By DAVID CASUCO
Journalism Class 78
Recession, unemployment and bankruptcy are current realities. But you’ll hardly hear those discouraging words around. Instead, we hear about downsizing, career change opportunity, and negative net worth.
Bailout? Um... that's sounds negative. Try rescue or something.
In journalism, brevity and clarity are basic and essential norms. This way, a journalist can easily communicate to his or her readers. It’s a lot different in real life. It seems to me that doubletalk is the name of the game, and we are embracing euphemism as the most useful figure of speech.
We use euphemism because it is a no-fault language. It is a good tool if we don’t want to face the ugly side of life. Things like war, death, taxes, prostitution, bankruptcy and a lot more unpleasant realities need to have politically correct equivalents. As an escape route, we resort to doublespeak and euphemisms to somehow lessen the impact of awful things in our lives.
So then we make it appear that people don’t die. Dead people are referred to as negative patient-care outcomes. And take note, we don’t bring our departed ones to the cemetery. Rather, we avail of the services of memorial gardens to bring our dead to their final resting places. In the newpapers, we don’t see their names in the obituaries; we read them under the banner from here to eternity.
Speaking of eternity, religious ministers also use sugarcoated words when dispatching the dead. The funny thing is (most of the time) they have no clue who the dead person is. And yet they say something like they the dead grew up in their backyards.
Most politicians are masters of the art of doublespeak and euphemism. And why not, that is their advantage over the regular guy. A politically correct public official, who woos the vote of the gay population, does not use the words of Billy Graham. Instead, he promises to fight for more rights of people who practice alternative lifestyles.
Another group of people who are good at euphemism are those who put personal ads in newspapers. Obviously, they do this to make them appear more desirable and engaging. One guy shows up regularly at the publication where I used to work in Glendale. He runs his ad like this: Forty-something, unaffected and earthly, self-employed and marriage-minded.
Why doesn’t he get a response? I wonder.
I learned later, that most people who read personal ads are also good at euphemism and doubletalk. To the regular reader, the guy’s ad appears impressive enough. But if we will lift the shroud of euphemism, we will see a good-for-nothing fellow. Consider: Forty-something roughly means forty-nine and trying to hide it. Unaffected and earthly translates loosely to slob and lacking social skills; self-employed is technically jobless; and marriage-minded means an essential bigamist.
The military is perhaps the group of people who are so good in trivializing something horrific. In military jargon a collateral damage refers to innocent people who die or suffer as a result of, probably reckless, military operations – make it target services. Among U.S. military men, The Peacekeeper is not an elite United Nations peacekeeping force, but the irreverent MX Missile van. And, in the Philippines, when the military press release says, the situation is under control, it invariably means there is a fierce firefight going on. Or if it says the party has started, that means the war is on.
Just a word of caution to folks out there: Don’t just read the fine prints, but watch for doubletalk as well. (davidlvnow@aol.com)
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