Usage of euphemisms in English political discourse

c) the last euphemism in this group is enemy combatants. It is a euphemistic term historically referring to members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the United States the use of the enemy combatant may also mean an alleged member of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in other words, a terrorist being held in detention by the U.S. government as part of the war on terror. Thus, this euphemism has to be read in context to determine whether it means any combatant belonging to an enemy state, or if it means an alleged member of al Qaeda or of the Taliban being detained as an unlawful combatant by the United States. The first example illustrates enemy combatant being any combatant belonging to an enemy state while in the second example enemy combatants refer to Guantanamo detainees used by Bush government.

* In Afghanistan difficulties separating friend from foe have been exacerbated by battles involving small formations of enemy combatants, often fighting at close quarters (guardian.co.uk, 17 January 2009) [29].

* He picks up MoazzamBegg's book, Enemy Combatants, about the latter's experience in Guantanamo Bay, and shows a bookmark at about page 10 (guardian.co.uk, 27 July 2008) [29].

3. The penultimate group is articles on terrorism policy containing eight most frequently used euphemisms: extraordinary rendition, crossfire, humanitarian intervention, extrajudicial executions, sectarian violence, and surgical strike.

a) extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for torture, i.e. a procedure whereby criminal suspects are sent for interrogation from one country to a second country, where less strict laws governing interrogation apply. The phrase became widely known during 2005 when newspaper articles began drawing attention to the fact the US Government was sending terrorist suspects, previously held in the USA, to countries that have less stringent laws against torture, and interrogating them there. The following example illustrates the usage of this euphemism clearly performing a taboo function:

* The former detainees - Mohamed, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes and Martin Mubanga - deny any involvement in terrorism and allege that MI5 and MI6 aided and abetted each man's unlawful imprisonment and extraordinary rendition (guardian.co.uk, 6 July 2010) [29].

b) one more euphemism which is frequently found in articles on terrorism policy is crossfire. It is a euphemism for the act of firing weapons or artillery at an enemy or, in other words, extrajudicial killings, for instance:

* He predicted that his client's death would be announced in due course, telling the Guardian last December: “Perhaps it will be announced that Rashid was caught in crossfire during a police operation” (guardian.co.uk, November 28, 2008) [29].

c) humanitarian intervention is a euphemism referring to military invasion or “dropping bombs on poor people”. The following example shows the usage of humanitarian intervention where the euphemism performs a covering up function as it hides the fact of killing hundreds of people during humanitarian intervention:

* It said the UN allowed “humanitarian intervention” in some circumstances, but such was not the case in Iraq, and that it would be very difficult to rely on earlier UN resolutions approving the use of force against Saddam (guardian.co.uk, November 30, 2009) [29].

d) sectarian violence and insurgency are euphemisms for a civil war.

* The vacuum thus created allowed sectarian violence - triggered by resentful, usurped and unemployed Sunnis, Saddam's own people - to flare up (guardian.co.uk, 16 February 2011) [29].

* Evans said "a significant number of UK residents" were training in al-Shabaab camps to fight in the insurgency in Somalia (guardian.co.uk, 17 September 2010) [29].

These euphemisms perform a covering up function because a civil war is a bloody event causing people's death but with the help of the usage of the euphemism civil war is reduced to something on the order of an inter-family feud.

e) surgical strike is a euphemism for a precision bombing. In other words, it is a a military attack which results in, was intended to result in, or is claimed to have resulted in only damage to the intended legitimate military target. This euphemism makes a precision bombing sound like a beneficial medical procedure, thus, performing a covering up function. For instance:

* He said he agreed with the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that it was “very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel”, adding: “These are not surgical strikes but have instead caused death and misery amongst innocent civilians” (guardian.co.uk, 30 July 2008) [29].

4. The last group is articles on political parties issues and politicians which contain the largest number of most often used political euphemisms such as collateral damage, blow-in, U-turn, and axis of evil.

a) collateral damage is a euphemism for civilian casualties in war or, in other words, a mass murder of innocent people. It is perfectly moral to protect innocents against aggressors. It is not moral, nor has it ever been necessary, to blow up cities filled with innocent people, for instance:

* Given the wide distribution of potential nuclear sites, far beyond the well-known ones at Isfahan and Natanz, it's almost certain there would be collateral damage. (guardian.co.uk, 2 February 2008) [29].

