The answers seem to be: not much. A friend dies and we cannot utter those three words. Instead, that friend has "passed on", which makes death sound less awful. We may even believe "passed on" makes death itself more acceptable.
It's called euphemism, the refusal to call a spade a spade. And we excuse our euphemisms by saying they're used for the best of reasons, conveniently forgetting the surfacing of the road to Hell.
Governments and others use euphemism for quite bad reasons. "Quantitative easing" sounds like getting into a warm bath, not staving off financial ruin. Officialdom prefers this obscure phrase, believing it will stop people asking who's to blame.
Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army leader, has just been put away for life, found guilty of "ethnic cleansing". Something like sweeping the streets, perhaps. There's an irony here; that phrase is literal English for the Serbo-Croatian "etnicko ciscenje". Mladic comes from a country which invented a term that appears on his charge sheet.
Even a full definition (Systematic forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group... etc, etc) damps down the full horror. Words, said Tweedledum...
Luckily there are cameras. Dzezana Sokolovic with her son tries to cross Sniper Alley in Sarajevo in 1994. A bullet passes through her stomach and kills her son. He's lying there, the pool of blood still widening. No need for euphemisms, nor for words.
Other than an expression of gratitude for the force of law.
The content is moving and thought provoking. Technically the interweaving of several concepts is cleverly balanced arriving at a powerful conclusion.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note, I suppose we all have our "favourite" euphemisms - one of mine; "We had to let him go."
Sir Hugh: Many tyrants get off lightly. Idi Amin of Uganda may have killed a lot of people (80,000 - 100,000, possibly 500,000) but it's more middle-class - shorter anyway - to say he was guillty of "crimes against humanity". An abstraction or euphemism to replace the fact that he personally fed, let's say, just one person to the crocodiles. He eventually died in the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, in the democratic paradise of Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteI might also add Robert Mugabe. Presently aged 93 he may live to be 100, delusionally waiting for a telegram from HM the Queen while enjoying first-class medical attention in Singapore.
As to Mladic there are Serbs who still hero-worship him. He was on the run for years, clearly sustained by others, before the law caught up. And his trial took an exhausting four years. Yet a verdict was finally arrived at and I was pleased to see he disagreed with it, swore in court (a shocking crime in itself) and had to be ejected. If I had time I'd celebrate by re-reading The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham, one of the UK's most admirable judges whom VR and I saw - and worshipped - at the Hay Festival.
The one thing I regret in doing this post is that I wasn't able, easily, to discover the name of Dzezana Sokolovic's son, killed in Sniper Alley. One needs names to animate the abstractions. Luckily she appeared on the BBC News, much worn as you might expect, saying she'd felt it necessary to bear witness against Mladic. In my heart of hearts what I most wished for was that she might accept me as a guest to share tea with her. Even though I don't like tea.