Doublespeak

Doublespeak (sometimes called doubletalk) is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity.

History

The term doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is often incorrectly attributed to George Orwell and his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term does not appear in that novel, although Orwell did 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." The term double talk (with a similar meaning) dates back to at least 1936. ^[1]

See also

• Double entendre
• Polite fiction

Notes

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.

External links

Look up doublespeak in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Business Doublespeak A short essay by William Lutz
• DoubleSpeak Homepage by Michele Damron (1998)
• National Council of Teachers of English Doublespeak Award established in 1974