Euphemisms

Jack Waterford, editor in chief of The Canberra Times, discusses the sensitivities of some readers to language and how newspapers need to deal with them.

Offence was taken by a number of people at a recent news report of the death of a small child while her father, deaf and unable to speak, struggled in vain to alert emergency services on the triple-0 telephone line. Our report described the father as 'deaf and dumb'.

This was in accordance with our style book, which says that deaf and dumb is the adjective; deaf-mute the noun. The style book says one should "be very sparing with either, particularly the noun. There are gentler ways of saying that a person cannot hear or cannot speak".

Although our style on the subject matches rulings in most of the other newspaper style books I have examined, including those of the ever politically correct New York Times and Washington Post, I am giving some thought to changing it, though I'm not sure how.

Reference to deafness is not, of course, the problem; it is the use of the word dumb and its suggestion, in another context, of stupidity. I very much doubt whether anyone would confuse the meanings in the proper context, but some fear that the use of this word for incapacity to speak carries a suggestion of stupidity.

The use of a difference word to avoid causing offence is not political correctness gone made, though some of the contortions that people go through to avoid offence can be.

Though this has been my first encounter with difficulties over the word "dumb", I have been reprimanded often about the use of other words said to cause offence or to be out of favour and, in respect of the currently acceptable word or phrase for some conditions, I am thoroughly confused: it would be a full-time job just to keep up.

"Negro", for example, has been regarded as offensive in the United States for a long time. First "black" was the favoured word. Later, the politically correct phrase became "Afro-American" (I heard an "IC3" described as Afro-Caribbean on The Bill the other day, showing that this one has crossed the Atlantic), and now we have "people of colour".

In much the same way, "indigenous" has become an Australian term for those who find that the burden of adding "and Torres Strait Islanders" to the word "Aborigines" every time one refers to this nation's original inhabitants is tiresome and breaks up the flow of a sentence. It cannot be resisted, I suppose, but I cannot see why "Aboriginal" is not an acceptable shorthand. In any case, the islanders are the Aborigines of Torres Strait.

One American newspaper, anxious to keep up with the trends, had its computers fixed to that when the word "black" appeared "Afro-American" was substituted, leading to the immortal news report of Pan-American Airline profits jumping $200 million into the Afro-American.

Similarly, I have lived long enough to have heard about 10 words or euphemisms to describe spastic conditions, and to have been told sharply on a number of occasions that the euphemism before last, to which I have only just become accustomed, could hardly be more calculatedly offensive.

We also get into trouble for using some words in their wider sense, even as we are also begged not to use them in their narrow one either.

In the mental-health field, for example, we have been reproved for allowing writers of letters to the editor to describe politicians as idiotic or moronic, on the basis that this adds to the stigma suffered by idiots and morons.

They will have to bear this with all of the fortitude they can muster.

Better points are made in relation to words such as "mad" - which, however, I will not abandon - or "paranoid" or "schizophrenic", the use of which, outside their clinical meaning, I discourage.

A reporter would not be encouraged to call a politician dumb, if she meant stupid, because it is, in that context, a mere word of abuse. But I would not ban the reporting of another's saying it, or strike it out of a letter to the editor on the grounds that it might cause offence to people unable to speak.

As Graham Downie commented last Sunday, there is a difference between offence given and offence taken, and the only working rule I can commend is that it is generally best not to define people by their conditions (a blind man, for example, as if this were the essence of his existence).

Where it is necessary to refer to a person's condition, it is usually best put in a phrase. But I do not see a great scope for euphemism in the description of the condition itself, particularly if the suggested euphemism does little more than hint at some quality, or where it seeks to overpower centuries of stigma from the conjunction of wide and narrow negative meanings by substituting an uplifting word.

The Australian Association of the Deaf has told the Australian Press Council, in its complaint about our use of the word "dumb", that "this kind of terminology went out of fashion decades ago, and for very good reasons. Quite apart from the fact that it is insulting, it is inaccurate. The use of such terminology is not in fact an isolated incident. It continues to crop up in newspaper reporting from time to time, and, quite frankly, we are tired of having to write letters to editors requesting them to educate their staff. Deaf people are human beings too, and have a right to the same courtesy and respect as any other person referred to in the press."

I have never had a letter from the association, nor had I, or any of the members of staff I consulted, ever seen any of the media guidelines that I later found on its Internet site. Though I have an open mind about changing our terminology, I am not convinced that I should simply adopt the association's.

They, and several other correspondents, told me, for example, that there is a convention that Deaf (with a capital D) is well known to imply deafness with an accompanying incapacity to speak. That is a convention with which most people, including myself, are unfamiliar, and I am afraid that it will not do. I have no intention of causing offence, or of unnecessarily drawing attention to a condition, but there are times when it is necessary and, when it is, readers should understand perfectly what is meant.

Another recommended set of words is "those who use Australian Sign Language (Auslan), and who identify as members of the signing deaf community". Even divided into two this is a mouthful, but it also suffers from the defect that it does not readily convey the concept of incapacity to speak. Each also seems to have the hallmarks of resolution by an irresolute committee, and likely to be amended next season.

I remain open to suggestions, if a little unwilling to bear on my own shoulders all of the responsibility for the ignorance some in the public may have. Newspapers, of course, are a necessary part of reducing such ignorance, but I cannot agree that we must lead the way by forswearing words that readers understand, or by adopting ones they do not.

Jack Waterford

(Reprinted from The Canberra Times with permission. The complaints noted in the column were withdrawn by the complainants during the correspondence, after the publication of this column.)

See also
Adjudication No 271
on the Council's view on language used by publications.

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