William Lutz is an American linguist who specializes in the use of plain language and the avoidance of doublespeak (deceptive language). He wrote a famous essay “The World of Doublespeak” on this subject as well as the book Doublespeak, which described the four different types of doublespeak (euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook, and inflated language) and the social dangers of doublespeak.
My understanding was it was a conceptually-poor language that artificially constrained one’s cognitive faculties through the nexus of a limited language/vocabulary emphasizing economy of expression. Sort of like a programming language with very few keywords and only ones that were absolutely necessary to receive and nominally participate in a minimal discourse.
Edit: I think this is actually Newspeak I’m contemplating as opposed to doublespeak. Doublespeak seems to refer to intentionally ambiguous language that obfuscates meaning and emotional content and usually for a political purpose. Like calling unintentional war victims “collateral damage” to reduce the bad publicity from one’s war efforts. The wrongfully-dead victims are hidden behind what sounds like oblique accounting or financial jargon.
If you haven’t, take some time to read 1984. It’s a fairly easy read and this thread will make a lot more sense. Also, there’s a reason it’s a timeless classic and referred to so often - Orwell hit on a lot of prevalent themes authoritarians like to use. Once you know how to identify them, it’s easy to see when someone is using something like double speak (consciously or subconsciously)
well the two aren’t necessarily exclusive. A speech pattern that obfuscates has many uses. But I think you’re conflating doublespeech and doublethink a bit.
(Fun fact: the term Doublespeak / speech is never actually used in 1984. Like, at all. It gets thrown in because of the doublethink concept, and the fact that everyone weaselwords, but it’s not actually used in the book.)
Saying one thing but meaning another. But in a deceptive sort of way, not like double entendre.
The word kinda comes from the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described concepts known as doublethink and newspeak, though “doublespeak” is never actually used in the book.
Newspeak is how the government in that book redid the English language to remove words/grammar it didn’t approve of. Not from the book, but something of an example you might see jokingly used on the internet today is saying “unalive” as a euphemism for “die/kill” because it expresses a concept and avoids the implications.
Doublethink is the phenomenon of simultaneously accepting contradictory ideas. The government in the book needs to be able to convince people that the blatantly bad things they’re doing are actually good things. Think along the lines of peace through conquest, or the idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns.
Doublespeak is sort of a synthesis of these ideas. As a concept, I’d imagine that it long predates Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it’s about changing language or word choice to obfuscate truth or imply contradictory meaning. It’s like how calling someone “special” can be used to imply mental deficiency, how sugary cereal is “part of a balanced breakfast” when it’s one of the least healthy things a child could eat, or when racists say “All Lives Matter” to protect the racially discriminatory status quo that the Black Lives Matter movement was created to challenge.
I’m not even sure what is ment by that.Do you mean like repeating yourself in another language when talking to groups?
https://www.igpub.com/doublespeak/#:~:text=He wrote a famous essay,the social dangers of doublespeak.
Don’t forget the first summary:
“Doublespeak is the language of non-responsibility, carefully constructed to appear to communicate when it fact it doesn’t”
My understanding was it was a conceptually-poor language that artificially constrained one’s cognitive faculties through the nexus of a limited language/vocabulary emphasizing economy of expression. Sort of like a programming language with very few keywords and only ones that were absolutely necessary to receive and nominally participate in a minimal discourse.
Edit: I think this is actually Newspeak I’m contemplating as opposed to doublespeak. Doublespeak seems to refer to intentionally ambiguous language that obfuscates meaning and emotional content and usually for a political purpose. Like calling unintentional war victims “collateral damage” to reduce the bad publicity from one’s war efforts. The wrongfully-dead victims are hidden behind what sounds like oblique accounting or financial jargon.
Are you thinking of newspeak?
Whoops, lol. Is he talking about, like, George Bush or something. I’m so lost right now and he hasn’t provided a single example to work from
If you haven’t, take some time to read 1984. It’s a fairly easy read and this thread will make a lot more sense. Also, there’s a reason it’s a timeless classic and referred to so often - Orwell hit on a lot of prevalent themes authoritarians like to use. Once you know how to identify them, it’s easy to see when someone is using something like double speak (consciously or subconsciously)
I’ve read it and seen the movie, just been a while and OP wasn’t super helpful pinpointing what he was after
well the two aren’t necessarily exclusive. A speech pattern that obfuscates has many uses. But I think you’re conflating doublespeech and doublethink a bit.
(Fun fact: the term Doublespeak / speech is never actually used in 1984. Like, at all. It gets thrown in because of the doublethink concept, and the fact that everyone weaselwords, but it’s not actually used in the book.)
Thanks for this!
Np!
There’s a couple different variants, and OP is most likely talking about 1984, but the core idea is pretty much the same
Saying one thing but meaning another. But in a deceptive sort of way, not like double entendre.
The word kinda comes from the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described concepts known as doublethink and newspeak, though “doublespeak” is never actually used in the book.
Newspeak is how the government in that book redid the English language to remove words/grammar it didn’t approve of. Not from the book, but something of an example you might see jokingly used on the internet today is saying “unalive” as a euphemism for “die/kill” because it expresses a concept and avoids the implications.
Doublethink is the phenomenon of simultaneously accepting contradictory ideas. The government in the book needs to be able to convince people that the blatantly bad things they’re doing are actually good things. Think along the lines of peace through conquest, or the idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns.
Doublespeak is sort of a synthesis of these ideas. As a concept, I’d imagine that it long predates Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it’s about changing language or word choice to obfuscate truth or imply contradictory meaning. It’s like how calling someone “special” can be used to imply mental deficiency, how sugary cereal is “part of a balanced breakfast” when it’s one of the least healthy things a child could eat, or when racists say “All Lives Matter” to protect the racially discriminatory status quo that the Black Lives Matter movement was created to challenge.
Hope that helps contextualize it.