Euphemisms can hide facts that need to be confronted. How do they work from a linguist’s point of view? Demonstrators march near the White House in protest following a Kentucky grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case on September 23, 2020 In March of this year, just as the pandemic was upending the way we live, a crime was committed. A young woman, whose name was Breonna Taylor, was killed, as an early local news report described, “inside a home […] in the middle of an officer-involved shooting. […] Police discovered Taylor inside the secured home, who was found dead from the gunfire.” Through the linguistic fog, we can just about make out what happened, and who might have been the perpetrators of this crime. The public has grown increasingly aware of the power of language to uphold the powers that be, from politicians to police. Many have pointed out how unbalanced and troubling this kind of manipulative indirect language can be. Even when the facts are as clear as day, media r...