Dictionary
Thesaurus
Reference
Translate
Web
Related Searches
on Ask.com
Doublespeak - 2 reference results
Doublespeak at Amazon
Millions of titles, new & used. Qualified orders over $25 ship free
Sponsored Results Amazon.com/books
Doublespeak
Doublespeak (sometimes double talk) is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of bald euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity. Doublespeak is a disparaging label for any euphemistic term perceived to be uttered in bad faith.

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.

See also

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

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Tuesday October 07, 2008 at 17:14:27 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation

Doublespeak at Amazon
Millions of titles, new & used. Qualified orders over $25 ship free
Sponsored Results Amazon.com/books
Doublespeak and euphemisms in education.
May 01, 1994; In 1972, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) established the Committee on Public Doublespeak for the purpose of...
Read more with a free trial on HighBeam.com »
How's that again? (doublespeak)
Mar 01, 1990; HOW'S THAT AGAIN? Doublespeak allows companies to run a negative deficit instead of a profit, car mechanics to become automotive...
Read more with a free trial on HighBeam.com »
doublespeak
Jan 01, 2000; doublespeak, the language of disinformation, is a subset of euphemism . In the words of a leading text on the subject:...
Read more with a free trial on HighBeam.com »
The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone's Saying Anymore
Jul 01, 1997; William Lutz. The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone's Saying Anymore. New York: HarperCollins 1996. This book is a...
Read more with a free trial on HighBeam.com »
DOUBLESPEAK YOU CAN BANK ON
Aug 08, 2000; George Orwell was wrong. It wasn't the Thought Police who introduced doublespeak to control the masses. It was Big Bank. Now we...
Read more with a free trial on HighBeam.com »
HighBeam Research, Inc. © Copyright 2009.

Search another word or see Doublespeak on Dictionary | Thesaurus