Doubts About Doublespeak By William Lutz

150 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essays about doublespeak

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.

Show More
Related

  • Wilson Follett: Article Analysis

    393 Words  | 1 Pages

    1 Wilson Follett, in the article “On Usage, Purism, Pedantry” from Modern American Usage, promotes how two parties view the rights and wrongs concerning the usage of language.

    Read More

  • Neil Postman Defending Against The Indefensible Summary

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • From Ancient Greece To Iraq, The Power Of Words In Wartime By Robin Tolmach Lakoff

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the essay “From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in Wartime” by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Lakoff discusses the fact that words are a tool as well when it comes to wars. She talks about the differences between our natural want and ability to kill things, and the mental training soldiers receive to make it easier for them. Lakoff talks about the practice of dehumanizing the “enemy” through nicknames that make us feel superior then our foes, and the repercussions of using this type of language. In the essay by George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, Orwell talks about the decay of the English language, especially in political writings. He discusses the fact that when it comes to writing, political being the main focus, it’s

    Read More

  • Summary Of Firoozeh Dumas's Essay The F Word

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Totally by Taylor Mali

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Doubleppeak In The World Of Doublespeak By William Lutz

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Explain How To Adapt Communication With Children And Young People

    1234 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Contested Meaning

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    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?

    Read More

  • Code Switching In Dennis Baron's 'Hooked On Ebonics'

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Jill Mccorkle's Essay Cussing Time

    547 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Fein And Millhauser's Vulgarity By Teaching Slang In The Classroom

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Critical Discourse Analysis Curriculum

    5766 Words  | 12 Pages

    text and the spoken word (Fairclough, 1995), and through the unveiling of these assumptions we

    Read More

  • Politics and the English Language

    1208 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Negative Aspects of Online Dating

    1327 Words  | 3 Pages

    Toma, C. L., & Hancock, J. T. (2012). What lies beneath: The linguistic traces of deception in

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Fairclough, Teun Van Dijk And Ruth Wodak

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

More about Doubts About Doublespeak By William Lutz

Open Document