Euphemism re-clothes devalued work and layoffs as benign or promotive

Evidence

Dismissals are clothed in softened or even promotive terms. The hapless workers are recipients of a “career alternative enhancement” or are placed in “non-duty, non-pay status.” Jobs that are socially devalued and underpaid are given convoluted, fancy names. A garbage worker is a “collector of surplus commodities.” A janitor is a “particulate matter remover.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 378

Categorization

• CANDY: ‘Collector of surplus commodities’ for garbage worker is a tweetable, eyebrow-raising example of prestige-washing language.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 378
• XREF: connects to: Rhetorical unmasking of euphemism is central to exposing industrial harm — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 8; Euphemism numbs conscience like anesthetic does physical pain; Euphemistic labeling whitewashes the harm of secondhand smoke