this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but doublespeak seems to be prevalent even in casual conversation

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every time I turn to politics. Our ex justice minister once said:

Surveillance is freedom

I'm not kidding. Word for word, that's what he said.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Just going to leave this here…

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Denmark actually. It's a couple of years ago he said it.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't know. I take most things that people say at face-value.

I don't have the time or energy to interpret double-meanings. Say what you mean & mean what you say.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People get mad at you when you do that. I’m actually shocked at how many do.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, they might get mad, but that's on them. If they said what they actually meant, things would go a lot smoother.

Communicate clearly instead of expecting me to do codebreaking.

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

Once you achieve a certain level of not giving a fuck, just repeat their statement back to then in plain language and they will usually either storm off, freeing you from the conversation, or they will get the point, freeing you from at least the tedious part of the conversation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is my favorite way to deal with management.

So you want me to disable a safety feature to help speed up production?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I agree; so strange what we value with words so often differ with what we value with our action or inaction.

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

How do you feel about people who communicate through movie quotes?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It only works if the other party clearly understands the reference.

Know your audience.

[–] cheese_greater 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any examples in particular?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, any example will do.

[–] cheese_greater 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That was more for you to provide an example so we know exactly what you are looking for?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Whether intentional or not their reply was hilarious.

And OP just read 1984.

[–] cheese_greater 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

/post [mic drop]

Its going to get funnier the longer he avoids answering lol. In my mind, he could be referring to anything from double speak (doublethink), double entendres, puns, double meanings, etc. He needs to show some of his thinking so we can answer intelligently

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

1984 was doublethink, not doublespeak

[–] xanu 11 points 1 year ago

"War is Peace" is doublespeak; an inherent contradiction. Anybody can say it and still see the contradiction and believe that it isn't true. Doublethink is the internalization of that doublespeak. A Party member says it and sees no contradiction. Deep in their hearts, they understand that to be in a never ending war is to experience neverending peace.

All that to say that doublespeak was certainly a thing in the novel, as it labours on the distinction between doublespeak and doublethink.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I assume you mean just subtly mentioning something without outright saying it. That's just a social skill, since some things are better said that way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On the other hand, equivocation is the bastion of cowards and simpletons.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All the time. ~~Discourse analysis ruined my life.~~

In special, the sort of doublespeak where someone lists something as a bonus of whatever the person defends, but as a malus for what he doesn't like. Often through different and partially overlapping words, such as one program being "traditional and tested" and another "archaic and outdated". Or one politician being "in sync with the voters" and another being "a demagogue".

However on the internet I feel like doublespeak is becoming less and less of a concern, because willingful stupidity is often more efficient, as it capitalises on Brandolini's Law.

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

In special, the sort of doublespeak where someone lists something as a bonus of whatever the person defends, but as a malus for what he doesn’t like. Often through different and partially overlapping words, such as one program being “traditional and tested” and another “archaic and outdated”. Or one politician being “in sync with the voters” and another being “a demagogue”.

Oh yeah, I hate that. I find it sad that there's a market for that kind of content. It's not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

It’s not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.

That requires us* to focus on the objective matters. We can't do that. We need to wallow in all that precious, oh so precious, subjectivity. But we can't show it, because then we can't claim "it's facts", and we're opening room for disagreement.

In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word "toxic".

*by "we" I mean "people in general", not necessarily you and me.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

What’s that “Kids Online Safety Bill” thing in the USA right now?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Where I live we call it "Minnesota nice". As a transplant I can't speak it well, so I have no idea what anyone thinks of me. It's pretty frustrating.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Every time I've talked to any manager or supervisor I've ever had.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It's ubiquitous.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Not being hyperbolic, but almost every single time I have to speak with or am spoken to by a manager/GM at work. HR at all large companies I have ever worked for as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I work for/with a religiously-affiliated charitable organization, so doublespeak is pretty constant. Worse, not only do people use it but they also police the speech of those around them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not even sure what is ment by that.Do you mean like repeating yourself in another language when talking to groups?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] cheese_greater 3 points 1 year ago (1 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 1 year 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"

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Np!

There's a couple different variants, and OP is most likely talking about 1984, but the core idea is pretty much the same

[–] Stovetop 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Saying one thing but meaning another. But in a deceptive sort of way, not like double entendre.

The word kinda comes from the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described concepts known as doublethink and newspeak, though "doublespeak" is never actually used in the book.

Newspeak is how the government in that book redid the English language to remove words/grammar it didn't approve of. Not from the book, but something of an example you might see jokingly used on the internet today is saying "unalive" as a euphemism for "die/kill" because it expresses a concept and avoids the implications.

Doublethink is the phenomenon of simultaneously accepting contradictory ideas. The government in the book needs to be able to convince people that the blatantly bad things they're doing are actually good things. Think along the lines of peace through conquest, or the idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns.

Doublespeak is sort of a synthesis of these ideas. As a concept, I'd imagine that it long predates Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it's about changing language or word choice to obfuscate truth or imply contradictory meaning. It's like how calling someone "special" can be used to imply mental deficiency, how sugary cereal is "part of a balanced breakfast" when it's one of the least healthy things a child could eat, or when racists say "All Lives Matter" to protect the racially discriminatory status quo that the Black Lives Matter movement was created to challenge.

Hope that helps contextualize it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

In the 1984-sense, daily at work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

All the time at work lol

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