Reading : Doublespeak - my attitude and experience

We are living in an age when avoiding making harsh, unpleasant or distateful statements is necessary. Thus in daily conversations appears doublespeak. In general, doublespeak can be divided into three main kinds: euphemism, jargon and inflated language.

First of all, euphemism is a kind of indirect words or phrases that people often use to refer to something embarrassing or unpleasant, sometimes to make it seem more acceptable than it really is. For example, 'user fees' is a politician's euphemism for taxes. To some extent, euphemism can be used to avoid hurting others' feelings. In other words, it not only protects feelings but also shows our care for them. For instance, it may be said that one is not dying, but 'fading quickly' because 'the end is near'.

The second type of doublespeak is jargon. It is the language that is used by a particular profession or group of people. Its purpose is to help the colleagues or members communicate with each other more efficiently. As a result, not every one can understand the jargon of a job. With jargon, corporations never lose money, they just experience 'negative cashflow', 'deficit enhancement', etc. and banks don't have bad loans or bad debts, they have 'non-performing assets' or 'non-performing credits'.

Finally, talking about doublespeak, we also take a look at inflated language. This kind of doublespeak, as stated in its name, is the language that has been made to be more important or impressive than it really is. Corporations take advantage of doublespeak by using it to explain for their acts of firing workers. For example, they now offer 'vocational relocation', 'career assignment and relocation', a 'career change opportunity', or 'voluntary termination'. These days no one gets fired, and you are never unemployed, you are just in an 'orderly transition betweem career changes'.

To sum up, whereas it may be considered wrong to construct words to disguise meaning, doublespeak is now an accepted and established practice. In fact, we can see that doublespeak is highly strategic and has a wide range of applications. Thus it is the way that we deal with it that counts.

* Thanks to professor William Lutz, I could get those examples to illustrate the essays.