The puritan and the euphemism

As the cries for linguistic bans louden, it is best not to budge.

A few millennia ago, in the late Bronze Age of Scandinavia, the inhabitants of the northern wilderness would likely not have spouted out the proper word for the beast when they saw a bear. They would have spoken carefully, alluding to “the brown one”. Over time this way of speaking endowed their language with a new word, the traces of which are found in its daughter languages of today: “bear” in English, “beer” in Dutch, “Bär” in German, “björn” in Swedish, and so on for all Germanic languages, go back to a circumlocution alluding to the colour of the bear. The presumed reason for this linguistic behaviour is well-known in anthropology. The Germanic tribes dared not pronounce the proper word for fear that the being so named would appear and bring destruction. Too ominous to be spoken, the proper word (probably based on Proto-Indo-European “hrktos”, with the original meaning “destroyer”) fell out of use and was forgotten.

The Germanic tribes were of course right to be cautious of the bear. It was the most fearsome predator roaming their woods. Their linguistic technique, on the other hand, could not have been effective for any other purpose than to assuage their anxiety. “Speak of the devil and he doth appear” — a proverbial sentiment that appears in various forms in many languages — obviously does not describe a real causal mechanism. The proposition amounts to nothing but magical thinking.

To the modern mind the euphemism may simply be a soothing word without magical power — a way to keep at bay the crudeness of the crude, the gravity of the grave and the vileness of the vile. It may simply be an emotional safety barrier against the full impact of reality. The etymology of the word paints a different picture of the role of the euphemism in ancient times. Liddell & Scott’s Greek dictionary ascribes “eúphēmos”, from which we have “euphemism”, the acceptations “uttering sounds of good omen” and “abstaining from inauspicious words”. Superstition, it appears, was an integral part of the linguistic practice.

The ongoing outbreak of extreme linguistic puritanism suggests a resurgence of similar beliefs in the magical power of words. One instance that hit me as especially aggravating took place in the Swedish city of Uppsala in 2019. A panel of university teachers at the master programme for archive, library and museum studies were answering questions from students. A group of students had read that it could be difficult to find information about race in old archives and catalogues and asked for advice. A senior lecturer, Inga-Lill Aronsson, began her answer: “Let’s look at the controversial word neger”, thus providing an example of a word the students might have to use when searching catalogues. Depending on the context, the word translates to “negro” or “nigger”. When it occurs in a few, mostly obsolete compounds denoting dark things, the translation could possibly be simply “black”. A search for it in the national library system yields, among other things, a collection of prints from 1840 by The Society for the Emancipation of Negro Slaves (Sällskapet för neger-slavars emancipation).

Four students lodged a complaint, arguing with reference to the fair complexion of Aronsson’s skin that she had no right to utter the word. After an official investigation, Aronsson was summoned to the head of department, was told that her use of the word had been unnecessary and inappropriate, and that she must never pronounce the full word again — always must she say “n-ordet” (“the N-word”). A public debate ensued, circling around the expected topics of censorship, academic freedom and the culture of offence. In this debate, the vice-chancellor of the university questioned the decision, arguing that the word had been relevant in the context.

One component made this instance of linguistic prohibition different from similar events on the other side of the pond. A Swedish university mandated the adoption of an American custom, a peculiar habit of linguistic censorship, namely the use of crypto-euphemisms such as “the N-word”, in which the perceived danger is hidden from perception by means of the initial letter. The imposition of the calque “n-ordet” speaks to the power of the movement. Never before had I seen a public Swedish institution so blatantly requiring its employees to submit to a foreign custom. It disregarded the integrity of Swedish culture and imposed the American way. Some Swedes are reluctant to use crypto-euphemisms for this very reason: it is alien, it has not been properly negotiated, and it feels like having an American puppet master in command of your tongue.

Let’s be clear what this was about. The mandate was not about the sensible use of language such as avoidance of slurs and other degrading expressions in the formal setting of teaching. Obviously, teachers should not spout slurs in class. The mandate tapped into a political regime of linguistic prohibition reminiscent of the magical thinking of the olden days: the absolute, unrelenting ban on the pronunciation of certain words. The mere sounds are perceived as almost criminal.

Despite its preoccupation with language, this current of thought pays little heed to the results of the language sciences. No respectable scholar of language fails to make the elementary distinction between use and mention, that is, between the actual employment of words and the citation of words in speech about them. The former is what language is used for most of the time. The latter is a string such as “bear”, which refers to the word and not to the animal. Absurd consequences follow from the conflation of use and mention.

The stir around Joe Rogan in February 2022, in which he was accused of racist language, once again brought this issue to the fore. If we are to believe Rogan’s explanation — and there has been nothing to contradict it so far — his mistake was that he didn’t use the euphemism “the N-word” when speaking about the word. He simply spoke the word. In the attacks against him, no one bothered about the distinction between use and mention, almost as if there is no relevant difference between citing what someone has said and saying it yourself. Unlike Aronsson, who never expressed allegiance to the doctrine to which she was submitted, Rogan apologised, saying that he had already changed his language since several years back.

