Euphemisms – do they really help?

As we all know, over the last year or so New Zealand has been hit by big earthquakes and their concomitant aftershocks. Curious to find out what the situation is like at the moment, I read the NZ Herald this morning. In a news story about Kaiapoi, a suburb of Christchurch, I read the following:

The Press this morning reported “up to one third of quake-hit Kaiapoi could be abandoned”, with a final decision to be made next week.

The paper quoted “sources familiar with the plans”, who said a recommendation will go to Cabinet that between 700 and 1000 of the town’s orange zone homes will be reclassified as red zone.

Red zone homes are on land that is not considered stable enough to build on and these properties would be abandoned.

Parts of Christchurch have already been declared as red zone and thus cannot be built on any more. The story is discussing whether or not the red zoning of parts of Kaiapoi were leaked, and home owners in Kaiapoi are understandably quite anxious to know what is going to happen to their homes.

from www.beforeafter.co.nz

There is a real strange euphemism at work in the passage above. Have a look at how it talks about homes having to be demolished: they will have to be ‘abandoned’. What a curious choice of words! Does it not suggest a picture of the house standing there all by its lonely self whilst the family drives away in their family car waving good-bye? Tears are rolling and 50s music is playing in the background. I may be left field here with my interpretation but I feel that this unlikely scenario is suggested when you’re talking of ‘abandoning homes’. Stupid political language! It is much more likely that red-zoned homes will de pulled down as according to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, ‘full land repair in these areas may mean that every house would need to be removed, regardless of its degree of present building damage’.

I wonder if the euphemism ‘abandoning a home’ that is used in the newspapers is helpful at all. Sure, taking out the hard-hitting emotional impact of having to imagine the house being destroyed as it is pulled down, it conceals the sad reality of what may (or may not) have to happen. But speaking of ‘abandoning’ a home does not make this any less sad, right? It romanticises that which is distateful, and it romanticises it probably for the wrong reasons by using an inappropriate euphemism.

There never are that many reasons why euphemisms are used in the first place. As James Valentine explains, ‘euphemisms are necessary where politeness demands that the distasteful is given only indirect reference’. This means that ‘euphemisms are encouraged in a society where politeness is highly valued, where indirect reference is considered a sign of good taste, and where direct reference can be embarrassing’.

Now I am thinking: In times of distress, would it not be more helpful to avoid ambivalent language such as when speaking of ‘abandoning homes’ and to be sensitive, clear and honest at the same time? In other words, I sympathise with the notion of using soft language so as to avoid unnecessary pain but I am also for calling a spade a spade – sensitively and with feeling, of course. This means one would have to be rather direct about the unpleasant facts of life which, in polite society, is not considered appropriate, however. Thus, in polite society things always take longer to be discussed as people are tiptoeing around each other avoiding to come out with clear statements.

I have my personal axe to grind with so-called polite society – which can often be not polite at all but rather backstabbing and treacherous, if you ask me. The imminent (or not) red-zoning of parts of communities in the earthquake hit areas around Christchurch begs the question, however, and this goes way beyond my own petty concerns: Shouldn’t rules of polite conversation be abandoned (pun intended) in times of distress so as to help people more effectively? And does this not mean that one should attempt to communicate rather more instead of less clearly? In other words, is this really the time for euphemisms and obfuscatory language?

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James Valentine (1998) Naming the Other. Power, politeness, and the inflation of euphemisms. Sociological Research Online 3(4), <a href="” target=”_blank”><http://www.socresonline.org.uk/3/4/7.html>.

Bring on the weekend!

This wasn’t such a bad week actually. Ok, Germany isn’t in the World Cup any more but I cannot pretend that I am cut up about it. Because I am not. I’m not even going to watch the World Cup final (shock!horror!!!), not because I don’t want to but because I won’t be able to. I have better plans: I am planning to cross the Cairngorms on Sunday, yay! Out in the mountains all day long!

That’s what I am looking forward to and I am sure on Sunday evening I will be able to say (with feeble voice because I’ll be absolutely knackered) ‘This was a good week.’ I can already say that right now too, of course, because:

• The week started with my sister’s birthday which was nice. I had sent her a birthday parcel and therefore, for a change, didn’t have to feel bad about not being in touch as often as I should be.
• On Tuesday night, and for the first time ever, someone recognised my Speights t-shirt as what it was straight away. Speights is a New Zealand beer and only very few people outside New Zealand know it which is why my t-shirt normally doesn’t get recognised as the cool piece of clothing that it is. On Tuesday it did. BTW, Speights commercials are absolutely awesome; take 2 minutes and check out these two samples of New Zealand stockmen masculinity and humour.
• Wednesday was carbohydrate day. I hadn’t planned on it but it happened. Finished it off with a handmade burger in the evening. What can I say. It was good.
• Thursday was the acceptance of my first article in a proper academic journal.
• Today is Friday.

