Euphemisms Promote Social Harmony and Strengthens the Social Fabric of Our Society. Discuss.

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Euphemisms both help and hinder social harmony in society. On the one hand, euphemisms help navigate around social taboos, minimising offence and promoting social harmony. On the other, euphemistic doublespeak is employed by large public entities, such as the government and multinational corporations, to disguise truths and minimise responsibility as well as to manipulate the masses, impeding on social harmony. Hence, euphemisms are truly a context dependent linguistic tool. Euphemisms help promote social accord by navigating around social taboos. Taboo topics are generally embarrassing and offensive, and are considered inappropriate and awkward to discuss in general conversation. These social taboos include topics such as old age, body image and sexual intercourse. Euphemisms avoid explicitly stating these ideas allowing these topics to be discussed without embarrassment. For instance, the euphemism “hooking up” is used to describe the various activities involved with sexual foreplay, while “banging” is used in preference of the profane and dysphemistic lexeme “f***ing” when referring to coitus. To avoid offending someone who is old aged, positively connoted lexemes such as “experienced” and phrases “wise with age” are often used to euphemise the person’s frailty and age. Similarly, euphemisms such as “big-boned”, “curvaceous” and “well-endowed” are often used to describe someone who is larger than average, the latter two lexemes also add positive connotations of sexual attractiveness to these individuals. Hence, euphemisms promote social harmony by avoiding offensive and awkward taboo topics. Euphemisms are also employed deceptively to cover the truths. As said by Quentin Crisp “Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.” The type of euphemism Crisp was referring to is doublespeak. Doublespeak is often used by governments and corporations to

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