A new Anglicism, or “word in x, y, z”, is now spreading in media and academic discourse. In its original language, its purpose is to designate words which, pronounced at length in certain contexts, could shock. In French, we never had this twist. There are, of course, the euphemisms, the distorted words, the circumlocutions; but, for example, we never had “four-letter words”, as in English. Admittedly, we were using the “U-turn” layer (for U-turn), but, fortunately, we finally rediscovered the U-turn.
I think we should make a collective effort to get out of this linguistic trap and deal with potentially explosive words differently.
First, in doubt, abstention, excluding the fields of education and artistic creation. Why, unless knowingly seeking to provoke, repeat words that are very emotionally charged for many people when it is possible to refrain from doing so? We all have pools of holy water into which we could hurl our ideological adversaries, who would thrash about furiously. Let’s save them for the inevitable clashes.
Then, on the simple level of clarity, we cannot allow ourselves to accumulate rebuses without risking losing all readability. When common words become offensive to some people who are members of very minority groups, such as “father”, “mother”, “man”, “woman”, the majority (necessarily tyrannical?) should continue to use them throughout, unless malicious intent ; if not, should we speak of “words in p, m, h and f”? This would be the start of another form of Newspeak.
Finally, to put things in context, remember that in territories where pure and unblemished multiculturalism reigns supreme, we do not hesitate to pronounce in full the nickname of the damned frogs who refuse to keep pace.