Euphemisms in European political communication in the time of migration crisis

The article is devoted to the study of the politically correct vocabulary, namely euphemisms, which seems to be an acute issue due to a huge number of tabooed topics in the modern political discourse. In the present study, the European Union official texts on the migration crisis are investigated, revealing the features of contextual and language euphemisms and suggesting the classification of such by form and content. Also, the types of relationship between euphemisms and their antecedents are distinguished. Based on the results of the research conducted, the authors arrive at the conclusion that the European Union employs euphemisms in its political discourse to address refugees two times more often than direct denotations. Furthermore, in political texts, alongside constant euphemisms, which have become political terms, contextual ones are also in use. With regard to the means of euphemizing refugees’ / migrants’ names, it can be concluded, that descriptive periphrasis prevails, and concepts with negative connotation are replaced by more general ones, shifting the given negative component of meaning to the background. The results obtained also suggest that euphemisms in the EU political discourse are used to mitigate information on undesirable migration of refugees to Europe and unstable situation in the world. The aim of the EU political texts is not only to inform the audience on the actual situation with refugees, but also to meet their approval, representing the process of inflow of migrants as an expected and, even a desirable phenomenon.