Doublespeak | EPFL Graph Search

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Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs and "servicing the target" for bombing), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language. The term "doublespeak" derives from two concepts in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, "doublethink" and "Newspeak", despite the term itself not being used in the novel. Another version of the term, "doubletalk," also referring to intentionally ambiguous speech, did exist at the time Orwell wrote his book, but the usage of "doublespeak", as well as of "doubletalk", in the sense of emphasizing ambiguity, clearly predates the publication of the novel. Parallels have also been drawn between doublespeak and Orwell's classic essay, Politics and the English Language, which discusses linguistic distortion for purposes related to politics. In the essay, he observes that political language often serves to distort and obscure reality. Orwell's description of political speech is extremely similar to the popular definition of the term, doublespeak: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness... the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where 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... The writer Edward S. Herman cited what he saw as examples of doublespeak and doublethink in modern society. Herman describes in his book, Beyond Hypocrisy, the principal characteristics of doublespeak: What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.

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Related concepts (3)

Politics and the English Language

"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examined the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. The essay focused on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement, or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved, according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The prefix ambi- reflects the idea of "two," as in "two meanings.") The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness.

Doublespeak