Speaking about the death of innocent people makes politicians feel awkward and confused so by using collateral damage they successfully avoid this taboo topic and cover up the most serious of political crimes.

b) blow-in is a euphemism for a foreigner who meddles in domestic affairs. For example:

* Her appointment is a surprise, given that to many in the DUP - especially those in the party's evangelical wing - she is perceived as a “blow in” from another rival unionist party (guardian.co.uk, 11 January 2010) [29].

It is a euphemism of Irish usage often found in various discussions of Irish political parties. In the example provided above “she” is Arlene Foster, the new caretaker first minister of Northern Ireland, who is referred to as a blow-in. In this case she is not a foreigner meddling in domestic affairs but rather a politician form a rival party. The usage of this euphemism performs a politeness function because blow-in seems to be a more pleasant term than a rival.

c) u-turn is a euphemism for a fundamental change in policy. The euphemism in the following situation softens the unwelcome change introduced by the Conservatives and makes it less apparent:

* She also claims that the u-turn on the sell-off of the country's woodland shows that the Conservatives are losing touch with the public on environmental issues (guardian.co.uk, 3 March 2011) [29].

d) axis of evil is a euphemism for governments that George Bush accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil.

* Following 9/11 there were those who looked at the world and saw an “axis of evil”. George Bush himself said faced with this axis indifference would be catastrophic (guardian.co.uk, 29 March 2011) [29].

This euphemism performs a taboo function because to speak about countries helping terrorism was and still is a taboo. Politicians are afraid to refer to these countries directly and that is why Bush referred to the countries helping terrorism as “axis of evil”.

So, in this section some of the most common euphemisms in English political discourse were analyzed with the help of the “Guardian” newspapers articles. It was shown that euphemisms usage may be regarded within nine different articles, but, as it was impossible to mention all of them, only the most popular ones were selected to be analyzed in the framing of the issues that possess the most interesting content for our theme. One could observe the purposes which incline politicians to euphemize their language and the main items being the very spot for using more polite (or just not so fair) words.

etymology uphemisms english text

3.2 The role of euphemisms in today's English political discourse

It goes without saying that language is like the building blocks of a civilization. A story in the Bible even told of how God decided to stop the building of a tower by making everyone speak different languages. Without it, an effective and cooperative society simply would not exist. In fact, the same thing may be said about euphemisms, since in politics, the initial function of the language which is to inform and to share knowledge have already been forgotten. Now, it is mainly used to convince someone about something, to impose one's seeing or to make some acts of violence to look more agreeable and reasonable.

Thus, language is a very powerful tool. Through subconscious ways, it can conciliate or discourage, win over public or cause its resentment . Perhaps it is not so bad that we have euphemisms for different phenomena and some people. This way, in our minds, we automatically associate them with the respect that they deserve.

Even though euphemisms have become an integrated part of our lives, most of us do not pause to consider the importance in which it plays in our perception of the world around us. It is a product of social norms, tradition, culture, and even history. It goes without saying that euphemisms play an important, if not the main, role in creating and reinforcing social preferances and seeing the moral aspect of its leaders.

Today, more and more often, while reading a newspaper or listening to some politician's speech, you may never hear of using a particular word or phrase being considered as too direct, harsh, unpleasant or offensive. Instead, you are likely to see it to be replaced with some different word or phrase to make it seem more acceptable in a general sense. If so, what you hear or read is Euphemistic language, which is used to replace harsh, unpleasant or inappropriate language. Hence there is a need and importance of euphemism, especially the ones of political sphere, in our life. Euphemisms are used in a variety of situations for numerous reasons, such as, not to hurt anybody's feelings, not to convey unpleasant or inappropriate message, or to make a polite reference to physical or psychological disability of the people. Thus, it is obvious, that euphemisms are now used in almost all fields of our life, but seem to be especially significant for politics, being an appropriate language form created by people to achieve an ideal communicative effect in the social interactions. As Enright D.J. stated, “If euphemism doesn't exist, the movement of the world will stop and it will be filled with hatred” [5, p. 29]. Euphemism develops while the society develops. If we make good use of this language form, it will accelerate and facilitate human communications.

But in politics it acquires some specific functions, especially, if one speaks about such topics as war and its victims. Politicians may use such a form of introduction information in an effort to avoid antagonizing the political opposition or to avoid reminding people that war puts human lives at risk. Talking about troops (or during the early days of the Vietnam War, “advisers”) instead of people in military services helps justify their use in war times; they seem less like human beings when we refer to them with such words. Nor does the phrase “civilian casualties” fully illustrate the human toll of warfare. In contemporary conflicts, there is rarely a separate battlefield, and people with nothing to do with fighting are often injured or killed.

Using such words helps one to talk about difficult topics - those for which emotions run high and that public may not be able to calmly discuss otherwise. When one distance themselves in this way from a highly emotionally charged situation, public they address to can see that situation from a different light - not necessarily better, just different.

So, now it is possible to conclude that the use of euphemisms in politics has a double nature. On the one hand, euphemized language always softens the contents of what we really mean and makes it sound more polite and not so offensive, especially, for vulnerable strata of population. With the help of euphemisms, one can express their ideas without worrying that it will insult someone. It facilitates the life of politicians, chairmen and public speakers, as well as lives of all the other people.

But, on the other hand, euphemisms are often used as a tool to stretch the truth or to confuse public by making them thinking and believing in what is, to say it more euphemistic, not really the point. The English language is characterized as the one having a vast number of poly-semantic words, which gives its speakers the priority to speak with a “forked tongue”, and, anyway, to claim for their words to be in possession of the ultimate truth. To conclude, we may say that referring to all the facts and examples mentioned above it is reasonable to claim that euphemisms play a very important role in both social and political life and may influence greatly the way people see some acts or policies that their government leads.

CONCLUSION

The task of this study was to examine theoretical approaches for English political euphemisms usage. According to this, in the work were defined the background of their use and evolution of English political euphemisms. Having analyzed the research, it is reasonable to claim that the most common transformation applied in the process of the evolution is neutralization.

The research question, which was to be answered in the present study, was what political euphemisms are used in the current English newspapers and what are their underlying semantic and structural features. The research question was based and illustrated while analysing political euphemisms found in the last three years' “The Guardian” newspaper with the help of which some political euphemisms in today's English newspaper were showed and analyzed.

The results of the research have shown that the usage of euphemisms was characteristic of political texts which imply that politicians cover up the true nature of political events, deceiving the public with nice-sounding words. However, the number of euphemisms was relatively limited.

In this research, English euphemisms were classified into nine groups from different spheres of life. Four fields of political articles in which euphemisms are found were distinguished:

1) articles on election issues;

2) articles on defence policy;

3) articles of terrorism policy;

4) articles on political parties issues.

The analysis showed that the articles on political party issues and politicians contain the vast majority of political euphemisms which may imply that politicians are strongly inclined to use euphemistic language when discussing various issues within the political parties or giving speeches.

Furthermore, the analysis revealed that political euphemisms perform five pragmatic functions which perform the goals for their usage: politeness, taboo, covering up, inducing, and tactical. The most frequent pragmatic function performed by political euphemisms was a covering up function which proves that the main aim of euphemisms is to hide the unpleasant reality by using more positive and acceptable words. The least frequent pragmatic function performed by political euphemisms was an inducingfunction which is probably more typical to advertisement and sales promotion activities not to political ones.

Regarding structural features, the most frequent structural feature of political euphemisms in terms of formation was compounding which means it is the most frequent way of building political euphemisms in terms of their structure. The second most frequent structural feature was derivation and the most frequent type of derivation of political euphemisms was prefixal derivation. It turned out that no political euphemism fit under the category of phonemic modification and sub-category of onomatopoeia which signals that these are not typical means of forming political euphemisms. Thus, the rejection of onomatopoeia and different types of phonemic modification as a means of building political euphemisms may mean that contemporary political texts tend to be serious, i.e. without any signs of playfulness. In addition, the category of loan words was also poorly represented and politics only such French borrowings as detainee, gaffe, demonstration, and restraint may be observed. In terms of semantic innovation most euphemisms were based on metaphorical transfer which means it is the most frequent semantic feature of political euphemisms.

So, we have analyzed the main features of euphemisms used in English political discourse and defined the goals its usage which appeared to be the ones to make offensive words to sound more agreeable, to “make up” the truth or to stretch it at all.

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