Cliches, euphemisms, stereotypes and conscious and unconscious bias

Cliches, euphemisms and stereotypes don't  just contribute to shoddy, non-value-added writing, they can obscure and distort meaning.

For instance, what would be wrong with referring in a story to the MX Missile by the Pentagon's euphemistic name for it, the LGM-118 Peacekeeper?

Writing about euphemisms in "Politics and the English Language" in 1948, George Orwell said that

 "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. 

"Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. 

"Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Here's a good parody of cliched, empty and abstract language and images intended to distort meaning and manipulate:

Another video parody: https://www.facebook.com/TheOnion/videos/10153509197974497/?pnref=story
                                       
This unsparing, even mean-spirited satire targets unconscious bias/ stereotyping:

http://mic.com/articles/103788/one-hilarious-video-perfectly-sums-up-a-big-problem-with-western-humanitarianism
Quote from accompanying blog post:

"Typically other people's problems seem simpler, uncomplicated and easier to solve than those of one's own society. In this context, the decontextualized hunger and homelessness in Haiti, Cambodia or Vietnam is an easy moral choice," (columnist Faria  Zakaria explains. "Unlike the problems of other societies, the failing inner-city schools in Chicago or the haplessness of those living on the fringes in Detroit is connected to larger political narratives. In simple terms, the lack of knowledge of other cultures makes them easier to help."

The reporter doesn't "reduce" issues but attempts to describe them in their complexity through close reporting, research and seeking to understand the "larger political narratives" that inform them.

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More from George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" on cliche's, tired language and other enemies of direct communication:

On tired, stale, cliched writing:
 "...modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. "

On pretentious, inflated, abstract language:
 "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."

Orwell's tips for writing meaningful sentences:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

This video is just for comic relief because this is such a serious topic: