3. Social Functions of Political Euphemism
3.1 Speech Act Theory and Social Functions of Political Euphemism
It is shown in the above analysis that political euphemism is different from others expressing physical phenomena or
used in other fields such as in career because it is equipped with obvious political language characteristics. Actually,
political language is neither romantic as literature nor precise as that in foreign trade, but purpose-oriented (Tian, 2002.
p24). In the following part, let's look at how political euphemism performs illocutionary act and perlocutionary act with
Austin's Speech Act Theory. Austin claims that speech performs three speech acts simultaneously, including locutionary
act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act (He, 1997, pp85-86). This theory provides theoretical support for us to
reveal the social functions of political euphemism. However, with individual listeners as his subject, Austin mainly
focused his attention on the function of speech act verbs in the three levels of speech act. Here in this paper, we try to
analyze this linguistic phenomenon from a wider perspective with political leaders (including governmental officials serving them) and public people as the two sides of the communication. We find that implication is an important part of
euphemism in addition to its narrative and signified functions.
3.2 Illocutionary Act--- Political Euphemism's Disguising and Deceptive Function
Political euphemism is an effective tool for political leaders to control the quantity and quality of information
transmission, with which some disgraceful behaviors or motivations will be glorified or hidden, hence avoiding public
accusal. For example, US Ex-President Nixon and his partners called their overhearing spying in Watergate Scandal as
“intelligence gathering” and their lie telling as “less than truthful” and “prevaricate”. Obviously, such trivialized
expression is to smooth out the bad influences they have exerted. US Government once expressed their nuclear
experiment in South Pacific as “operation sunshine”. It is widely known that atomic bomb experiments are mainly
intended to test the extensiveness and effectiveness of its execution, but such a euphemistic name hides their nature. It is
impossible for people who are uninformed of it to associate such a beautiful name with terrible nuclear weapon. In the
reports about US military attacks to other nations in recent years, people hardly find expressions as “surprise attack”.
Instead, some other expressions such as “preemptive strikes” or “surgical strikes” are employed to add a color of justice.
Actually, all these are defensive expressions to hide their illegal attack to others.
It doesn't go far to compare politicians to euphemism masters because they skillfully deliver their lies with their own
language. 2500 years ago, Chinese militarist Sunzi summarized military behaviors as “nothing is too deceitful in war”,
which seems also adaptable to politicians. George Orwell (1946) pointed out straightforwardly that political language
was designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
3.3 Perlocutionary Act---Political Euphemism's Persuasive Function
Lakoff (1990) claims that politics is language and language is politics. Political euphemism is similar to political
propaganda in that both aim at persuading and influencing the public. It has been a long time since linguists realized
language is not only for ideogram or reflecting social culture but for participating social events and constructing social
relationship. Actually, it is a kind of social practice and an intervention. Based on the above facts, Berger and Luckmann
(1967) have long before pointed out the important role of language in the construction of social reality. Although it
doesn't change the signified things in existence, it really changes its conceptual connotation because sometimes
people's learning of a concept or a meaning is based on their knowledge about words (Hudson, 2000, pp92-93).
Political leaders try to shape people's recognition and knowledge of the world with the use of euphemism, hence
influencing their view of world and intervening their knowledge of the world and sense of right and wrong.
It is stated by critical linguists that language is not a true reflection of reality. While helping people to know about the
objective world, language also imposes on them a set of extremely subjective classification on behalf of their group
interests, which is often used to deceive people without detection (Dong, 2000, p25). The influences exerted by political
euphemism are not immediate but subtle and potential, hence planting illusive concepts into people's minds and
changing them into facts accepted by these people.