Doublespeak

Doublespeak (Rebel Reads) Lutz, William
  • Page 1 Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable. Doublespeak is language that avoids or shifts responsibility, language that is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language that conceals or prevents thought;
  • Page 1 rather than extending thought, doublespeak limits it. Doublespeak is not a matter of subjects and verbs agreeing; it is a matter of words and facts agreeing. Basic to doublespeak is incongruity, the incongruity between what is said or left unsaid, and what really is. It is the incongruity between the word and the referent, between seem and be, between the essential function of language--communication--and what doublespeak does--mislead, distort, deceive, inflate, circumvent, obfuscate.
  • Page 2 Who is saying what to whom, under what conditions and circumstances, with what intent, and with what results?
  • Page 2 The first is the euphemism, an inoffensive or positive word or phrase used to avoid a harsh, unpleasant, or distasteful reality.
  • Page 2 When you use the euphemism "passed away," no one is misled.
  • Page 2 the euphemism functions here not just to protect the feelings of another person, but to communicate also your concern
  • Page 3 when a euphemism is used to mislead or deceive, it becomes doublespeak.
  • Page 3 euphemism constitutes doublespeak, since it is designed to mislead,
  • Page 3 to cover up the unpleasant. Its real intent is at variance with its apparent intent. It is language designed to alter our perception of reality.
  • Page 3 A second kind of doublespeak is jargon, the specialized language of a trade, profession, or similar group, such as that used by doctors, lawyers, engineers, educators, or car mechanics. Jargon can serve an important and useful function. Within a group, jargon functions as a kind of verbal shorthand that allows members of the group to communicate with each other clearly, efficiently, and quickly. Indeed, it is a mark of membership in the group to be able to use and understand the group's jargon.
  • Page 4 Jargon as doublespeak often makes the simple appear complex, the ordinary profound, the obvious insightful. In this sense it is used not to express but impress.
  • Page 4 when a member of a specialized group uses its jargon to communicate with a person outside the group, and uses it knowing that the nonmember does not understand such language, then there is doublespeak.
  • Page 5 A third kind of doublespeak is gobbledygook or bureaucratese. Basically, such doublespeak is simply a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience with words, the bigger the words and the longer the sentences the better.
  • Page 5 Sometimes gobbledygook may sound impressive, but when the quote is later examined in print it doesn't even make sense.
  • Page 6 The fourth kind of doublespeak is inflated language that is designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary; to make everyday things seem impressive; to give an air of importance to people, situations, or things that would not normally be considered important; to make the simple seem complex.
  • Page 7 Thucydides wrote in The Peloponnesian War
  • Page 7 Words had to change their ordinary meanings and to take those which were now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent, a man to be suspected.
  • Page 8 A pencil sharpener was an "Appliance for milling wooden dowels up to 10 millimeters in diameter," and a typewriter was an "Instrument for recording test data with rotating roller."
  • Page 8 "Politics and the English Language,"
  • Page 8 "great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
  • Page 9 Newspeak, the official state language in the world of 1984, was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of human thought, to make only "correct" thought possible and all other modes of thought impossible. It was, in short, a language designed to create a reality that the state wanted.
  • Page 9 doublethink, the mental process that allows you to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and believe in both of them. The classic example in Orwell's novel is the slogan, "War Is Peace."
  • Page 9 At its worst, doublespeak, like newspeak, is language designed to limit, if not eliminate, thought.
  • Page 10 Military doublespeak seems to have always been around. In 1947 the name of the Department of War was changed to the more pleasing if misleading Department of Defense.
  • Page 13 Business magazines, corporate reports, executive speeches, and the business sections of newspapers are filled with words and phrases such as "marginal rates of substitution,""equilibrium price,""getting off margin,""distributional coalition,""non-performing assets," and "encompassing organizations." Much of this is jargon or inflated language designed to make the simple seem complex, but there are other examples of business doublespeak that misleads or is designed to avoid a harsh reality.
  • Page 14 make ordinary actions seem complex.
  • Page 14 Education has more than its share of doublespeak.
  • Page 15 There are instances, however, where doublespeak becomes more than amusing, more than a cause for a laugh.
  • Page 17 there is insincerity, and again there is a gap between the speaker's real and declared aims.
  • Page 19 By using such vague wording as "would lead one to believe" and "may accidentally have been perceived to have been doing so," he avoids any direct assertion.
  • Page 19 indeed language.in defense of the indefensible; language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable; language designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
  • Page 19 doublespeak should make it clear that doublespeak is not the product of carelessness or sloppy thinking.
  • Page 19 most doublespeak is the product of clear thinking and is carefully designed and constructed to appear to communicate when in fact it doesn't.
  • Page 19 language designed not to lead but mislead.
  • Page 20 Doublespeak has become so common in everyday living that many people fail to notice it.
