- POTUS @ CONSTITUTION VERSUS POTUS AS PRIVATE (ORDINARY) CITIZEN.
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs and "servicing the target" for bombing),[1] in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.
Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.[2][3]
The word is comparable to George Orwell's Newspeak and Doublethink as used in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, though the term Doublespeak does not appear there.[4]
The term "doublespeak" derives from two concepts in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, "doublethink" and "Newspeak", though the term is not used in the book.[4] Another variant, "doubletalk", also referring to deliberately ambiguous speech, did exist at the time Orwell wrote his book, but the usage of "doublespeak", as well as of "doubletalk", in the sense emphasizing ambiguity clearly postdates the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four.[5][6] Parallels have also been drawn between doublespeak and Orwell's classic essay Politics and the English Language, which discusses the distortion of language for political purposes.[7] In it he observes that political language serves to distort and obfuscate reality. Orwell's description of political speech is extremely similar to the contemporary definition of doublespeak:[8]
The writer Edward S. Herman cited what he saw as examples of doublespeak and doublethink in modern society.[9] Herman describes in his book Beyond Hypocrisy the principal characteristics of doublespeak:
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