Euphemistic Disability Nomination in German Newspaper Texts

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify and linguistically describe the means of euphemizing the concept of “disability” in the German article “Florian wäre in Werkstatt für Behinderte fast versauert – dann brach er aus” (Florian would have worked in a workshop for the disabled, but he chose a different path), dedicated to the social and labor adaptation of a young person with disabilities. The paper analyzes the means of euphemizing such a social topic as disability. The material of the study is an article on the topic taken from the German electronic informational and political weekly magazine “Focus”, which contains direct and indirect nominations of disability. In German studies, no attempts have been made so far to linguistically describe the means of euphemizing the disability topic in the German journalistic discourse on the material of one article. In the course of the study, euphemized and non-euphemized variants of disability nominations were identified in the following areas: “disabled people”, “social exclusion of people with disabilities”, “overcoming social exclusion”.

The study solves such research questions as: what nominations are relevant for journalistic discourse? What language units are preferable from the point of view of a person with a disability? The analysis has revealed that the author of the article actively uses euphemisms, since the direct nominations of this phenomenon can lead to communicative discomfort, and, therefore, need a politically correct euphemistic replacement. The material has also showed that the person with disabilities discussed in the article less often resorted to euphemisms when talking about their childhood, family, life difficulties, and profession. Euphemistically colored words and expressions identified in the work can complement the synonymous set of lexemes for disability: Behinderte, Behinderung, behindert sein, Nichtdazugehören.