poyani
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2014–2025
9:01 · 6.3M views · Dec 29, 2012
A George Carlin stand-up bit on euphemisms, tracing how language gets softened, such as shell shock becoming PTSD, until it loses its emotional force.
HN commenters reach for it whenever a thread involves corporate or political euphemism, using it mostly as a reference.
20 comments from Hacker News
Did anyone else notice this euphemism treadmill update? "for people experiencing homelessness" "the number of people experiencing homelessness" "of those experiencing homelessness" This softer language with more syllables is not for the benefit of the homeless, it's for everyone else so they don't feel as bad about it. Which makes it less likely anything will be done. George Carlin made this point brilliantly: this video
"You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse." - George Carlin Here's an amusing and insightful video of Carlin dissecting the language behind Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder this video The U.S. military seems particularly prone to this habit of using euphemisms to mask reality.
George Carlin had a great bit[1] about our continuous need to soften our language with euphemisms. That, combined with a kind of forced optimism: needing to hide all negativity inside robotic passive aggression, is what communication has become in a lot of corporations. I don't imagine anyone actually likes having to do it, but we all seem to adopt these speech patterns eventually. Every time your boss tells you, "Hey, can you tone it down next time? Fred told me he was very offended by your asking him to do his job!"-- you're being asked to participate in the game. 1: this video
George Carlin has a great bit on euphemism where he makes the case that euphemisms are used to soften the meaning of things that are painful to the point of being meaningless, e.g. shellshock -> ptsd this video The author of this article pointed our some similar examples: welfare -> cash assistance -> TANF.
He made fun of euphemism and the way people mourn over or feel hurt because of choice of words. this video This article asks us to avoid the d word (death, dead). This is bit too extreme for me. English is my third language and I have hurt people at multiple occasions because of poor choice of words. I wish it goes away, so that my life can be easier. It is not easy to live in society as an autistic person and I have no interest in learning manners of society when I believe I have more meaningful interests to pursue. If you are a social person, you will not like my opinion and it's fine. I am used to that. Check what Linus has to say about it in his TEDx talk. [LINK]