Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable. Doublespeak is language that avoids or shifts responsibility, language that is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language which conceals or prevents thought; rather than extending thought, doublespeak limits it - William Lutz

1. Doublespeak
(unspeak)
prepared by
Galichkina Anna

2. Plan:
1. Introduction
2. What doublespeak is
3. How the notion appeared
4. Classifications of doublespeak
4.1 Classification 1
4.2 Classification 2
1. Fun fact: NCTE Doublespeak Award
2. References

3. What doublespeak is
Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the
bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable.
Doublespeak is language that avoids or shifts responsibility, language that is at variance with its real or
purported meaning. It is language which conceals or prevents thought; rather than extending thought,
doublespeak limits it - William Lutz

4. How the notion appeared
George Orwell
1946 - Politics and the English language
1949 - novel “1984”: “doublethink” и “newspeak”
“Doublespeak” or “doubletalk”

5. How the notion appeared
➢ Rome, where announcements of traitors' executions were made in the form of saying "they have
lived"
➢ At the same time, Caesar, in his account of the Gallic Wars, wrote about his brutal and bloody
conquest and subjugation of Gaul as "pacifying" himl
➢ Nazis - work camp, final solution, “The Jew X.Y. lived here,” posted on a door, meant the
occupant had been “deported,” that is, killed
➢ In 1947, the name of the United States Department of War was changed to the Department of
Defense

6. How the notion appeared
William Lutz, was chair of the NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak

7. Classification 1
1. euphemism
2. jargon
3. gobbledygook or bureaucratese
4. inflated language

8. Classification 1
1. euphemisms - used with the purpose of mystifying, misleading, or covering up something
unpleasant, to alter our perception of reality
e.g.: “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life”, “incontinent ordnance”, “radiation enhancement
device”
1. jargon
the speaker or writer wants to manifest profundity, authority or prestige, makes very simple issues
seem complicated, makes the ordinary profound and the obvious insightful
e.g.: Political jargon: exhibits a tendency, diplomatist, dishabituate, In the final analysis,
underprivileged, Lock, stock, and barrel, Anticipate the unpredictable —> Unpredictable elements
must be anticipated, Congress refugee panel visit ban

9. Classification 1
3. gobbledygook or bureaucratese - polysyllabic
language used by the people in Washington,
uses extremely long sentences and pretentious
and abstract language
4. inflated language - designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary; to make everyday things
seem impressive; to give an air of importance to people, situations, or things that would not normally
be considered important; to make the simple seem complex, the longer you speak and the less
information you convey, the better.

10. Classification 2

11. Classification 2
Lexical doublespeak Stylistic doublespeak
Syntactic doublespeak

12. Stylistic doublespeak
Jargon
Gobbledygook
Bureaucratese
Officialese
Inflated language

13. Lexical doublespeak
Favorable or unfavorable naming - employing a positive or negative word (biased word or a purr/snarl
word) by the speaker in order to influence the hearer's perception of facts on the positive/negative scale
Hidden bias - evades responsibility and claims that there is hardly any sentence in normal speech which
lacks bias as it is very pervasive
Adjectives –Young (and handsome, attractive, inexperienced), Extreme (absurd, dangerous)
Nouns – Reformer (progressive, efficient), Dictator (brutal, ruthless, cruel)
Verbs – succeed x fail, win x lose, build x destroy
e.g.: I don't see how you can win in Iraq if you don't believe we should be there in the first place. (George
W. Bush)
But that's how we're going to win the peace, by rapidly training the Iraqis themselves. (John Kerry)
denotative meaning 1. be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict) 2. acquire or secure as a result
of a contest, conflict, bet, or other endeavor

14. Lexical doublespeak
Purr or snarl words - "direct expressions of approval or disapproval, judgments in their simplest form"
Purr words - frequent repetition of purr words leads to repeated activation of extensive areas in the human
brain, leading to inerasable brain change, "all the frames and metaphors and worldview structures are
activated again and strengthened - because recurring activation strengthens neutral connections"- Lakoff
two groups
primary purr words secondary purr words
peace, democracy, freedom, security, accountability, prosperity,
liberty, civil liberties and justice, stability, flexibility,
American dream transparency, equality and fairness
The concepts that are categorized as primary purr words are superior to secondary purr words in the
hierarchy of values.

