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GEORGE CARLIN YOUTUBE EUPHEMISMS FREE

Like something that might happen to your car.

It was absolutely sterile: operational exhaustion. "By the early 1950s, the Korean War had come along, and the very same condition was being called 'operational exhaustion.' The phrase was up to eight syllables now, and any last traces of humanity had been completely squeezed out of it. 'Fatigue' is a nicer word than 'shock.' Shell shock! Battle fatigue. "Then a generation passed, and in World War II the same combat condition was called 'battle fatigue.' Four syllables now takes a little longer to say. It almost sounds like the guns themselves. In World War I it was called 'shell shock.' Simple, honest, direct language. There’s a condition in combat that occurs when a soldier is completely stressed out and is on the verge of a nervous collapse. George Carlin on "Shell Shock" and "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" Giridharadas, "Language as a Blunt Tool of the Digital Age." The New York Times, Jan. But when they call you, even at dinnertime, then it’s a 'courtesy call.'" When you dial into 'customer care,' they care very little. When it 'manages stakeholders,' it could be lobbying or bribing. When it is 'right-sizing' or finding 'synergies,' it may well be firing people.

"When a company is 'levering up,' it often means, in regular language, that it is spending money it doesn’t have.

(George Carlin, "Euphemisms." Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics, 1990) Constipation became occasional irregularity." The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore. Used cars became previously owned transportation.

"Sometime during my life toilet paper became bathroom tissue.

Yes it is emotive – but why shouldn’t it be? To borrow from George Carlin: I betchya if more people were called poor then they might get more of the attention they deserve. If we just used the word ‘poor’ – the crude and blunt power of that word would make it harder to skim read in reports and presentations. One of the most odious examples of euphemisms used by economists is referring to people as ‘ less-privileged’ or from ‘ lower socio-economic backgrounds’. What strikes me is not that these two commentators make the same point 50 years apart – more that they could equally make the same point today. It’s easier to spot euphemisms and jargon when talking about things slightly removed from most economists’ daily work. I use these as examples of euphemisms when trying to convince economists not to commit the same sins themselves. Now compare it to this from the colourful late comic George Carlin 50 years later – just the opening two minutes of the video below.

And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine.

GEORGE CARLIN YOUTUBE EUPHEMISMS FREE

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases - bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder - one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them.

Our civilization is decadent and our language - so the argument runs - must inevitably share in the general collapse… Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.

Let’s start with this passage from George Orwell’s famous essay ‘ On Politics and the English Language’, written in 1936…