There are two kinds of euphemistic language. The first is poetic and representative: instead of using the precise word, you’re conveying a deeper, more poignant truth via your rhetorical flourish. For example, after the Challenger disaster, President Reagan didn’t just say that the rocket blew up and everyone is dead; he said, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”
(Credit goes to a young speechwriter named Peggy Noonan.)
I’m a big fan of those kinds of euphemisms. Via the poetic use of imagery, our understanding of the emotional ethos is expanded. In essence, it gives us a more comprehensive, three-dimensional appreciation of reality. Peggy Noonan expressed a far deeper truth than straightforward language could ever convey.
After all, straightforward language is just a series of words.
But the second kind of euphemism is designed to do the exact opposite: it's intended to obscure the truth.
And not always out of malice either — often, the intent is benign; we want to spare someone’s feelings. So we call a fat person “big-boned.” We call a handicapped guy “special.” And when Grandma turns 90, we don’t say, “Yeesh, she’s 90 years old.” Instead, we go, “Wow, Grandma’s 90-years young!”
But other times, the intent is far more sinister.
Some people believe that if they can control language, they can control thought. And if they can control thought, they can control behavior. And that’s their real objective. If you’re a leftwing activist — or a liberal politician in Washington who wants to transform society into a socialist paradise — it’s like a superweapon. It’s irresistible.
This is why, eventually, all liberals morph into Language Gestapos.
Sometimes, it gets silly. When you can’t even define what the hell a woman is, there’s a pretty big hole in your dictionary. When you reach this point, the goal of language is no longer to communicate the truth, but to virtue-signal to the higher-ups.
Speaking of dictionaries, according to Merriam-Webster, there are roughly one million words in the English language. And out of all those words, only one is only known by its first letter.
The N-word.
This word is so awful, we can’t even write it out. So it must be the worst word in the entire English language!
But of course, it’s not.
We’ve always had our thumbs on the scale when it comes to language. We prioritize certain words and ostracize others. Usually, it’s not borne of a sliding scale of absolute evil or good, but of a reflective response to social pressures.
I’ll give you an example: HBO (and other movie channels) used to explicitly warn viewers if a film had a rape scene. But not murder. Not genocide. Not war.
As a kid, I thought that was strange. After all, murder is worse than rape; that’s why there’s a higher penalty. And genocide — the deliberate murder of thousands (or millions) — was obviously worse than the murder of one.
But as a society, sex crimes are deemed more shocking and upsetting than murder or genocide. A TV show might have dozens of people shot and stabbed (often in ultra-graphic ways), but any representation of sexual violence will almost certainly warrant an explicit warning.
It’s an extension of our social values.
So, the N-word euphemism is less about good and evil in its strictest sense, and more of a societal “coping mechanism” for the sins of slavery: We feel so bad about it, we won’t even use that word anymore. (See how sorry we are?)
Of course, calling it the N-word is unfair to uneducated bigots and illiterate racists, because lots of them don’t know the alphabet well enough to understand what we’re talking about: “What, I can’t say the N-word?! Screw that, I’ll say ‘motherf**ker’ if I want!”
Poor bigots.
As a white guy, I kind of liked it when black guys used the N-word with each other. When you stop and think about it, their usage was actually beautiful: They took a word that was widely used to demean and hurt, and reappropriated it as a euphemism for "brother" or "friend." Isn’t that great?
It’s almost Christlike.
That’s a far more inspiring use of language than simply banning it forever.
