Column: Jeremy Corey-Gruenes, Paths to Peace

For six months in my early 20s, I worked at a residential treatment facility for adolescent boys. The residents were there as an alternative to juvenile prison. The particular unit where I worked as a day counselor housed juvenile sex offenders.

The crimes many of these kids had committed were disturbing, and occasionally their daily behavior was too. Unprovoked violent outbursts and assaults occurred at the unit. It was the strangest environment I’ve ever worked in, and the whole place had an air of tragedy about it. Many of these young offenders had been abused themselves when they were young, learning at an early age how to gain power and control through violence and victimization.

Some of my co-workers and I privately used humor as a coping mechanism to process the things we encountered on the unit. (If you didn’t find a way to laugh, you just might cry.)

For example, we’d use formal “therapy speak” among ourselves to equally assess both major and minor incidents. A resident destroying property in a fit of rage might inspire the exact same assessment as one sneaking a cookie from the kitchen after it was closed. He did it because “he has unresolved issues from his past that he’s not dealing with in a healthy manner.” The line struck us as funny because it was true in a general sense but ridiculously vague and hyperbolic in another.

Having “unresolved issues” became a catch-all euphemism meaning “this kid’s behavior is often defiant and irrational, and we really aren’t sure what to do about it.”

Euphemisms — substitutions of milder, more vague expressions or phrases for ones thought to be too offensive, harsh or blunt — are interesting linguistic tools.

The first euphemism I remember hearing as a child came from the old game show “The Newlywed Game” where the host would say “making whoopee” when he really meant something else.

Euphemisms allow us to package ideas, policies and even titles in a more attractive manner. When I was a custodian for five summers in high school and college, I referred to myself as a “flat surface engineer” because I cleaned and waxed floors all day long. The title was definitely more glamorous than “summer janitor,” but it was somewhat misleading.

I guess that’s the danger of using euphemisms. Rather than simply aiming to protect certain audiences from inappropriate language (e.g. “making whoopee”), euphemisms are often employed to intentionally mislead and manipulate public discourse.

Military officials are keenly aware of this. When we unintentionally kill civilians in a war zone, they become “collateral damage” rather than “innocent victims.” When we accidentally fire on and kill our own soldiers, their deaths are caused by “friendly fire” not “bullets from our own guns.” And of course the Pentagon has been known to approve “enhanced interrogation techniques” rather than “torture.”

George Orwell once wrote that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible . . . thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Indeed.

Have you noticed that certain prominent Republicans no longer say “the wealthy” when discussing budgets and taxation? Instead, they use “job creators.” We all like jobs, and “job creators” does sound much nicer than “the rich” or “millionaires.” But how accurate is the “job creators” euphemism? Some high earners create jobs, but in reality many wealthy folks have nothing at all to do with job creation. Some simply inherited their wealth; some make their money from investment practices that actually create job losses.

We also have a euphemism for “tax increases.” We now say “revenue enhancements.” It’s as though the word “tax” is so evil we can’t even bring ourselves to utter it aloud. In fact, here in Minnesota we dislike taxes so much we’ve chosen to “defer payments to schools” instead of raising taxes, which really means, “making already cash-strapped school districts borrow money to pay their bills so that we don’t have to tax the wealthy a penny more.”

During our recent government shutdown, I heard more than one politician say he preferred the term “negotiate” over “compromise.” I surmised that these guys believe one who ”compromises” is weak but one who “negotiates” is strong.

Grrrrr.

Rather than getting upset and doing something I might regret due to “unresolved issues from my past,” I’m considering embracing these linguistic games and creating my own anti-euphemisms — substitutions of phrases that might be a little wordy and offensive to some but that actually add some truth and clarity to the phrases they replace. Here are two I’ve come up with:

“Constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage” will become “irrational fear-based discrimination legislation.” (I’ll pull this one out more frequently as November 2012 nears.)

“Members of the Tea Party caucus in Washington” will become “inflexible individuals willing to sabotage our economy because they hate our president and value low taxes above the welfare of their own country.” (This one I’m using more and more each day.)

It’s just a start, but I’m open to suggestions.

Jeremy Corey-Gruenes teaches at Albert Lea High School and lives in Albert Lea with his wife and two young daughters. He can be reached at jcorey2@gmail.com.