Doublespeak
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Such language is often associated with governmental, military, religious, and corporate institutions and its deliberate use by these is what distinguishes it from other euphemisms. Doublespeak may be in the form of bald euphemisms ("downsizing" for "firing of many employees", "enhanced interrogation techniques" for torture) or deliberately ambiguous phrases ("wet work" for "assassination", "take out" for "destroy", "red tape" for "bureaucracy").
The decision to label something as "doublespeak" or "euphemism" depends on whether the speaker approves of the change or suspects an illicit motive behind it. Doublespeak, in its actual use, has become a disparaging label for any euphemistic term perceived to be borne of some corrupt desire to deceive.[1] Thus, one might accuse another of using doublespeak, while the latter justifies the new phrase as a totally honest effort to be more considerate and inoffensive.
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[edit] History
The word doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is often incorrectly attributed to George Orwell and his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The word actually never appears in that novel; Orwell did, however, coin newspeak, oldspeak, and doublethink, and his novel made fashionable composite nouns with speak as the second element, which were previously unknown in English. Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's lexicography, as the vocabulary of Newspeak, words "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them." (See Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.)
Doublespeak is most reminiscent of Orwell's "newspeak" when it is used by a government agency to cover up something unpleasant. The government, finding the need to talk to large portions of the public about something that has negative connotations, avoids backlash by replacing the term with a new one that most people will not recognize as the same thing.
[edit] Examples of doublespeak in current usage
For example, "area denial munitions" may mean "landmines", "physical persuasion", "rough interrogation" and "tough questioning" means "torture", and "detainment of enemy combatants" may mean "prisoners of war".
Doublespeak was famously common in the Third Reich. Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Ministry of the Reich for Public Education and Propaganda) coined thousands of new German words. Other examples include "concentration camp" (labor/death camp, or "joycamp" in Newspeak), "protective custody" (imprisonment without due process of law), "Heim ins Reich" (occupation of Austria), particular new meanings for "Volk" (people) and "Rasse" (race), and verschärfte Vernehmung which referred to torture.
A prominent example of doublespeak in the corporate world is the number of different phrases that describe massive employment termination, such as "right-sizing." Corporate doublespeak can also involve downplaying problems, such as calling a fix for a software bug a "reliability enhancement".
Police and court officers use jargon and terms of art that can be seen as doublespeak when they are used to cover up brutality or corruption. "Fines on the spot", for example, are bribes taken during traffic stops (though the Blair administration of the British government used the same term genuinely to describe fines for anti-social behaviour). What police call "aggressive enforcement" may be called "racial profiling" by others. To "pacify" someone, euphemistically, is to subdue him by force.
When illegal activity is routine, it often acquires its own specific jargon. For example, the term "black-bag operations" was used by the FBI to describe illegal break-ins in the 1970s. Mostly, such terms are an informal code, similar to thieves' cant, intended to be used and understood only by fellow-conspirators.
Recently Rutgers University English professor William Lutz has written extensively on the subject.
The National Council of Teachers of English bestows an annual "award" for outstanding instances of doublespeak. According to the organization's website, the "NCTE Doublespeak Award, established in 1974 and given by the NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak, is an ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centred."
Elements of doublespeak are also used and expounded upon by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In which the main character lives in a society where the government uses doublespeak as an element in their language, Newspeak, an attempt to eradicate all feelings and individual thinking from the society.
[edit] See also
- Code word
- Euphemism
- Euphemism treadmill
- Forked tongue
- Janus head
- Neologism
- Newspeak
- Obfuscation
- Political correctness
- Propaganda
- Straight and Crooked Thinking
[edit] References
- Lutz, William. (1987). Doublespeak: From "Revenue Enhancement" to "Terminal Living": How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You. New York: Harper & Row.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Webster's New World College Dictionary 3rd ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1997) 409.
[edit] External links
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
- Doublespeak from SourceWatch
- Doublespeak on Latte Examples of Doublespeak from the current administration
- Business Doublespeak A short essay by William Lutz
- National Council of Teachers of English Doublespeak Award
Propaganda techniques |
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| Bandwagon effect · Buzzword · Card stacking · Code word · Dog-whistle politics · Doublespeak · Framing · Glittering generality · Power word · Lesser of two evils principle · Loaded language · Newspeak · Public relations · Plain folks · Testimonial · Weasel word |
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