Flight

of the
Euphemism
by John MacBeath Watkins
Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of structuralism, believed that every language creates its own

reality. Language isn't just the sound of words, it's the structure of meaning that underlies the words,

the signs that the words signify. It's not just a way to communicate, it's a web of meaning that shapes

our categories of thought. It makes abstract thought possible, and helps us construct the world we

encounter into a “reality” that makes sense to us.

So what if you want to change the way people think?

One of the first books on anthropology I read was written in the early 1930s and referred to

people with large heads and underdeveloped mental faculties as "macrocephalic idiots." It was a

technical term, but it drew to it (and embodied within it) the attitudes people held at the time toward

mental disabilities. It was a little more technical than the term "low-grade moron" which was also
applied to this group, in that it referred to a specific characteristic associated with the disability,

although the category was wider than a particular syndrome..

Suppose you wanted to change the way people thought about the mentally disabled, what would

you do? Well, you'd probably notice the contempt with which people said the words with which they

referred to these people, and decide to change the words. Some people referred to these kids as

“backward.” A more technical and therefore less obviously judgmental term would be “retarded.” So

the new word was chosen to take the place of 'low-grade moron.'

But the sound only represents the meaning. In time, much of the old meaning attached to the

new word. Perhaps a little progress was made, a little change in attitude, but soon 'retarded' became an

insult. So a new word was chosen, “developmentally disabled.” This meant the child did not develop

as quickly as its cohorts. In fact, the plane meaning of the term is “backward” or if you prefer the

more Latin term, “retarded.”

Each time, the new sign acquires at least most of the meaning of what the old sign signified.

Still, I can't fault the effort to change the underlying meaning. It can be done, but it isn't easy.

Once, in graduate school, I made a powerless enemy. A friend of one of my house mates told

me she had struggled mightily to change the name of the office for helping disabled students to the

“challenge office.” She wondered what I thought of that. I argued that what I thought made very little

difference, and she was the real expert on the matter, but she insisted that I render judgment.

So I told her quite honestly that I thought it would make very little difference to the meaning of

the office if she changed the name. I did not explain de Saussure's theories about language, because I'd

already said enough that she was yelling at my house mate. She had, after all, insisted that I render

judgment, so she chose to strike out at a convenient target other than myself.

Later in my life, cynic that I am, I thought that if a blind man is differently abled -- able to not

see! Perhaps my unfaithful lover was “differently faithful” -- faithful not to be...

Something like this (moron/backward/retarded/developmentally disabled) transference of

prejudice to new terms has happened with the term for people descended from sub-Sahraran African

ancestors. There was a Portuguese word, negro, which means black, which came to be applied to them

when the Brazilian slave trade was particularly important. There was a euphemism for negro, which

was “colored,” as if the specific color dare not speak its name. (Could it be golden? Purple? Puce or

chartreuse? The color of a ripe red potato or a fresh green tomato? Striped like that special tulip that

would make a Dutchman swoon? Pale against a midnight sky, like a sliver of a silver new moon?)

There were two common insults, “black and nigger.” I thought the most ingenious effort to deal

with the stigma attached to being African-American was the “black is beautiful” idea. This tackled the

underlying problem of changing the meaning without the usual flight to a new euphemism, and was

more successful than most flights to new euphemisms..

“Nigger” has become one of the few non-sexual obscenities in the American lexicon. I'm fine

with that. Some complain that blacks continue to use it, but for a black to use it is transparently ironic.

For a white to use it, there is no presumption that the use is ironic.

I am, of course, always fascinated by language. A few years back, a Washington, D.C. official

lost his job for using the word “niggardly,” which those listening thought was a racial slur, although it's

based on an old Norse word that was invented before the Norse were in contact with sub-Saharan

Africans. The mayor eventually hired his aide back, presumably after a little quiet time with his

Oxford English Dictionary.

A friend worked at a gas station with a Cajun woman who had a “100% Coonass” bumper

sticker. The woman was accused of racism because of the bumper sticker, even though it referred to

her own ethnicity. A coonass, or Cajun, is a person of French descent, whose ancestors were part of the

Arcadian colony in what is now Nova Scotia. The French king didn't like them, because they would

pledge no allegiance to him, and the English, when they conquered Canada, didn't trust them because

they wouldn't pledge allegiance to the English king either. They shipped most of them to the other big

French colony of the time, the Louisiana territory.

 This is the problem with the sign and the signified. With a little ignorance, the sign can be

mistaken for another signified. Sometimes these communication accidents reveal how the structure

works. In both cases, people used the proper sign to send the signal they wanted to send, but people

ignorant of the sign (and perhaps even of the meaning signed) assigned meanings of words that

sounded close to the one used. It's as if they were part of a different reality.

But the more usual problem is the flight of the euphemism, where new words try to flit to new

meanings, but keep settling on the old one. The structure of language, and the structure of thought, are

not entirely inflexible, but they are resilient. They bend, they don't break, and they eventually change

shape to accommodate the pressures of a changing society.