15. Lexical doublespeak
Snarl words - marginal form of doublespeak, which is resorted to in the presidential debates only
exceptionally, are used in order to intensify somebody else's bad - some third party, either a
country or regime in the third world, or Russia
e.g.: words related to Second World War and the Cold War

16. Lexical doublespeak
Elevation of meaning - the use of euphemism in order to make facts sound more pleasing or less
rude and thus avoid negative feelings in the listener
e.g.: Tory: brigand, highwayman → member of the Tories
Knight: manservant → noble, courageous man

17. Lexical doublespeak

18. Lexical doublespeak

19. Lexical doublespeak

20. Syntactic doublespeak
Passivisation - does not require the
speaker/writer to be explicit about the
performer of the action
e.g.: People should not try to live where
they are not wanted
Nominalisation - "a process converted into noun (or a multi-word compound noun)", enables the
omission of some of the meaning of the original sentence, modality and agent/patient are missing.
Suffix -able, -ible - a "curious implicit passive that takes an agent more or less for granted" no
specification of the agent of the action
e.g.: likable, undesirable, detestable, abominable, admirable, intolerable,
Undesirable events should be reported

21. Syntactic doublespeak
Experiencer deletion - certain impersonal verbs carry with them a reference to a personal
standpoint, that of the one who undergoes the experience, some do not require the mentioning of
the experiencer
e.g. look, be surprising, be obvious, be amusing, stand to reason, be convincing
It seems (to me) that he is asking too much.
Tagging - pleads for agreement by pretending to offer the hearer a choice between a positive and a
negative answer
e.g.: She is French, isn't she?

22. Fun fact: NCTE Doublespeak Award
After a U.S. bombing raid: "You always write it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing! It's air support" -
1974, Colonel David H. E. Opfer, USAF Press Officer in Cambodia
After the Three Mile Island accident. an explosion - ‘energetic disassembly' a fire - ‘rapid oxidation.' A reactor accident
is an ‘event,' an ‘incident,' an ‘abnormal evolution,' a ‘normal aberration' or a ‘plant transient.' - 1979, The nuclear
power industry
Calling the MX intercontinental ballistic missile "Peacekeeper" - 1983, President Ronald Reagan
"Invasion" with reference to Panama: "Operation Just Cause"; "directed our armed forces to protect the lives of
American citizens in Panama"; "deployed forces" to Panama; conducted "efforts to support the democratic processes
in Panama"; assured "the integrity of the Panama Canal", etc. - 1990, President George Bush
2008 - Aspirational Goal - used in relation to the Iraq war and climate change. Aspirations and goals are the same
thing; yet when the terms are combined, the effect is to undermine them both, producing a phrase that means, in
effect, “a goal to which one does not aspire all that much.”
"Truth isn't truth" - 2018, Rudy Giuliani
2020 - China Virus
just wow

23. References
1. William Lutz “Doublespeak. From revenue enhancement to terminal loving: how government, business, advertisers, and others
use language to deceive you ”, 2015 edition
2. Doni, Apriyanto (2021) DOUBLESPEAK IN BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH “ON THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS BY
SYRIAN GOVERNMENT TERM PAPER. Other thesis, Unsada.
3. Pavel Reich Doublespeak in Televised Political Debates Ph.D. dissertation 2013
4. DOUBLESPEAK” И “UNSPEAK” КАК ВИДЫ ЭВФЕМИЗМОВ С.А. Киселева, 2014
5. Past Recipients of the NCTE Doublespeak Award
https://ncte.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Past_Recipients_Doublespeak_Award.pdf
6. Beware of nominalizations aka zombie nouns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlkHtMgcPQ
7. Elevation and degradation of meaning of a word. https://studfile.net/preview/7169122/page:7/

24. Thank you for attention!

25. Thank you for attention!