If we don't want to offend a person by being too straightforward or blunt we use expressions that let us avoid that. These are called politically correct terms.
Political corectness in general relates to political injustice matters such as race, sex, religion, etc. Political correctness, however, has been recently applied to almost anything in search of more socially acceptable terms. Some of them are quite funny, others sound very pompous and pretentious...especially the ones used by the politicians.