this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
63 points (82.5% liked)

Asklemmy

42520 readers
916 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but doublespeak seems to be prevalent even in casual conversation

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you thinking of newspeak?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I've read it and seen the movie, just been a while and OP wasn't super helpful pinpointing what he was after

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)