water
grouse,” i.e. frogs as food), бели бъбреци (“white kidneys” – i.e. testicles), have to do with avoiding unpleasant or
indecent subjects, or are used for the sake of what is perceived as politeness. Furthermore, some euphemisms give an
insight into the nature and practice of different political systems, as well as people’s mentality and cultural
characteristics. Consequently, when President Bush says there will be serious consequences it means “war”; when
Donald Rumsfeld mentions a little untidiness, its meaning is transparent: “loot and plunder.”
This type of mind control by means of lexical mis/use has always been a social fact: cf. the final solution for
“annihilation of the Jews by the Nazis,” collateral damage for “civilian casualties,” friendly fire for “bombs or bullets
which accidentally kill people on the side which has fired the weapons” (LDELC); wildlife management, harvesting,
depopulation for “large-scale killing of animals or trees.” (Pei, 1973) Cf. also some other examples culled from CNN:
“efforts are under way to get the population to settle down” (stop looting), “a major disaster” (murder, death), “respect
ceasefire” (do not shoot).
As Noam Chomsky noted in a BBC interview about his famous book Rogue States: When the Americans say
“we are doing it to protect NATO’s credibility,” any don will tell you it means “do as we say, or else.” For this very
reason the UN language is an interesting study in euphemisms: unlawful use of force against … or illegal war in…
means “aggression”; when Kofi Annan would say: “I have qualms about this decision,” what he really meant was that
he was against it.
In these cases, the avoidance language serves either to justify inaction – if it is aggression or slaughter of the
civilians, the international organizations should put their foot down and act; 1 or as a means to brainwash the public, to
hide the meaning of what is happening, to neutralize the importance of an event by verbal means. Not coming to the
point is part of the political culture in many countries. The desire to justify and control accounts for the following
statement made by Lidia Shouleva, the one-time Bulgarian Minister of Economy, who was proud to point out in a TV
interview (purportedly as a sign of progress): “Вече не говорим за намаляване на безработицата, а за увеличаване
на заетостта“: (We no longer talk about decreasing unemployment but about increasing employment.) 2
Indeed, language or even silence as a means of control, may be traced back to totalitarianism: e.g. in the culture
of secrecy of totalitarian Bulgaria, demography was taboo (no statistics could be divulged about the population breakdown
into ethnic groups, the altitude of unmapped mountain tourist shelters, the depth of the Black Sea in certain
areas, etc.), while in the Soviet Union there was no sex or diseases. The Russian writer Sergei Dovlatov describes an
interview given to a group of American congressmen by the then Party Secretary of Leningrad. When the party official
was asked about the mortality rate in Leningrad the answer was that in Leningrad there was no mortality rate. This
situation still rings some bells. In the 2003 film Spinning Boris directed by Roger Spottiswoode, which features Boris
Yeltsin’s re-election campaign conducted using American expertise, the American consultant played by Jeff Goldblum
says, -“Don’t say Yeltsin is having the flu, because in Russia everybody would think he is on his deathbed!”
The use of another group of euphemisms is due to advertising and marketing reasons. Thus, in Bulgarian
supermarkets there are no small eggs any more - only medium, large or extra-large, while in the USA they are
described as medium, large, extra-large and jumbo. The euphemisms which you have “to see through” (like medium
eggs with the meaning of “small”) cater for the market situation and aim to attract more customers. Another
manifestation of avoidance is in hyper-inflation of English. According to Neil Tweedie, to make an impact now you
have to be a superhero, vegetables must be dew-fresh, market-fresh or seasonal. ”Uptitling” is an offence in which
employees are given elevated titles to keep them happy. Thus managers become executive managers, associate
managers or managers at large (see also vice president of a company – IP) Post room workers are now dispatch
services facilitators. “As part of the ‘bigging-up’ or ‘supersizing’ trend the prefixes “ova, uber or mega prefixes are
used to beef up words.”
(Tweedie, 2005)
In all the above examples, the most common reasons for implicating, instead of saying directly or overtly, is
avoidance of what is regarded as taboo or unpleasant, as socially unacceptable or impolite or for manipulative
purposes – to play down or to play up the importance of the event or object. What is being referred to is being
implicated, not explicitly stated, and can only be interpreted correctly given the existence of shared codes which may
range from a dialogue between two interlocutors to a cultural community at large. I would also like to postulate that
the degree of indirectness differs in different cultures, amongst other things depending on the cultural dimension of
high and low context propounded by E.T.Hall (Hall, 1981). In fact, different communication styles of British English
and American English have been noted by researchers: thus, Dunkerley and Robinson point out that the British
communication style is characterized by the opaqueness of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. “To
interpret successfully requires an understanding of the particular Gricean implicatures of particular comments in which
the overt context may bear a variety of relationships to the intended meaning. For example, to expect an outsider to
interpret “not bad at all” as meaning “very good indeed” is to expect too much …just as the interpretation of “It might
be an idea, if you were to do x” as an urgent imperative requires long acculturation to decode” (Dunkerley et al, 2002).
1 Cf. “calling a spade a spade would have mattered, because if it was genocide, how could you not act, however difficult it was?” Barnaby
Mason, “The Language of Diplomacy” From Our Own Correspondents:May 2004,
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools.print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/
2 There are numerous interesting examples as well as the rationale of “language demagogy” in Стефана Димитрова, 1999, pp.29-31.
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