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Essays about doublespeak
The world of doublespeak essay
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In the essay “Doubts About Doublespeak”(1993), William Lutz, depicts how utilizing doublespeak can damage a society. Lutz begins with providing examples of doublespeak that range from silly to serious, showing how doublespeak can be harmless but can also be used to disguise a truth with a manipulation of words. While there is different types of doublespeak, Lutz breaks it down into four different categories euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook and inflated language, all four of these types of doublespeak share the similarity that they are phrases or words that make something negative sound good. There is more types of doublespeak that can be seen all around us as doublespeak is being created everyday and everywhere so much that it can not be escaped.
In “Defending Against the Indefensible,” author and professor Neil Postman proposes that language has been abused in modern society by people manipulating it and brainwashing the others. Hence, he suggests seven elements for critical intelligence that can help with identifying and avoiding the manipulative use of language: definition, questions, simple words, metaphor, reification, style and tone, and media.
We hear and read doublespeak every day, but what, exactly is doublespeak? William Lutz in “The World of Doublespeak” argues that “doublespeak is a language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive” (389). Instead of making something sound miserable doublespeak insists on making it tolerable. Therefore doublespeak is a danger to the world and can interpret many ideas in different ways that can backwash and hide the truth. Doublespeak could also sound so real that someone will not recognize it as doublespeak it is used in many aspects such as commercials, advertisements, and even campaigns to mislead people. Also it is a technique everyone falls victim to but not everyone is aware of it. We
Code switching can occur not only during social situations where the same language is spoken, but ethnicities may be different. Kumea Shorter-Gooden, co-author of “Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America,” and chief diversity officer at the University of Maryland argues that code switching is used for survival, stating that its roots date back to pre-antebellum slavery times. Modern examples include people of color in predominantly white cultures or women in male-dominated situations, have had to “quickly figure out ‘How do I manage?’ and read situations that ‘they weren’t set up for in the first place,’” (O’Neal). Caucasians, who may normally speak in Standard American English, can be perceived as racist if they use AAVE. This is because whites have not had to communicate using AAVE in order to survive in society, unlike African-Americans and other people of color that feel pressured to use SAE to fit into society. When Caucasian people use AAVE, it can sound forced or offensive. In contrast, African-Americans who use SAE may be perceived as more intelligent and better fitting into society if they code-switch from AAVE to SAE. Also, problems can arise in the classroom, where many young people who are competent in English and children who have not been sufficiently exposed to both languages (Pfaff). One mainstream example is trying to “sound white.” Speaking “proper,” or Standard American English, in black or ghetto areas can get you bullied (O’Neal). In contrast, sounding “black” in white places can make you feel “alienated and unheard,” (O’Neal). Rather than fulfilling a new role, code switching marks these conversational functions. In addition, code-switching research focuses usually on the code-switcher, but not how it influences the person, or persons, for whom the code switching is
The use of rhetoric in today’s world is seen everyday as various groups of people attempt to persuade others in any given topic. One of the most effective rhetorical strategies, if used correctly, is that of sarcasm. Thus is the case between the Grove Press and Coca-Cola as they feud over the use of Coca-Cola’s slogan “It’s the real thing” in an advertisement for the Diary of a Harlem Schoolteacher. Through different strategies, both companies attempt to persuade the other of what they believe is the right course of action.
To paraphrase the late comedian George Carlin, language is used to mask the truth. In his 1990 stand up special “Doin' It Again” he says “there is nothing wrong with those words in and of themselves” when talking about bad language. He and McCorkle both argued that context is more important than the words themselves, and this is not hard to prove. In Monty Python’s “The Life Of Brian”, there is a scene where a man is to be stoned for saying the word “Jehovah”, but the people instead decide to stone the man announcing his crime, as he had to say “Jehovah”. Humans need to express emotions, and swear words are a conduit for one’s distaste or anger. They are indeed vital to expression.
Language is just meaning and this meaning consists of nothing other than random connections that man has made to try to bring order to the chaos of the world. This assemblage of the signifier (the word) and the signified (that which the word is describing) has no foundation other than that inherited from tradition. Would the world be any worse off if the name for a cow was “duck”? Most of the human population is forced into only a certain set of actions by the media, by the man, by their own language. Is there any escape from this?