I find this concession of a sort more troubling than the outrage that preceded it. The concession is troubling, because the fanaticism about the prohibition does not bode well for the future. The reign of one ideology and of one set of sensibilities to the exclusion of all others is the mark of an authoritarian society. Social and political freedom brings diversity to the use of language and, unless society is fraught with conflict, a spirit of negotiation and tolerance. This is why an increased acceptance of vulgar language can be a sign of increased social equality. “Vulgar”, one should remember, originally referred to the populace, and “vulgar language” to demotic language. The expurgation of everyday language is mainly a concern of the privileged classes, in part as a way to distinguish themselves from the riffraff. There is nothing like the shibboleth of morally correct language to keep the unworthy barred from the highly sought-after positions of the well-behaved, decent people in the middle class.

How should the emergence of this regime of linguistic prohibition be understood? As a Swede far from the epicentre of the movement, it is difficult not to draw a connection to the culture of censorship in American television: the prudish fear of sex and nudity and the bleeping out of words, as if the viewers’ ears would come falling off if they were to hear a foul word. The latter custom generates an institutional need for crypto-euphemisms like “the N-word”, “the F-word” and “the C-word”. Has this culture created a general acceptance for linguistic prohibitions? Did it pave the way for its propagation into the surrounding society? At the very least, it must have put the idea in the heads of the politically pious that it is a sensible policy to ban the utterance of certain words. There is no recognition among the adherents that the action is fundamentally authoritarian. “Speak as we command or face the wrath of the righteous” is sold as the advancement of social justice.

A more popular way of explaining the regime points the finger at the spectre of postmodern thought: the disregard for truth, the lack of intellectual rigour and an overemphasis on power struggles as opposed to reason have made unreasonable positions tenable and ad hominem arguments into an acceptable form of discourse. Although without direct reference to postmodernism, Sam Harris touched on this line of thought in a reflection on the storm around Joe Rogan. “American hysteria around the use of the N-word”, he said, is “an offence to basic sanity”. The idea that a white person cannot say the word for any reason whatsoever, he continued, is “to attribute magical properties to words”.

Another common explanation seeks the cause in the heightened sensibilities of the younger generation, who with a newly developed strain of fragile ears cannot stand to hear that which goes against its convictions. For some people in this generation certain words are simply unbearable. This kind of explanation was elaborated at length in Lukianoff & Haidt’s 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.

These explanations are part of the story but place undue stress on the source of the regime, failing to address its goals. The cry for linguistic prohibitions is not mainly an expression of the emotions of the speaker; it is directed towards other speakers and seeks to impose its will on them. It is a political action. Ostensibly, the goal of the action is to keep people from uttering certain expressions, and if that was all there was to it, then perhaps, in the interest of peace and unity, the best response would be to budge.

But that is hardly all there is to it. The movement for censorship, for cancelling and for the public shaming of perceived offenders does not only have a future social order in sight. More importantly, it continuously produces a psychosocial dynamic in the present that exhibits a self-reinforcing pattern that should be very familiar by now. It goes like this: the initial shock at an alleged fault, the rush of anger amplified by the furore of the mob, the alleviation of those emotions through the exertion of social power in the attempted shaming, expelling and crushing of the offender, the brief excitement after a victory well won, the validation of this behaviour through the assumption of victimhood and moral superiority, and the forming of a community around the movement that provides its members with comfort, favours and support. This is powerful stuff. It would be naive to think that the particular dynamic of the movement lacks intrinsic value for the participants. I even suspect it is the main driving force. The movement is the goal.

This is why one should not give in to unreasonable demands. In the moment, it may seem like a cheap compromise and a show of good faith. But compromise will not bring the movement to an end. The movement will not stop, because its purpose is to go on, and in order to go on it requires a constant supply of offenders to drag through the mud. In its wake it leaves a climate of silence and fear, of despair and disbelief, unfortunately driving some people straight into the arms of the reactionary right, where it actually is acceptable to be all those things of which the perceived offenders are accused. And for all its turmoil it does not even do much for the economic advancement of the people: the income inequality in the US has deepened over the last few decades and the black–white income gap has remained the same. Either the movement is a leftist failure or its true creed is of a different sort.

The call for linguistic bans is grounded in beliefs that sometimes bear a resemblance to the magical thinking of the past. That gives cause for concern, but it isn’t the most urgent danger. Because of their fear of the bear, the Germanic tribes came to expel the word for the beast from their vocabulary. That was a small loss. Our loss will be much greater. Because of our fear of causing undue offence, we are at risk of expelling from our societies the modern ethos that favours freedom over prohibition, tolerance over bigotry, justice over vengeance, and reason over emotion. Many battles in defence of this ethos have already been lost. Unless a much stronger, more unapologetic resistance makes the tide turn, I fear that the entire war will soon be lost.

(Written in February 2022)