  • Page 21 Doublespeak is insidious because it can infect and eventually destroy the function of language, which is communication between people and social groups.
  • Page 23 The airlines, I am sure, think that the word "equipment" sounds much more solid, reliable, and far less frightening than the simple, common, ordinary word "airplane."
  • Page 24 Airlines never speak of first-class passengers, but always of "passengers in the first-class section."
  • Page 33 Diet beer was around for years,
  • Page 33 Miller Brewing Company, who changed the word "diet" to "lite," hired a bunch of ex-jocks to extol the virtues of "less-filling" beer, and sales history was made.
  • Page 33 We may not know what light foods really are or what makes them light, but when it comes to buying light foods in the supermarket we know one thing: They cost more.
  • Page 33 The Cooperative Extension of New York State warned consumers in 1984 that, just because such words as "natural,""light,""life,""health,""nutrition,""country,""nature,""harvest,""fair," and "farm" appear on packages (along with pictures of sheaves of wheat, farms, green valleys, streams of clear running water, and farmers toiling in the field), it does not mean the contents are farm fresh, wholesome, organic, or healthy.
  • Page 35 According to the Code of Federal Regulations there are twenty- seven chemicals that can be added to bread, but the food manufacturer doesn't have to list any of them on the label.
  • Page 35 In 1985, the Center for Science in the Public Interest revealed that the source of "fiber" in a number of popular "high-fiber" breads was nonnutritional wood pulp.
  • Page 36 You can't even say you're getting a lemon when you buy foods like lemon pudding or lemon cake mix, because the lemons in these products are fake. In fact, you don't need any lemons to make lemonade.
  • Page 37 If you look at all those products that use the word "lemon" on their packages, you'll find few if any lemons were used to make any of them.
  • Page 37 Some "food technologists" (as fake-food inventors like to be called) don't even call their products food; they call them "food systems."
  • Page 38 The U.S. Department of Agriculture allows food processors to combine 135 parts of water with one part meat stock and still use the words "beef stock" instead of water on their ingredient labels.
  • Page 38 A number of Japanese companies ship large amounts of fake frozen crab meat (or, more precisely, a "surimi-based crab analog") to the United States. Surimi is a fish paste made by pressing and repeatedly washing deboned fish. The fake crab comes in the form of sticks or shredded meat and is made from cheap cod plus starch, salt, chemical seasoning, "essence of crab" (which is derived from boiling down crab shells), and polymerized phosphate. Sales of imitation crab meat exceeded $100 million a year in 1984 and were growing rapidly.
  • Page 43 I still use a toothbrush, and not an "oral hygiene appliance" or a "home plaque removal instrument."
  • Page 44 Statistical doublespeak is a particularly effective form of doublespeak, since statistics are not likely to be closely scrutinized. Moreover, we tend to think that numbers are more concrete, more "real" than mere words. Quantify something and you give it a precision, a reality it did not have before.
  • Page 45 the world of numbers is not as accurate as you think it is, especially the world of the public opinion poll.
  • Page 47 How do you read a poll? Actually, it's not all that hard, but the problem is that most poll results don't give you enough information to tell whether the poll is worth anything. In order to evaluate the results of a poll, you need to know the wording of the question or questions asked by the poll taker, when the poll was taken, how many people responded, how the poll was conducted, who was polled, how many people were polled, and how they were selected. That's a lot of information, and rarely does a poll ever give you more than just the results.
  • Page 48 You have to ask a lot of questions if you really want to understand a graph or chart.
  • Page 53 doublespeak flows pretty thick in the world of education, where it is used to make what is pretty ordinary--teaching children and running a school--sound very complex and difficult. Doublespeak in this realm can also be used to avoid some harsh realities and to soothe some hurt feelings.
  • Page 59 Although English teachers like to say they prefer the clear, simple style in writing, when given a choice they tend to choose the heavy, ponderous style.
  • Page 62 Remember the old days when there were physical education classes? Well, physical education is out of date; it's now called "human kinetics" or "applied life studies."
  • Page 65 education doublespeak is particularly depressing because, more than anyone, teachers should be aware of doublespeak. They should be leading the fight against doublespeak by teaching their students how to spot it, how to defend themselves against it, and how to eliminate it in their own writing and speaking. Unfortunately, too many in education have found that using doublespeak can advance their careers and their pay, so they have decided to give in to it.
  • Page 157 When Russian publishers produced a special Russian edition of the Oxford Student's Dictionary of Current English, they changed the definitions of several political words in the Russian edition. Among the words redefined were "communism,""imperialism,""Marxism,""fascism,""Bolshevism,""internationalism,""socialism," and "capitalism." For example, the Russian edition defines capitalism as "an economic and social system based on private ownership of the means of production operated for private profit, and on the exploitation of man by man, replacing feudalism and preceding communism." The Russian edition also defines socialism as "a social and economic system which is replacing capitalism." By comparison, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives the following definitions: "Capitalism: the condition of possessing capital or using it for production; a system of society based on this; dominance of private capital.""Socialism: a theory or policy of social organization which advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc. by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all." So much for looking up a word in the dictionary to find out what it really means.
  • Page 166 General Pinochet continues a long tradition of those who would overthrow democracy in order to protect it, those who would destroy democracy in order to save it.
  • Page 166 So many rulers seem to think that the people they rule are never quite ready for democracy and only a nondemocratic form of government can preserve democracy. Even those rulers who claim their goal is the establishment of democracy have a strange way of going about it.
  • Page 212 The discovery of the term "user fee" for "tax increase" really opened up all kinds of opportunities for raising taxes without raising them.
  • Page 213 The Tax Reform Act of 1986 calls chicken coops and pigpens "single-purpose agricultural structures," thereby giving farmers a special depreciation deduction denied other businesses. The act also declares that Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara Tyson run a "family farm." Their "farm" has twenty-five thousand employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year, but because the bill calls them a "family farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million.
  • Page 217 First the State Department had to legitimize the Nicaraguan guerrillas by giving them the right kind of name, and the right kind of definition to that name. So instead of calling them guerrillas, the State Department called them Contras, and then "Freedom Fighters," after President Reagan used that term.
  • Page 218 The State Department is required by Congress to prepare each year a full report on the status of human rights in 163 countries around the world. Now the State Department had a problem because some of the governments that the United States supports engage in the systematic abuse of the human rights of their citizens. It's hard to come up with a positive report on the status of human rights in countries like South Africa, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, and Chile, especially when some governments kill a lot of their citizens. To smooth over the problem a little, the State Department announced in its 1,485-page 1984 report that it would no longer use the word "killing" in its reports. Instead it will use the phrase "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life.""We found the term ‘killing' too broad and have substituted the more precise, if more verbose, ‘unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life,'"
  • Page 223 In 1987, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that pollution control efforts had been so effective that parts of the Delaware River in Philadelphia were suitable for "primary recreational contact," meaning you could go swimming in the river.
  • Page 226 Doublespeak can also mean redefining widely used words, giving them a new meaning that is the opposite of their generally accepted meaning.
  • Page 226 can do? The redefinition of words is a particularly powerful form of government doublespeak.
  • Page 229 Getting a job with the CIA is no easy task. In its help-wanted ads, the CIA never uses words like "spying,""wiretapping,""breaking and entering," or "killing," nor do its ads mention illegally over-throwing governments, recruiting mercenaries, bribing foreign officials, lying to Congress, or all those other exciting things the CIA does. What the ads do stress is "intercultural sophistication,""communication skills," and "solid ethical standards," plus "a gift for dealing with people" and "integrity of performance." Best of all is the doublespeak used to describe the major function of the CIA, which is spying. The ads say that "Prudent foreign policy decisions depend on solid knowledge. The most important decisions depend on information our adversaries seek to conceal. A truly extraordinary group of men and women serve abroad as the key players in our national effort to fill these critical information gaps." You won't be spying; you'll just be "filling critical information gaps."
  • Page 262 The function of nuclear doublespeak is to avoid reality, to control and direct any discussion of nuclear power and weapons, and ultimately to make any real public discussion of nuclear power, weapons, and war impossible.
  • Page 263 Nuclear doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but doesn't, that makes the negative aspects of nuclear power appear positive and the unpleasant side-effects and possible disasters appear tolerable. It is language designed to conceal the realities and dangers of nuclear power.
  • Page 263 the doublespeak of nuclear power, the official language designed to make "our friend the atom" seem like just another technological advance.
  • Page 263 level cities." By the 1970s, the word "atomic" had lost its magic glow, so it was replaced by the more acceptable and less frightening "nuclear." Nothing is atomic anymore, now everything is nuclear, from "nuclear devices" (instead of atomic bombs) to "nuclear" (not atomic) power plants. Sometimes the preferred doublespeak is "energy," as in the Energy Research and Development Administration.
  • Page 268 A reactor accident is an "event," an "unusual event," an "unscheduled event," an "incident," an "abnormal evolution," a "normal aberration," or a "plant transient." In one report on accidents at nuclear power plants, one "abnormal occurrence" occurred so frequently that it was called a "normally expected abnormal occurrence." Nuclear power plants need never be concerned about earthquakes, just "seismic events." Plutonium contamination at a nuclear power plant is referred to as "infiltration,""migration," a "breach of containment," or "plutonium has taken up residence." A meltdown at a nuclear power plant is a "core disruptive accident."
  • Page 277 Doublespeak is useful when the government wants to get around a treaty that it no longer wants to honor.