This week’s reading had so many definitions to memorize. Although, it was interesting to learn about Euphemism and how it is suppose to be intended to spread positive attitude. Just by changing a few words can make the whole expression have a completely different outcome. For example, rather than saying a person has died, you can say departed to make the situation appear better. We use rhetorical devices like Euphemism, to make everything have positive results. While dysphemism is the complete opposite, it’s purposely used to produce a negative effect on someone’s attitude. Chapter four provided many rhetorical devices, which will help in writing better. One of the terms is down player, which is used to make someone or something’s value appear
” Stop murdering the language!” John Leo exclaims. Looking deeper into society, manipulation of language is vastly occurring. John Leo sheds light on language manipulation occurring all over the place. Language manipulation has become a large problem in the technology, professional sports, and hunting industries. Although these three subjects are very different and diverse, they all have one relatable topic, language manipulation. For example, some people label trophy hunting as a form of serial killing, an old NFL football team’s name being prejudice, and even blaming cell phone overuse for addictions.
David A. Fein and Milton Millhauser have both written articles pertaining to the topic of slang. Fein and Millhauser provide two different viewpoints, and they employ information and their opinions in different ways. David A. Fein’s article, “Vulgarity by Teaching Slang in the Classroom”, makes a good argument as to why slang should be utilized in teaching, while Milton Millhauser’s article, “The Case Against Slang”, explains that slang is to be avoided in teaching, but fails to provide a good argument for his claim.
For example, using sarcasm †̃well thatâ€TMs just greatâ€TM most often used in a sarcastic tone but taken literally it would be interpreted as amazing. The language we use can be confusing we must adapt our verbal communication accordingly.
George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, first published in 1946, talks about some “bad habits”, which have driven the English language in the wrong direction, that is, away from communicating ideas. In his essay he quotes five passages, each from a different author, which embody the faults he is talking about. He lists dying metaphors, operators, pretentious diction, and meaningless words as things to look out for in your own writing and the writing of others (593-595). He talks about political uses of the English language. Our language has become ugly and the ugliness impedes upon communication. Ugly uses of language have been reinforced and passed down in the population “even among people who should and do know better,” (598). Ugly language has been gaining ground in our population by a positive feedback mechanism.
People of the current generation have adjusted their speech in order to avoid criticism for whatever opinions they may express. Of course, we all have opinions, but do we want to be told that we’re wrong? No, and society has changed because of our weakness and inability to accept being wrong. Instead of declaring our thoughts with absolute belief, we add an interrogative tone to allow things we say to be changed without it having an affect on how smart or cool we seem to be. In “Totally,” Taylor Mali uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to convey that society has lost its voice of conviction.
text and the spoken word (Fairclough, 1995), and through the unveiling of these assumptions we
In American society the “F” word has been deemed a cuss word, a dirty word. It’s a simple, four letter word that shouldn’t be used. In Firoozeh Dumas’s essay, “The ‘F Word’”, she give it a new light to a different “F” word with the same meaning in our culture. Firoozeh Dumas uses her Iranian background to help her criticise the American ability to adapt to different and unfamiliar cultures through humor, empathy, and metaphors.
Her approach is capable of identifying and describing the underlying mechanisms that contribute to those disorders in discourse which are embedded in a particular context, at a specific moment, and inevitably affect communication. Wodak’s work on the discourse of anti-Semitism in 1990 led to the development of an approach she termed the Discourse-Historical Method. The term historical occupies a unique place in this approach. It denotes an attempt to systematically integrate all available background information in the analysis and interpretation of the many layers of a written or spoken text. As a result, the study of Wodak and her colleagues’ showed that the context of the discourse had a significant impact on the structure, function, and context of the utterances. This method is based on the belief that language “manifests social processes and interaction” and generates those processes as well (Wodak & Ludwig, 1999, p. 12). This method analyses language from a three-fold perspective: first, the assumption that discourse involves power and ideologies. “No interaction exists where power relations do not prevail and where values and norms do not have a relevant role” (p. 12). Secondly, “discourse … is always historical, that is, it is connected synchronically and diachronically with other communicative events which are happening at the same time or which have happened before” (p. 12). The third feature