vagueness. . . . Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Orwell understood well the power of language as both a tool and a weapon. In the nightmare world of his novel, 1984, Orwell depicted a society where language was one of the most important tools of the totalitarian state. Newspeak, the official state language in the world of 1984, was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of human thought, to make only “correct” thought possible and all other modes of thought impossible. It was, in short, a language designed to create a reality that the state wanted.
Newspeak had another important function in Orwell’s world of 1984. It provided the means of expression for doublethink, the mental process that allows you to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and believe in both of them. The classic example in Orwell’s novel is the slogan, “War Is Peace.” Lest you think doublethink is confined only to Orwell’s novel, you need only recall the words of Secretary of State Alexander Haig when he testified before a congressional committee in 1982 that a continued weapons build-up by the United States is “absolutely essential to our hopes for meaningful arms reduction.” Or remember what Senator Orin Hatch said in 1988: “Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.”
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.
The Doublespeak All Around Us
Orwell was concerned primarily with political language because it is the language of power, but it is not just political language that is so misleading these days. Everywhere you turn you encounter the language with which Orwell was so concerned. It’s not an economic recession but, according to the Reagan Administration, a “period of accelerated negative growth” or simply “negative economic growth.” There’s no such thing as acid rain; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it’s just “poorly buffered precipitation” or, more impressively, “atmospheric deposition of anthropogenetically-derived acidic substances.” And those aren’t gangsters, mobsters, the Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra in Atlantic City; according to the “New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement” (a doublespeak title that avoids the use of that dreaded word, “gambling”) they’re just “members of a career-offender cartel.”
Military Doublespeak
Military doublespeak seems to have always been around. In 1947 the name of the Department of War was changed to the more pleasing if misleading Department of Defense. How much easier it is to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for defense instead of war. During the Vietnam War the American public learned that it was an “incursion” into Cambodia, not an invasion; a “protective reaction strike” or “a limited duration protective reaction strike” or “air support,” not bombing.
When asked why U.S. forces lacked intelligence information on Grenada before they invaded the island in 1983, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald told reporters that “We were not micromanaging Grenada intelligence-wise until about that time frame.” In today’s armed forces it’s not a shovel but a “combat emplacement evacuator,” not a bullet hole but a “ballistically induced aperture in the subcutaneous environment.”
Business Doublespeak
The world of business has produced large amounts of doublespeak. If an airplane crash is one of the worst things that can happen to an airline company, a recall of automobiles because of a safety defect is one of the worst things that can happen to an automobile company. In April of 1972, when the Ford Motor Company had to recall 423,000 1972 Torino and Mercury Montego models to correct “mechanical deficiencies,” the company sent a letter to all those who had bought the defective cars. In its letter, Ford said that the rear axle bearings of the cars “can deteriorate” and went on to say “Continued driving with a failed bearing could result in disengagement of the axle shaft and adversely affect vehicle control.” This is the language of nonresponsibility. What are “mechanical deficiencies”—poor design, bad workmanship? The rear axle bearings “can deteriorate,” but will they deteriorate? If they do deteriorate, what causes the deterioration? Note that “continued driving” is the subject of the sentence, which suggests that it is not Ford’s poor manufacturing that is at fault but the driver who insists on driving the defective car. Note, too, the expression “failed bearing,” which implies that the bearing failed, not Ford. Finally, the phrase “adversely affect vehicle control” means simply that, because of the mechanical defect, the driver could lose control of the car and get killed.
If you ask the questions for examining language to see if it’s doublespeak (who is saying what to whom, under what conditions and circumstances, with what intent, and with what results), you can quickly discover the doublespeak here. What Ford should be saying to its customers is that the car Ford sold them has a serious defect that should be corrected immediately, otherwise the customer runs the risk of being seriously injured or killed. But you have to find this message beneath the doublespeak that Ford has used to disguise its embarrassing and unpleasant message. We will never know how many customers didn’t bring their cars in for repairs because they didn’t understand from that letter just how serious the problem was and that they’d better get their car to the service department fast.
When it comes time to fire or lay off employees, business has produced more than enough doublespeak to deal with the unpleasant situation. Employees are, of course, never fired or laid off. They are “selected out,” “placed out,” “non-retained,” “released,” “dehired,” or “non-renewed.” A corporation will “eliminate the redundancies in the human resources area,” assign “candidates for derecruitment” to a “mobility pool,” “revitalize the department” by placing executives on “special assignment,” “enhance the efficiency of operations,” “streamline the field sales organization,” or “further rationalize marketing efforts.” The reality behind all this doublespeak is that companies are firing or laying off employees, but no one wants to acknowledge to the stockholders, public, or competition that times are tough, business is bad, and people have to go.
When the oil industry was hit hard by declining sales and a surplus of oil, after years of great prosperity and a shortage of oil, the doublespeak flowed thicker than crude oil. Because of “reduced demand for product,” which results in “space refining capacity” and problems in “down-stream operations,” oil companies have been forced to “re-evaluate and consolidate their operations” and take “appropriate cost-reduction actions,” in order to “enhance the efficiency of operations,” which has meant the “elimination of marginal outlets,” “accelerating our divestment program,” and the “disposition of low throughput marketing units.” This doublespeak really means that oil companies have fired employees, cut back on expenses, and closed gas stations and oil refineries because there’s a surplus of oil and people are not buying as much gas and oil as in the past.
One oil company faced with declining business sent a memorandum to its employees advising them that the company’s “business plans are under revision and now reflect a more moderate approach toward our operating and capital programs.” The result of this “more moderate approach” is a “surplus of professional/technical employees.” To “assist in alleviating the surplus, selected professional and technical employees” have been “selected to participate” in a “Voluntary Program” providing “incentives” for employees who “resign voluntarily.” What this memorandum means, of course, is that expenses must be cut because of declining business, so some employees will have to go.
Wall Street produces doublespeak right along with the
