Close Encounter and Doublespeak Creates Confusion
Bijena Adhikari
Jerome Parent
English 121-56I
04/04/2012
The World of Doublespeak. In 1989 William Lutz published a book called “Doublespeak” which talked about how doublespeak has been used in our day to day communication from the public to the government. Doublespeak is usually referred as a language to misguide the audience or it is a language “that pretends to communicate but really doesn’t”. It is a language used to communicate the bad news seemingly in a pleasant way. Doublespeak can be categorized in four kinds; first kind is euphemism, second kind is Jargon, third kind is gobbledygook, and the fourth type is inflated language. Throughout the essay William Lutz has given examples of how doublespeak has been misleading us in many ways like “there are no potholes in the street of Tuscan, Arizona, just “pavement deficiencies”. The audiences will definitely not think it is a bad news because they used the language where bad seemed good. Take this example “there are no more poor people, just fiscal underachiever”. Basically it is not saying that there are no more poor people but the words that have been used make it seems like there are no more poor people and that’s not the truth. William Lutz used many more examples which create controversy among people and how government has been misguiding people with doublespeak. In the fourth kind of doublespeak which is inflated language writer talks about giving importance to things that are not really important or to make day to day things impressive. Giving example of pentagon “pre-emptive counterattack” which means American force attacked first”. The language used made it seems like it was not American force who started the attack first. And the other example “In the doublespeak of the military, the 1983 invasion of Grenada was conducted not by the
Jerome Parent
English 121-56I
04/04/2012
The World of Doublespeak. In 1989 William Lutz published a book called “Doublespeak” which talked about how doublespeak has been used in our day to day communication from the public to the government. Doublespeak is usually referred as a language to misguide the audience or it is a language “that pretends to communicate but really doesn’t”. It is a language used to communicate the bad news seemingly in a pleasant way. Doublespeak can be categorized in four kinds; first kind is euphemism, second kind is Jargon, third kind is gobbledygook, and the fourth type is inflated language. Throughout the essay William Lutz has given examples of how doublespeak has been misleading us in many ways like “there are no potholes in the street of Tuscan, Arizona, just “pavement deficiencies”. The audiences will definitely not think it is a bad news because they used the language where bad seemed good. Take this example “there are no more poor people, just fiscal underachiever”. Basically it is not saying that there are no more poor people but the words that have been used make it seems like there are no more poor people and that’s not the truth. William Lutz used many more examples which create controversy among people and how government has been misguiding people with doublespeak. In the fourth kind of doublespeak which is inflated language writer talks about giving importance to things that are not really important or to make day to day things impressive. Giving example of pentagon “pre-emptive counterattack” which means American force attacked first”. The language used made it seems like it was not American force who started the attack first. And the other example “In the doublespeak of the military, the 1983 invasion of Grenada was conducted not by the