ABSTRACT

Euphemisms enable to communicate about unpleasant or unflattering things without sounding too blunt or too scientific. The British comedy troupe Monty Python provides with an instructive example of the use of euphemisms. The “Chemist Sketch” on Monty Python’s Flying Circus involved a pharmacist using euphemisms while dispensing prescriptions: a number of men and women are sitting around in an area by the counter where there is a large sign saying “Dispensing Department.” The “Chemist Sketch” takes a jab at censorship—the Pythons demonstrate that if it is taken to extremes, government can go too far in regulating the words hear. Censorship is a practical and political means to satisfy the “ideological and practical needs of communities or, as some would say, of their rulers.” Though censorship typically identified with modern dictatorships such as Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, democracies are not immune to the temptation to suppress particular ideas by attacking “their originators or principal exponents.”