Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms, 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.
A euphemism is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as mental or physical disability, sexual intercourse, bodily excretions, pain, violence, illness, or death in a polite way.
George Herbert Walker Bush was an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the 43rd vice president from 1981 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan and previously in various other federal positions.
Circumlocution is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication, but it can also be undesirable. It can also come in the form of roundabout speech wherein many words are used to describe something that already has a common and concise term. Most dictionaries use circumlocution to define words. Circumlocution is often used by people with aphasia and people learning a new language, where simple terms can be paraphrased to aid learning or communication. Among other usages, circumlocution can be used to construct euphemisms, innuendos, and equivocations.
Leon Edward Panetta is an American retired politician and government official who has served under several Democratic administrations as secretary of defense (2011–2013), director of the CIA (2009–2011), White House chief of staff (1994–1997), director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–1994), as well as a U.S. representative from California (1977–1993).
Robert Michael Gates is an American intelligence analyst and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was appointed by President George W. Bush and was retained by President Barack Obama. Gates began his career serving as an officer in the United States Air Force but was quickly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gates served for twenty-six years in the CIA and at the National Security Council, and was director of central intelligence under President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton that studied the lessons of the Iraq War.
The NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language is an award given since 1975 by the Public Language Award Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English. It is awarded annually to "writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse."
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is a United States professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. Since 1911, NCTE has provided a forum for the profession, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth throughout their careers, and a framework for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the teaching of English." In addition, the NCTE describes its mission as follows:
The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
A code word is a word or a phrase designed to convey a predetermined meaning to an audience who know the phrase, while remaining inconspicuous to the uninitiated. For example, a public address system may be used to make an announcement asking for "Inspector Sands" to attend a particular area, which staff will recognise as a code word for a fire or bomb threat, and the general public will ignore.
In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named after ultrasonic dog whistles, which are audible to dogs but not humans. Dog whistles use language that appears normal to the majority but communicates specific things to intended audiences. They are generally used to convey messages on issues likely to provoke controversy without attracting negative attention.
Raymond McGovern is an American political activist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and participated in preparing the President's Daily Brief. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, returning it in 2006 to protest the CIA's involvement in torture. McGovern's post-retirement work includes commenting for RT and Sputnik News, among other outlets, on intelligence and foreign policy issues. In 2003 he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Richard Barlow is an American intelligence analyst and a former expert in nuclear non-proliferation for the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. He lost his job and was subjected to a campaign of persecution and intimidation after he expressed concern to his managers in the US Department of Defense over testimony to congress that he believed to be false about Pakistan's nuclear weapon program during the presidency of George H. W. Bush. Since then, he has had occasional contract work for various federal agencies including the CIA, the State Department, the FBI and Sandia National Laboratories. In 2013 he had been unemployed since 2004 when his job at Sandia had been eliminated. "If they had busted those [Pakistani] networks," he told journalist Jeff Stein, "Iran would have no nuclear program, North Korea wouldn't have a uranium bomb, and Pakistan wouldn't have over a hundred nuclear weapons they are driving around in vans to hide from us."
George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.
William D. Lutz is an American linguist who specializes in the use of plain language and the avoidance of doublespeak. He wrote a famous essay The World of Doublespeak on this subject as well as the book Doublespeak His original essay and the book described the four different types of doublespeak and the social dangers of doublespeak.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
Stefan A. Halper is an American foreign policy scholar and retired senior fellow at the University of Cambridge where he is a life fellow at Magdalene College. He served as a White House official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, and was reportedly in charge of the spying operation by the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign that became known as "Debategate". Through his decades of work for the CIA, Halper has had extensive ties to the Bush family. Through his work with Sir Richard Billing Dearlove, he had ties to the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
Newt Gingrich has declared his position on many political issues through his public comments and legislative record, including as Speaker of the House. The political initiative with which he is most widely identified was the Contract With America, which outlined an economic and social agenda designed to improve the efficiency of government while reducing its burden on the American taxpayer. Passage of the Contract helped establish Gingrich's reputation as a public intellectual. His engagement of public issues has continued through to the present, in particular as the founder of American Solutions for Winning the Future.
Academese is the unnecessary use of jargon in academia, particularly in academic writing in humanities; it is contrasted with plain language. The term is often but not always pejorative, and occasionally can be used to refer to complex but necessary terminology. Critics of academese argue that it usually creates unnecessary difficulty in communication, with the harshest critics arguing this is intentional with writers aiming to impress the readers and hide the fact that they are not saying anything of substance.