William Lutz, The World of Doublespeak
Doublespeak is language which pretends to communicate but really does not. It is language which makes the bad seem good, something negative appear positive, something unpleasant appear attractive, or at least tolerable. It is language which avoids or shifts responsibility; language which is at variance with its real and its purported meaning; language which conceals or prevents thought. Doublespeak is language which does not extend thought but limits it.
Euphemisms are words or phrases designed to avoid harsh or distasteful reality. When a euphemism is used out of sensitivity for the feelings of someone or out of concern for a social or cultural taboo it is not doublespeak. For example, we express grief that someone has passed away because we do not want to say to a grieving person, "I'm sorry your father is dead." The euphemism "passed away" functions here not just to protect the feelings of another person but also to communicate our concern over that person's feelings during a period of mourning.
However, when a euphemism is used to mislead or deceive it becomes doublespeak. For example, the U.S. State Department decided in 1984 that in its annual reports on the status of human rights in countries around the world it would no longer use the word "killing." Instead, it will use the phrase unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life. Thus the State Department avoids discussing the embarrassing situation of government-sanctioned killings in countries that are supported by the United States. This use of language constitutes doublespeak because it is designed to mislead, 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.
Jargon is the specialized language of a trade, profession, or similar group. It is the specialized language of doctors, lawyers, engineers, educators, or car mechanics. Jargon can serve an important and useful function. Within a group, jargon allows members 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. For example, lawyers and tax accountants will speak of an involuntary conversion of property when discussing the loss or destruction of property through theft, accident, or condemnation. When used by lawyers in a legal situation such jargon is a legitimate use of language since all members of the group can be expected to understand the term.
However, when a member of the group uses jargon to communicate with a person outside the group, and uses it knowing that the non-member does not understand such language, then there is doublespeak. For example, in 1978 a commercial airliner crashed on takeoff, killing three passengers, injuring twenty-one others, and destroying the airplane, a Boeing 727. The insured value of the airplane was greater than its book value, so the airline made a profit of $1.7 million on the destroyed airplane. But the airline had two problems: it did not want to talk about one of its airplanes crashing, and it had to account for $1.7 million when it issued its annual report to its stockholders. The airline solved these problems by inserting a footnote in its annual report which explained that this $1.7 million was due to "the involuntary conversion of a 727." The term involuntary conversion is a technical term in law; it is legal jargon. Airline officials could claim to have explained the crash of the airplane and the subsequent profit. However, since most stockholders in the company, and indeed most of the general public, are not familiar with legal jargon, the use of such jargon constitutes doublespeak.
Gobbledygook or bureaucratese is simply a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience with words, the bigger the better. For example, according to an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, when Alan Greenspan was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors he made this statement when testifying before a Senate committee:
It is a tricky problem to find the particular calibration in timing that would be appropriate to stem the acceleration in risk premiums created by falling incomes without prematurely aborting the decline in the inflation-generated risk premiums.
Did Alan Greenspan's audience really understand what he was saying? Did he believe his statement really explained anything? Perhaps there is some meaning beneath all those words, but it would take some time to search it out. This seems to be language which pretends to communicate but does not.
Inflated language is language designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary, the common, uncommon, to make everyday things seem impressive, to give an air of importance to people, situations, or things which would not normally be considered important, to make the simple seem complex. With this kind of language car mechanics be-come automotive internists, elevator operators become members of the vertical transportation corps, used cars become not just pre-owned but experienced cars, grocery store checkout clerks become career associate scanning professionals, and smelling something becomes organoleptic analysis.
A World of Doublespeak
We live in a world filled with doublespeak. We are asked to check our packages at the desk for our convenience when it's not for our convenience at all but for someone else's convenience. We see advertisements for previously distinguished cars, not used cars, for genuine imitation leather, virgin vinyl, or real counterfeit diamonds. Television offers not reruns but encore telecasts. There are no slums or ghettos just the inner city or sub-standard housing where the disadvantaged or economically non-affluent live. Non-profit organizations don't make a profit, they have negative deficits or they experience revenue excesses. In the world of doublespeak it's not dying but terminal living.
In the world of business we find that executives operate in timeframes within the context of which a task force will serve as the proper conduit for all necessary input to program a scenario that, within acceptable parameters, will generate the maximum output for a printout of zero defect terminal objectives. And when things don't turn out right, it's not a mistake just a shortfall.
Political language is the language of public policy and power. Through language our direction as a nation is defined for us by our elected leaders. The corruption of the language of power and public policy, therefore, can lead to the corruption of our political system and our sense of national purpose. If our leaders do not speak clearly to us, then we, the people, from whom all power ultimately derives, cannot have the requisite knowledge and understanding upon which to make important decisions. It takes some effort to determine that advance downward adjustments in the appropriations request is really a budget cut.
Vietnam gave us protective reaction strikes (bombings), resources control programs (poisoning the vegetation and water supply), pre-emptive counterattack, (first strike), and termination with extreme prejudice (killing a suspected spy without trial). Watergate gave us misspeak and inoperative statement for lie, inappropriate actions for illegal acts, and miscertification for fraud and conspiracy. The Iran-Contra affair gave us cleaning up the historical record for falsifying official documents, carefully crafted, nuanced answers for lies, and testimony that is fixed by omission for false testimony. This is language which attacks the very purpose of language, communication between people. This is indeed language which, in Orwell's words, is "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Identifying Doublespeak
Identifying doublespeak can at times be difficult. For example, on July 27, 1981, President Ronald Reagan said in a speech televised to the American public that
I will not stand by and see those of you who are dependent on Social Security deprived of the benefits you've worked so hard to earn. You will continue to receive your checks in the full amount due you.
