Please excuse me while I use the Bathroom Formula.....

Everyday language is usually the most interesting to study.  A perfect example of this is how we excuse ourselves when we need to use the bathroom/go to the toilet/powder our nose/visit the little boys’ room etc….As you can see the possibilities are endless!  In a fascinating study Magnus Levin investigated how and why speakers use this ‘Bathroom Formula’.

The ‘Bathroom Formula’ refers to the phrases speakers use to express their need to leave an ongoing activity in order to go to the bathroom.  It is a highly complex formula as in most situations it would be inappropriate to just disappear without giving an explanation and yet the explanation itself in this instance could cause embarrassment or be deemed impolite.  Therefore the speaker needs to be resourceful and draw on predictable expressions to negotiate this potential difficulty.

In his data, taken from British (BE) and American (AE) English, Levin identified six different ways of using the Bathroom Formula:

1)     Going to a place: ‘I’ll have to go to the loo.’ (BE)

2)     Specifying the activity: ‘I’m gonna go pee.’ (AE)

3)     Asking for directions: ‘Where’s the little boys’ room at?’ (AE)

4)     Asking permission: ‘Please may I go to the toilet?’ (BE)

5)     Promising to be back: ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ (AE)

6)     Using a metaphor: ‘I’ve got to wash my face.’ (AE)

In both British and American English (1) was the preferred way of using the Bathroom Formula, regardless of gender or age of the speaker.  We would expect children to use (2) the most; however, interestingly, Levin found that adults also quite often specify the activity they intend to perform with words like pee and tinkle.  Also surprising is that 86% of these speakers are women, who describe what they are going to do just as often in conversations with men as with other women.  It seems that verbs like tinkle are seen as polite and inoffensive enough to use in any company. 

Many other uses of the Bathroom Formula were found to be intermixed; for example, (5) was used with at least one of the other categories and served to make the interruption in the conversation seem less impolite.  The metaphors used in (6) were nearly always quite conventional (wash my hands/face, powder my nose or spend a penny, for example) and the following, rather bizarre, conversation between two American men helps to illustrate why this may be:

A:              Thanks for getting bags and stuff

B:              Oh, no problem.  They were two for one so

A:              Alright.  I’ll be right back….I’ve got to go deliver something
       around the corner OK. I just smelled gun powder

B:              Really

A:              It’s somebody…still lighting off fireworks

B:              (laughs) I wouldn’t doubt that

The only way that the speaker manages to convey his real need to go to the bathroom through his peculiar metaphor is by using the highly conventionalised phrase I’ll be right back to introduce it, which gives his friend a clue about what’s really going on.  So, using a tried and tested formula that everyone recognises, like wash my hands, is more accessible for the listener.  This is why new metaphors for going to the bathroom tend to fall out of use so quickly – they’re just too much work to use! In fact, Levin found that people rarely use metaphors at all when excusing themselves; it’s just that, when they do, they ‘stick out’ in the conversation and so are more memorable.

The same happens with potentially more offensive expressions like take a piss and have a dump.  Levin found that they are very rarely used and because of this are more noticeable when they occur, hence their force.  Generally people choose a ‘safe’ and inoffensive conversational path, sticking to tried and tested formulas that everyone knows.  As Levin writes, ‘things which are heard often tend to be noticed less.’

Levin found that, overall, women used the bathroom formula more than men but he is unsure as to why – It may because in general women use the toilet more often than men?  Or maybe because women are generally more polite than men?  More studies are needed to investigate this.  However, more interesting than the differences between speakers is the lack of variation when it comes to using the Bathroom Formula – we all generally stick to the same phrases.  Levin puts this down to our desire to be as unobtrusive and discreet as possible.

Now, if you’ll excuse me …

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Levin, Magnus (2013) The Bathroom Formula: A corpus-based study of a speech act in American and British English. Journal of Pragmatics 64: 1-16.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.01.001

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle 

Do euphemisms soften the impact of war or mask the truth?

 

Casualty                                                                                                                        

‘He had been trained to take out other men.

We had made sure his weaponry was smart,

And softened up the enemy with carpet

Bombing. Sadly, he was taken out

By some friendly fire.’

Instead he could have taken out some girls,

The mirror having proved him smart enough;

And one, perhaps, happy to take him home,

Might have softened up on some dark carpet

By some friendly fire.

In his short poem ‘Casualty’, Gerry Abbott responds to the use of euphemisms for killing often seen and heard in the media. Terms such as ‘taken out’ and ‘friendly fire’ have become commonplace in British newspapers and news broadcasts but he questions the role that these euphemisms play in the reporting of war stories.

He looks first at the use of euphemisms in daily life as a way of avoiding delicate or taboo subject matter and refers to these as ‘respectful’ euphemisms. Included here are terms such as ‘passed away’ or ‘gone to meet their Maker’ to refer to dying, the dead become ‘deceased’ and often the dead are not ‘buried’ but ‘laid to rest’, with the grave becoming their ‘last home’. These, he says, are used as acts of social kindness and show concern for the feelings of our fellow human beings.

He then turns his attention to the increased use in recent years of military euphemisms used in war reporting.  He points to subtle differences in terms such as ‘friendly fire’ and ‘collateral damage’. Both terms are used to refer to the accidental (or ‘careless’ as Abbott puts it) act of killing people but the former refers to combatants killed by their own side while the latter refers to civilians caught up in the crossfire. He is especially scathing of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ which has pleasant connotations of healing and hygiene when, in fact, it is used to refer to the deliberate mass slaughter of civilians. These, he argues, are not respectful in purpose but are ‘deliberate attempts to obfuscate military actions, to hide their mistakes and to excuse the perpetrators’.

Of course, as Abbott acknowledges, euphemisms thrive in spheres other than military contexts. He points to terms such as ‘creative accounting’ and ‘massaging’ to mean the falsifying of financial records and the use of ‘climate change’ when meteorologists mean climate damage. In Parliament, where members are not permitted to accuse each other of lying, phrases such as ‘economical with the truth’ and ‘created a false impression’ have sprung up.

The main thrust of this paper, then, is that the use of euphemisms in these contexts points to a lack of truthfulness. Abbott proposes that acronyms such as WMD (‘weapons of mass destruction’) to refer to powerful missiles and bombs should be uttered/written in full and replaced with ‘weapons of mass death’.

_________________________________________________

 Abbott, G. (2010). Dying and killing: euphemisms in current English. 

 English Today 104 Vol. 26 (4): 51-52. doi:10.1017//S0266078410000349

 

This summary was written by Sue Fox