Doublespeak

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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, 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") or deliberately ambiguous phrases ("wet work" for "assassination", "take out" for "destroy").

1 History
2 Examples of doublespeak in current usage
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The word doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is often incorrectly attributed to George Orwell and his 1948 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. It was therefore just a matter of time before someone came up with doublespeak. Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's lexicography, as the B 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."

[edit] Examples of doublespeak in current usage

Doublespeak is most reminiscent of Orwell's "newspeak" when it is used by a government agency to cover up something unpleasant. The government may find the need to talk about something that has negative connotations to large portions of the public, and avoids backlash by replacing the term with a new one that most people will not recognize as the same thing. Thus "area denial munitions" means "landmines", "physical persuasion" and "tough questioning" mean "torture", and "operational exhaustion" means "shell shock". Others include the changing of the UK War Office and the United States Department of War to the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) and United States Department of Defense.

Doublespeak was very common in the Third Reich. Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Ministry of the Reich for Public Enlightenment 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), and particular new meanings for "Volk" (people) and "Rasse" (race).

In a similar fashion, politicians who want to radically change the legal or political system of their country speak of starting a "discussion" or "debate" about it, as well as couching their radical agenda in euphemistic terms generally. For example, on November 28th, 2006, the American politician Newt Gingrich spoke at the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, where he said "We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision (i.e, surveillance) that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of the threat." and further spoke of "a serious debate about the First Amendment", and of developing "the appropriate rules of engagement" (to deal with terrorists). Gingrich: Free Speech Should Be Curtailed To Fight Terrorism, New York Sun, November 29th, 2006

A prominent example of doublespeak in the corporate world is the number of different phrases that all describe the action of "firing lots of employees", usually obliquely. These phrases include "layoffs," "downsizing," "right-sizing," "headcount adjustment," "RIF" (reduction in force), and "realignment." The Dilbert comic strip satirizes this in one strip in which an employee understands none of these terms and is unable to figure out that he has been fired. 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 ironically 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. In some instances, such as in the "dirty 39th" Precinct in Philadelphia, this term has been used for excessive and unjustified 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. There is also a short (approx 26 min.) video from FFH (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, INC) which features professor Lutz and extensively details some examples of doublespeak.

The National Council of Teachers of English bestows an annual "award" for outstanding instances of doublespeak. According to their 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-centered."

[edit] See also

[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.