This speech had been billed as President Reagan's position on Social Security, a subject of much debate at the time. After the speech, public opinion polls revealed that the great majority of the public believed that President Reagan had affirmed his support for Social Security and that he would not support cuts in benefits. However, five days after the speech, on July 31, 1981, David Hess of the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted White House communications director David Gergen as saying that President Reagan's words had been "carefully chosen." What President Reagan did mean, according to Gergen, was that he was reserving the right to decide who was "dependent" on those benefits, who had "earned" them, and who, therefore, was "due" them.
The subsequent remarks of David Gergen reveal the real intent of President Reagan as opposed to his apparent intent. Thus, Hugh Rank's criteria for analyzing language to determine whether it is doublespeak, when applied in light of David Gergen's remarks, reveal the doublespeak of President Reagan. Here is the gap between the speaker's real and declared aim.
In 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig testified before congressional committees about the murder of three American nuns and a Catholic lay worker in El Salvador. Three of the women had been raped and all four were shot at close range, and there was clear evidence that the crime had been committed by soldiers of the Sal-vadoran government. As reported by Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, Secretary Haig said to the House Foreign Affairs Committee:
I'd like to suggest to you that some of the investigations would lead one to believe that perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock, or may accidentally have been perceived to have been doing so, and there'd been an exchange of fire and then perhaps those who inflicted the casualties sought to cover it up. And this could have been at a very low level of both competence and motivation in the context of the issue itself. But the facts on this are not clear enough for anyone to draw a definitive conclusion.
The next day, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Haig claimed that press reports on his previous testimony were inaccurate. When Senator Claiborne Pell asked whether Secretary Haig was suggesting the possibility that "the nuns may have run through a roadblock," Secretary Haig replied,
You mean that they tried to violate ... ? Not at all, no, not at all. My heavens! The dear nuns who raised me in my parochial schooling would forever isolate me from their affections and respect.
When Senator Pell asked Secretary Haig, "Did you mean that the nuns were firing at the people, or what did `an exchange of fire' mean?" Secretary Haig replied,
I haven't met any pistol-packing nuns in my day, Senator. What I meant was that if one fellow starts shooting, then the next thing you know they all panic.
Thus did the Secretary of State of the United States explain official government policy on the murder of four American citizens in a foreign land.
Secretary Haig's testimony implies that the women were in some way responsible for their own fate. By using such vague wording as "would lead one to believe" and "may accidentally have been perceived to have been" he avoids any direct assertion. The use of the phrase "inflicted the casualties" not only avoids using the word "kill" but also implies that at the worst the killings were accidental or justifiable. The result of this testimony is that the Secretary of State has become an apologist for murder. This is indeed the kind of language Orwell said is used 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.
Doublespeak and Clear Thinking
These last examples of doublespeak should make it clear that doublespeak is not the product of careless language or sloppy thinking. Indeed, most doublespeak is the product of clear thinking and is language 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 the mind.
It's not a tax increase but revenue enhancement or tax base broadening, so how can you complain about higher taxes? It's not acid rain; it's poorly buffered precipitation, so don't worry about all those dead trees. That isn't the Mafia in Atlantic City, New Jersey; those are just members of a career-offender cartel, so don't worry about the influence of organized crime in the city. The Supreme Court justice wasn't addicted to the pain killing drug he was taking, the drug had simply established an interrelationship with the body, such that if the drug is removed precipitously, there is a reaction, so don't worry that his decisions might have been influenced by his drug addiction.
It's not a Titan II nuclear-armed, intercontinental, ballistic missile with a warhead 630 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; it's just a very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system, so don't worry about the threat of nuclear destruction. It's not a neutron bomb but an enhanced radiation device, so don't worry about escalating the arms race. It's not an invasion but a rescue mission, or a predawn vertical insertion, so don't worry about any violations of United States or International Law.
Doublespeak which calls bus drivers urban transportation specialists, bill collectors portfolio administrators, and doorkeepers access controllers can be considered humorous and relatively harmless. But doublespeak which calls civilian casualties in a nuclear war collateral damage, lies inoperative statements or plausible deniability, and missiles designed to kill millions of people Peacekeepers is language which attempts to make the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, something unpleasant appear attractive; language which seems to communicate but does not. Such language breeds suspicion, cynicism, distrust, and, ultimately, hostility.
Works Cited
Corbett, Edward P. J. "Public Doublespeak: If I Speak with Forked Tongue." English Journal 65, no. 4 (1976): 16-17.
Editorial. Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 December 1974: 12-A.
Greenblatt, Stephen J. "Orwell as Satirist." In George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays, 106-18. Edited by Raymond Williams. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Hess, David. "Reagan's Language on Benefits Confused, Angered Many." Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 July 1981: 6-A.
Lewis, Anthony. "Showing His Colors." The New York Times, 29 March 1981: E-2 1.
Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." In In Front of Your Nose (1945-50), 127-40. Vol. 4 of The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. 4 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952. Reprint. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: New American Library, 1961.
Rank, Hugh. "The Teacher-Heal-Thyself Myth." Language and Public Policy. Edited by Hugh Rank. Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1974. 215-34.
Sapir, Edward. "The Status of Linguistics as a Science." Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality, 160-66. Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. "Science and Linguistics." In Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, 207-19. Edited by John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956.
Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine