You searched for: “doublespeak
doublespeak
1. A language that is deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a "communication bypass". Such language is often associated with governmental, military, and corporate institutions.
2. The ability to speak or write two or more contradictory ideas without the speaker or writer being consciously aware of the contradiction.
3. Doublespeak is often consciously used to deceive and to sidetrack the reality or truth about an unpleasant situation or fact.
4. It also seems, consciously or unconsciously, to be used as a tool to fog up and otherwise avoid what could easily be a simple, unambiguous, statement.

Doublespeak is about making words and facts agree. It is a process of misleading, distorting, deceiving, inflating, circumventing; as well as, obfuscating. It is a language that refers to lies being used as "strategic misrepresentations" and therefore avoids responsibility, that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, something unpleasant appear attractive, language that only appears to communicate. It's a language designed to alter our perception of reality and corrupt our thinking.

We need to be on constant alert so that those who create and use doublespeak can't use it to control, manipulate, deceive, use, and abuse us.

—Compiled from Doublespeak Defined by William Lutz;
Harper Resource, Division of Harper Collins Publishers; 1999; pages IX to XIV.
This entry is located in the following unit: Doublespeak, Doubletalk, et cetera (page 1)
A unit related to: “doublespeak
(euphemisms, question-begging, declarifications, and cloudy vagueness sometimes designed to make lies sound truthful)