Doublespeak by William Lutz

• 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; rather than extending though, 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• At its worst, doublespeak, like newspeak, is language designed to limit, if not eliminate, thought. Like doublethink, doublespeak enables speaker and listener, writer and reader, to hold two opposing ideas in their minds at the same time and believe in both of them.
• At its least offensive, doublespeak is inflated language that tries to give importance to the insignificant.
• Business doublespeak often attempts to give substance to pure wind, to make ordinary actions seem complex.
• Indeed, most doublespeak is the product of clear thinking and is carefully designed and constructed to appear to communicate when in fact it doesn't. It is language designed not to lead but mislead. It is language designed to distort reality and corrupt thought.
• Doublespeak is insidious because it can infect and eventually destroy the function of language, which is communication between people and social groups.
• This corruption of the function of language can have serious and far-reaching consequences.
• Remember, doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't; it is language designed to mislead.
• 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.
• Simple, clear language just isn't impressive enough for many people in education. It seems they want to impress others with how hard their jobs are and how smart they have to be in order to do their jobs. After all, if anyone can understand it, then it can't be very special.
• Doublespeak can and is used to avoid those harsh realities the medical profession prefers not to acknowledge.
• It may come as a surprise to you, but advertisements do not have to be literally true. "Puffing" the product is perfectly legal.
• "Puffing" is an exaggeration about the product that is so obvious just about anyone is capable of recognizing the claim as an exaggeration.
• The most common examples of "puffing" involve the use of such words as "exciting", "glamorous", "lavish", and "perfect".
• However, when an advertising claim can be scientifically tested or analyzed, it is no longer "puffing".
• Parity products are simply products in which most if not all the brands in a class or category are pretty much the same.
• Advertisers use weasel words to appear to be making a claim for a product when in fact they are making no claim at all.
• Weasel words appear to say one thing when in fact they say the opposite, or nothing at all.
• The biggest weasel word used in advertising doublespeak is "help". Now "help" only means to aid or assist, nothing more.
• The trick is that the claim that comes after the weasel word is usually so strong and so dramatic that you forget the word "help" and concentrate only on the dramatic claim.
• One of the most powerful weasel words is "virtually", a word so innocent that most people don't pay any attention to it when it is used in an advertising claim.
• "Virtually" means not in fact.
• When used in advertisements, "improved" does not mean "made better". It only means "changed" or "different from before".
• "New" is just too useful and powerful a word in advertising fo advertisers to pass it up easily. So they use weasel words that say "new" without really saying it. One of their favorites is "introducing".
• "Acts" and "works" are two popular weasel words in advertising because they bring action to the product and to the advertising claim.
• Ads that use such phrases as "acts fast", and "acts against", "acts to prevent", and the like are saying essentially nothing, because "act" is a word empty of any specific meaning. The ads are always careful not to specify exactly what "act" the product performs.
• Watch out for ads that say a product "works against", "works like", "works for", or "works longer". As with "acts", "works" is the same meaningless verb used to make you think that this product really does something, and maybe even something special or unique. But "works", like "acts", is basically a word empty of any specific meaning.
• Every word in an ad is there for a reason; no word is wasted. Your job is to figure out exactly what each word is doing in an ad--what each word really means, not what the advertiser wants you to think it means. Remember, the ad is trying to get you to buy a product, so it will put the product in the best possible light, using any device, trick, or means legally allowed.
• Your only defense against advertising is to develop and use a strong critical reading, listening, and looking ability.
• Always ask yourself what the ad is really saying.
• When corporations have a bad year or something goes wrong, the corporate report is filled with doublespeak.
• Often annual reports are simply filled with a lot of seemingly impressive language that says nothing. This is the doublespeak or gobbledygook or bureaucratese.
• See what the doublespeak of accounting can do? It turns profits into losses and losses into profits. The doublespeak of accounting is some of the most powerful and influential (not to mention profitable) doublespeak there is.
• Layoffs are always good for the company and never a sign that the company may be in trouble.
• Using doublespeak, bad news can be magically transformed into good news.
• Dictators are particularly good when using doublespeak to cover up their use of secret police to enforce their rule.
• With doublespeak, a government can kill its citizens while still respecting their rights.
• Often, political leaders are reduced to a kind of doublespeak absurdity when defending their position, or as Orwell put it, "the defense of the indefensible".
• Somehow, dictators never see the killing of thousands of their citizens as anything but necessary for the good of those killed and those still alive. Such instances give rise to doublespeak that is used to make murder respectable.
• With doublespeak, enemies can kill each other while stoutly maintaining their only interest is peace.
• There are three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the military way, to paraphrase an old G.I. saying. So when it comes to doublespeak, the military has a way with words that is unmatched by other users of doublespeak.
• Military doublespeak starts at the top with the name of the Department of Defense. From the founding of our Republic, there has been a Department of War. Until 1947, that is, when the military pulled off the doublespeak coup of the century.
• One important function of doublespeak is to hide reality, to cover up what's really going on. With doublespeak, weapons never fail, and expensive items are always very complicated and worth their high price.
• Sometime military doublespeak doesn't even give you the faintest idea of what it is the Pentagon is paying all that money for.
• Doublespeak is particularly effective in explaining or at least glossing over accidents.
• The military is acutely aware that the reason for its existence is to wage war, and war means killing people and the deaths of American soldiers as well. Because the reality of war and its consequences are so harsh, the military almost instinctively turns to doublespeak when discussing war.
• Using the language of the business world--jobs, pay, training, benefits, advancement, experience, and career development--the military portrays the unpleasant aspects of military life as not just palatable but desirable. In the world of the military corporation, combat is just one of the functions of the corporation, almost like marketing or sales.
• In the modern military corporation combat does not involve killing and death, but is a "challenge" that will "test your strength, stamina, and spirit" and slake "your thirst for adventure", as the army's "Combat Arms" pamphlet presents it.
• As Orwell pointed out, history can be and often is rewritten to suit the needs of the present.
• Political doublespeak is often language that sounds impressive but really says nothing.
• Gobbledygook, or bureaucratese, is such a common form of political and government doublespeak because it allows the speaker to appear intelligent and able to handle a difficult, complicated subject while suggesting that the audience is too stupid to understand what the speaker is saying.
• In addition to saying nothing, political doublespeak also allows the speaker to sound sincere, concerned, and thoughtful.
• For quite awhile, when politicians had nothing to say because they had no ideas or simply didn't know what was going on, they would fall back on that handy little piece of doublespeak, "process" [...]. But "process" lost its luster, so another meaningless yet impressive word has to be found. Some geniuous at doublespeak came up with "initiative".
• For politicians, "initiative" has become THE word to use when discussing any program that is more gaol than fact, more hope than reality, more hype than substance.
• When politicians run out of ideas or solutions, or when they want to sound like they're doing something when they haven't the faintest idea what to do, they come up with initiatives.
• Initiatives only start, they don't finish, which explains why there have been so many Middle East peace initiatives, but no real peace in the Middle East.
• Initiatives, initiatives everywhere, but not a success in sight.
• While politicians often use doublespeak to avoid taking a position or accepting responsibility, or to lie and mislead, government works often use doublespeak simply because it's the only language they know. They really think they are communicating a message with their doublespeak. There audience, however, is just as bewildered and baffled as any politician's.
• Doublespeak can also mean redefining widely used words, giving them a new meaning that is the opposite of their generally accepted meaning.
• The redefinition of words is a particularly powerful form of government doublespeak.
• Congress is one of the greatest sources of doublespeak, if for no other reason than the tax laws that it produces.