English Destruction Via Euphemisms And Rap
...thoughts clearly and accurately. Many find it challenging, at times, to write down what they mean in a manner that makes sense to anyone but themselves. Politicians seem to have the opposite problem; their ideas are too clear and the general public understands them. Politicians often want to use confusing words and phrases to disguise the true meaning. Whether they are discussing an event, which represents their administration negatively, or simply hiding the truth about where tax money is going. William D. Lutz in his article "The World of Doublespeak" points out several excellent examples of political euphemisms, "in 1984 the US State Department announced that it would no longer use the word "killing" in its annual report on the status of human rights in countries around the world. Instead, it would use the phrase "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life." Is that a grotesque enough obfuscation for you? Other examples Lutz use are:
"There are no more poor people, jus fiscal underachievers.' There was no robbery of an automatic teller machine, just an unauthorized withdraw.' The patient didn't die because of medical malpractice, it was just a diagnostic misadventure of a high magnitude.' The US Army doesn't kill the enemy anymore, it just services the target' And the doublespeak goes on." (Lutz 36).
Politicians, through the use of euphemisms and political correctness are destroying the English language by inventing words and phrases to conceal the truth. These euphemisms are being invented by the intelligent leaders of our time to "protect" people from the truth, when in fact, it seems that they are harming the people and destroying the English language. At least an argument can be made that the politicians are eliminating truth from our language in a somewhat intelligent manner. The same argument cannot be made for Rap-English, which is another major...
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