SUPERTALKexample, labor has a historical overtone of manual toil. Most people
we think of as laborers have nothing to do with toil, however.
Hawkins suggested we call them the paycheck population.
He would have us make a few other changes as well. Cease to
purchase could substitute for boycott; motivation through fear for
coercion; difference for dispute; temporary work cessation for layoff.
For segregation, why not use distinction without evaluation? For
scab, how about noncertified worker?
Hawkins's recommendations clearly align with management's
thinking. The words scab, segregation, boycott, and the others
call up a very strong subtext. Labor, or the paycheck population,
has used them for years to make a point. They are welded to
uneasiness in our collective consciousness. They arouse a definite,
almost palpable, subtext and certainly changing them would destroy
that subtext. Do we, as a culture, want that?
Euphemisms, the use of one word for another to create a more
favorable subtext, is nothing new. People in the Victorian era
were adept at it. Even the word legs brought to mind too sexual
a subtext for them. Limbs were gentler, more delicate. We accept
more today, but we still don't like the subtext behind died. Friends
and relatives pass away or pass over. She left us, he's gone.
In business, euphemisms, along with jargon and slang, create
a subtext of inside knowledge. Tune in on Harper, the CEO of a
middle-sized company, talking to his new marketing people. "It
wouldn't hurt you to interact with some of the competition (find
out what the competition is up to). When that deal fell through
you just didn't see the right button pusher (decision maker). And,
Jim, you're the man for junk bonds. I don't want anyone else
treading on Jim's turf. (Here's slang for "field of exploitation"
borrowed directly from street gangs. It may, subtextually, give a
hint of the ruthlessness of wheeling and dealing in the marketplace.)