Blue skies, take me away…

Happy weekend y’all.

On a brilliant spring day

I remember going for a walk with my friend Severine a few years back; it was a lovely spring day and we admired the cherry blossoms in the cherry trees and enjoyed the first really warm weather. It was a marvellous day.

Then we passed this field. We were very intrigued. It took us a while to figure out (talking about city girls in the countryside) that we were looking at a dead cow.

About Conservatism

I remember the first time I realised that Conservatism is something that must be taken serious. I was doing my Masters and trying to find out why people in the Fifties were so conformist and materialistic, why they voted in right-wing and not left-wing parties, and why they were so suspicious of intellectuals. Reading speeches, campaign material and lots and lots of books it dawned on me that the Conservatives (or I should say ‘the National Party’ because my research was set in New Zealand) address people’s primary needs and Labour often doesn’t. National was all about ‘own your own home, be happy’ whereas Labour was cerebral and talked about the international workers’ community (I am exaggerating). National had all the emotion, Labour had all the intellect.

On the whole, this hasn’t changed much. Right-wing parties will target people’s primary needs and emotions much more than left-wing parties who will focus on equality in the work-place and everywhere else in life. In a cerebral manner. And that’s just not right! True, the left will always win the battle of ideas – the right only has (economic, social, whatever) libertarianism going for it and that’s one heartless ideology if you ask me – but the right will always win the battle of the hearts. Yes, I used that clichéd phrase, the battle of the hearts.

The home, the family, the individual’s rights and freedoms, these things really matter to people, and the Left used to be aware of that, too, as Clancy Sigal pointed out a few days ago in the Guardian. The American Left has abandoned emotion to the Right, Sigal argues:

There is an astonishing lack of anger among liberals, progressives and radicals who have abandoned emotion to the right. Our role model continues to be not FDR, still less Malcolm X, but our “bipartisan” and apparently tone-deaf President Obama. In this second or third year of a devastating depression, not just recession, that has inflicted an epidemic of suffering on the lower half of the American nation, Obama is very busy being fluent and civil while being essentially untouched by the rage felt by so many of us. Our world, as we have known it, is being annihilated, and nobody in power shows signs of giving a damn.

Sigal says toward the end of his article that “somewhere along the line, maybe when I shifted from working class to middle class, I lost my rough, grating, empowered, assertive voice – and maybe the anger that had fuelled it. If so, that’s a pity.” The working class is not what it once was; instead of factories, the new ‘natural constituency’ of the left-wing parties works in part-time jobs with fixed-term contracts. In offices. Where everyone is well-mannered and professional. No righteous anger there but maybe a tiny bit of a cough of disapproval.

The Left really needs to get their act together if they want to win any battles in the future at all. Disregarding people’s primary concerns such as the home and the family is sheer folly – though it does come across very sophisticated, of course.

Not living in the Maniototo

Janet Frame’s Living in the Maniototo is one of the great modernist novels of the last century. I had started to read it about a year ago but got stuck early on. Then, when the Globe and Mail advertised a new paperback edition this January I thought, ‘why not give it a try again.’

Well, I tried, again, and again I failed. I don’t know why. (Well, I do. I don’t like the story to be interrupted by abstract poems every twenty pages or so.) I find Living in the Maniototo convoluted and difficult. I want to like it as a leisure time read but I can’t really. True, there are a few wonderful passages in it – Janet Frame isn’t New Zealand’s most distinguished writer for nothing. Owls Do Cry is simply amazing in its sketchy and blurry depth, with its beguiling mixture of clear description, children’s voices and evasive adult meanings. An Angle at my Table (both in film and book) is also a great book and a truly wonderful depiction of New Zealand life in the Fifties, too.

Meaning: It’s not Frame that I find difficult, it’s just this particular book, Living in the Maniototo. Why did I want to like it anyway? It wasn’t so flash the first time around. I guess I got swayed by the fact that it’s a book by Janet Frame.

It is strange though: Last night I decided to give up on this book for good and to move on to another. I opted for Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. The contrast couldn’t have been starker: rejected lay a Frame’s book that seemed so difficult and disjointed to me, and glued I sat ten minutes later to this early book by Pollan.

The Virgin Prime Minister

I am preparing a course syllabus on women in politics at the moment and am therefore scanning through lots of

material on the topic. Names such as Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel came to mind, and so I began looking into the topic of strong female leaders.

Now, New Zealand is quite interesting in that it has had two female Prime Minsters in a row, Jenny Shipley from 1997

to 1999 and then Helen Clark (Labour) who was voted out in 2008. I remember Helen well; she was given a lot of stick in the media for not having children and not being very feminine. (At the same time that’s probably exactly how she made it to the top.) Just towards the end of her time in office there was talk of her as the ‘Virgin Queen’ of New Zealand. Likening her to Elizabeth I., essayist Richard Meros even wrote a play entitled On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking me as her Young Lover (great idea to write a play like this!). This is what a commentator in the New Zealand Listener said on the play:

In it, Meek [a co-author] plays Meros, presenting his essay as a PowerPoint-aided lecture and trying to convince us: a) that Clark must take a young lover to ensure her political survival; b) that Clark’s acquisition of a young lover will benefit the country; and c) that he, Richard Meros, between whose brown wool vest and brown tweed trousers exists a certain chemistry, should be that young lover.

This was in May 2008 (yes, quite a while ago but no less funny for it); looking at subsequent articles, also in the NZ Listener, it seems that connecting Helen Clark with Elizabeth I. had taken off really well. There’s talk of her chopping her opponents’ heads off! In June, closer to the impending elections later that year, another commentator wrote this:

But being a Virgin Queen in this sense is not all that flash. Clark’s legacy is now at risk for lack of a worthy heir. Because as the polls are monotonously telling us, she is not -electorally immortal. Should Labour lose, she could stay on, gamely leading the party through the coming ignominy. But this would lack dignity. You have only to look back on the last defeated PM who clung on.

It’s a bit strange to see the metaphorical mix with the real like this. It’s an interesting (to say the least) way to deal with a woman leader. I wonder if female politicians are always in for treatment like this in some way (because they didn’t stay at home to have children and cook meals for the husband).

Robofarming, or how to milk a cow differently

Being such a small country, New Zealand can implement change much quicker than other much larger and therefore slower places. This is not always an advantage; neo-liberal politics became a reality in New Zealand almost before anyone realised it, simply because the government had agreed to try it out. But neither is it always bad (unless you’re a staunch cultural conservative who’s against change as such); Ashburton District, on the South Island, has recently seen a huge increase in dairy industry output, and one of the major changes involved in this is ‘robofarming’.

Robofarming does not require people except to work in the control room from where they steer operations. The use of surveillance in animal husbandry is widespread; robofarming adds to that a robotic milking apparatus. Little human input is required in the milking process at all. And this is how it goes, according to a friend’s report:

The entire cattle farm works on an ‘open door’ policy as far as cows are concerned, meaning they can come to eat or be milked whenever they feel like it. Gates will open for them automatically. The milking robot recognises individual udders and will only milk those teats that do actually give milk. Some cows come to get milked twice a day, others come three times and others again might only need to come once; each cow to her own milking rhythm.

Cows on robofarms don’t have to deal with humans at all which I imagine is quite pleasant for them. Dairy farmers, on the other hand, don’t have to deal with the cows either so they are out of harm’s way too (cows can be amazingly vicious). This is clearly a win-win situation, and not only for New Zealanders: Mackies, in Scotland, also uses a robotic milking system, and as we all know Mackies makes the best ice-cream ever!

Robofarming certainly is the way into the future. It might seem a bit of an odd notion at first – for how can a robot replace soft human hands?, one might think. There isn’t that much softness involved in milking though. It’s a tough job so I don’t think it’s surprising at all that we should be making use of technology in it if we can.

But what is truly surprising in the case of New Zealand actually is the fact that although robofarming contributes to a flourishing industry, the majority of New Zealand dairy farmers are actually young, enthusiastic individuals. True, they might be in it for the money which clearly makes sense; but I’d rather have me a kiwi dairy farmer friend any day than another British accountant who is also only in it for the money, and they can’t even get kicked by cows even though they could do with that about a trizillion times a day.

Lucy Mhoma, sculptor and painter

The Flying Dream (oil & mixed media on canvas)

I could dream about far-away places…

…that in hindsight seem so wondrously fair and beautiful…

…that have none of the gravity of real life attached to them…

Lucy Mhoma’s paintings and sculptures are singularly inspiring. More pictures here.