The essentiality of politics as a
means of gaining and holding power by the elite in the struggle against political rivals, is
displayed in the language explicitly or implicitly. There have been the cases
of deliberate formation of some certain properties of the language for its
further impact on the public and individual consciousness and behavior.
Language manipulation of political consciousness in a political discourse is
provided by creating meanings of the words at the expense of ideologizing,
evaluation, modalities, mobility of semantics and pragmatics of a word,
variability of denotative and connotative meanings of the same language signs
under the influence of some social, cultural and other factors.
In the
new century the widespread use of euphemisms has been continuing in the "political
language". Euphemisms, in their turn, are defined as substitutes of abusive,
obscene or harsh words for more lenient, less offensive language, which helps to
mitigate the effects of terrible names, obscene or shameful. However, the replaced
words are used not for the distortion of concepts but to camouflage other forms
of expression and thereby mitigate the effect of expressions.
It must
be said that a significant role among new euphemisms plays the names of
poverty, poverty, social inequality. But in the most cases these are euphemisms
imposed from “above” i.e. by the authority, they are mainly found in some official
papers and periodicals. Also, we have come across a new group of euphemisms -
the names of some non-prestigious occupations and activities that reflect
social inequalities.
Euphemisms
are closely related to the nomination that is one of the three fundamental
processes that shape the
linguistic human activities. The objects that are due to some ethical, cultural, psychological
and other reasons people try not to name aloud, require the euphemistic designation, the renovation of nomination is dictated by the need to update over
and over veil or mitigate the essence of the notion that is considered being something inappropriate,
indecent, etc due to the cultural society.
For the
time being the euphemisms are
closely related to the language of political correctness. They have been created witht the aim to elevate the language
and soften it.
Euphemisms
are considered as a complex multifaceted linguistic phenomenon, which has three
interrelated aspects: social, psychological and linguistic ones.
The social aspect deals
with
some moral
and religious motives underlying the fundamental idea of the euphemism. Under their influence,
the direct names of objects and phenomena that cause a negative
assessment, then they are banned and replaced by appropriate notions and words.
The psychological aspect deals with the effect of mitigation of pronunciation, which is
typical of a euphemistic
replacement. Old, negative name causes negative emotions and the new one neutralizes this negative emotion.
The linguistic aspect deals with understanding of mediocrity of nominations with a meliorative, improved
character. Taking everything into consideration, in order to become a euphemism,
a new name has to create the association in the mind of the speaker and the
listener with the object or phenomenon with more positive assessment than the denotation. That is why
euphemisms are defined as a replacement of abusive words to lenient, inoffensive words that means to disguise the truth by using soft words.
In the 80s of
the last century th americanism F-word, where the abbreviation F stands for the well-known vulgar word, has become a model for
new formations with a euphemistic nature. The abbreviation in such cases is the first letter of
words, words that are considered the taboo ones, although the given taboo has humorous and ironic nature. As the material of this work testifies the political vocabulary
and phraseology have been filling up with a large number of new formations associated with the coexistence
of different racial and ethnic groups, different cultures in English-speaking
countries, as a
result of a mass
influx of immigrants, especially from poor countries.
Apart from
euphemisms we have seen the PC-terminology. Political correctness is a phenomenon reflected, primarily, in the language behavior that is
characteristic of the modern ideology of the Western democracy. Political
correctnessis considered to
be by its
ideologues as a means to avoid conflicts in a multicultural society by
establishing special rules of the linguistic etiquette, primarily using a special language
that only contains expressions that will be emotionally and positively perceived by the addressees. Thus, the political correctness is associated with a desire
to avoid discrimination on all levels of communication. For example, it not correct to say
"businessmen" or "businesswomen", but "businesspeople"; it not correct to say "black
man", but it is acceptable to say "a man of color" or "Afro-American".
It is
significant that the category of valuation is reflected in the political discourse witht the help of ready-to-use shortcuts,
negative characteristics that sometimes go beyond the political correctness and violate the ethical standards. The
emergence of the units
with a pronounced negative connotation, dysphemism – is a permanent feature of the political speech. The
fact that in the modern
political language it is clearly traced the trend to stylistically reduced vocabulary and
phraseology, helps us to understand that in many ways this feature
characterizes the "the language taste of our epoch."
Summing up,
it should be emphasized that the semantics of a political term is poorly studied that’s why this issue is of
practical importance.