Wikipedia: Doublespeak/Talk

There's clearly a lot more to say here, not the least of which is that while the examples chosen certainly can be double-speak, they aren't necessarily. Sometimes war is defense (at least on one side). Sometimes rebels are fighting for freedom (though I certainly agree that most of them are just fighting to replace the current oppressive regime with their own oppressive regime). Also, not all doublespeak is propaganda: sometimes it is evasive speech used to protect one's privacy or deceive for other reasons. --Lee Daniel Crocker

Yup. I'm happily leaving this entry provocatively brief so that others will contribute to it. --The Cunctator

Orwell wrote an essay regarding Newspeak which is usually published as an appendix to 1984. That's the place to go for whoever wants to shore this article up.

I believe the point of doublespeak is that a phrase can have two meanings which contradict one another, saving the speaker from the need of meaning anything specific or reconciling internal contradictions. - Tim

: That is doublethink, not doublespeak. --TheCunctator

I like the human intelligence: spies one. It reminds me of the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy by the US gvmnt. A press release was put out to say this happened due to 'Lack of proper Intelligence', Paul Merton quipped that it was nice of them to admit it. -- sodium

taxpayer: citizen

: Similarly, the usage of the phrase taxpayer to refer to a citizen of some state or nation implies that the primary role of a citizen is to pay taxes, or more generally, that the social contract (again, a term with a particular bias) between citizen and state is primarily economic.

I'm deleting this again, because I fail to see how it qualifies. Yes, it serves an agenda, and might qualify as a propaganda term, but it is compeltely accurate and descriptive, not deceptive or evasive in any way. If you want to put it back, convince me here that it deserves to be called "doublespeak". Doublespeak terms evade the realities rather than accentuating them. --LDC

It's certainly not completely accurate and descriptive--it implies that that the social contract between citizen and state is primarily economic. And it's not, at least not historically. That implication is very deceptive. And the term has enjoyed an explosion in recent use as corporate/political institutions reshape the understanding of the relationship between citizen and state--and that's why I included it here. The terms on the list are doublespeak within a particular context--sometimes they're neologisms, coined to dissemble (collateral damage), but often they're perfectly good words, redefined or recontextualized (intelligence, taxpayer).

Perhaps my definition of doublespeak is too broad, and there should be a category called [propaganda term]? or something. I'd appreciate if instead of just deleting taxpayer, you put it where you think it belongs. And should the burden of proof be on me ("If you want to put it back, convince me...") or on you?

I'm asserting that taxpayer for citizen is as much doublespeak as terrorist for armed rebel. If one isn't doublespeak, neither should the other. Conversely, if terrorist is doublespeak, then so is taxpayer. --TheCunctator

The word taxpayer means someone who pays taxes, and when used in a discussion of government revenues does not have the drastic implications listed above, which only come in when one starts using the term interchangeably with citizen - the military is there to protect the taxpayers and such. Even then it isn't doublespeak, and neither is terrorist, nor the majority of the entries on the current list.

A reply to me from alt.usage.english [1]

> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Euphemism
> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Doublespeak

I looked at both. The "Euphemism" article seems unobjectionable, but it's so terse as to be little more than a dictionary definition. The examples given in the "Doublespeak" article seem mostly inconsistent with the definition you give of the term, because most of them are not of words used "contrary" to their true meaning. For example, "secret" does not contradict "classified," nor does "wet work" contradict "assassination." Most of your list is a bunch of bureaucratic euphemisms, nothing more.

Also, the Department of Defense (assuming you mean the one in the US) was formed by a merger of the pre-existing War Department and Navy Department (I believe those to be the correct names). I don't deny that the DOD is there to wage war (and therefore affords perhaps the one indisputable example of doublespeak in your entire list), but your history is a bit off.

Note that doublespeak is not the same as the Orwellian term of doublethink, which refers to words that mean the exact opposite of their meaning, but refers to words that are deliberately used in a way to disguise their meaning, usually by governmental or corporate institutions.

--TheCunctator

I removed examples from 1984, because they are about Newspeak, not doublespeak; the words have quite different meanings. Yet another word, which actually precedes Orwell's novel, is "doubletalk" and it has yet another slightly different meaning; I'm not sure this is worth mentioning in the article.--AV

Thanks for the info...if you could write an entry on doubletalk? or doublthink? that would be great.

: I'm not sure it needs one... Wikipedia is not a dictionary. There isn't much to say about the word "doubletalk" beyond what's in the dictionary. --AV

I'm using the definition of doublespeak exactly as in this page, http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-same.html (which I found only now...it wasn't an inspiration). --TheCunctator

I disagree with the idea that string words together is doublespeak - I was associated it with words like Peacemakers, the various Departments in 1984 etc. Wikipedia really is anwiki encyclopedia. In other words, in the latter there is no saying something with an alternate meaning. The Department of (IIRC) Truth was not really about truth. Nazi's really were nationalists and socialists; if they had called themselves the Freedom Party then it could be considered doublespeak. - Eean

: Certaintly the Nazi's were nationalists, but I think (and many would agree) that their calling themselves socialists was doublespeak. Nazi policies as actually implemented were on the whole favourable to German industrialists, and most of the semi-socialist policies of their earlier years were quitely dropped upon assuming power. -- SJK

I disagree with the 'intelligence' examples:

intelligence: spies or secrets
human intelligence: spies

Intelligence in this context means 'important information' as in military intelligence: information of importance to the military (usually about enemies or threats). (The use of military intelligence as an example of an oxymoron is a pretty good joke, implying that the military is stupid, but it bears on another meaning of 'intelligence'.

Also, human intelligence is not the spies themselves, but the information they gather.

I propose using 'intelligence agents' as more accurate doublespeak for spies and omitting 'human intelligence'. Ed Poor