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 disability, sex, excretion, or death in a polite way.
Ronald Lee Wyden is an American politician and retired educator serving as the senior United States senator from Oregon, a seat he has held since 1996. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until 1996. He is the dean of Oregon's congressional delegation and chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
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. Roundabout speech is the use of many words 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 Democratic Party politician who has served in several different public office positions, including Secretary of Defense, CIA Director, White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and as a U.S. Representative from California.
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.
George Walker Bush is an American politician who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he previously 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.
The 2004 State of the Union Address was given by the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, on January 20, 2004, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 108th United States Congress. It was Bush's third State of the Union Address and his fourth speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, accompanied by Dick Cheney, the vice president, in his capacity as the president of the Senate.
"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 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.
Lawrence Alan Kudlow is an American conservative broadcast news personality, columnist, and political commentator. He is a financial news commentator for Fox Business and served as the Director of the National Economic Council during the Trump Administration from 2018 to 2021. He assumed that role after his previous employment as a CNBC television financial news host.
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.
Robert James Woolsey Jr. is an American political appointee who has served in various senior positions. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995. He held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including as United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time as a professional lawyer, venture capitalist and investor in the private sector.
This article describes the foreign policy positions taken by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Academese is a term referring to unnecessary jargon associated with the field of academia, particularly common in academic writing in humanities, and 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 most harsh critics arguing this is intentional with writers aiming to impress the readers and hide the fact that they are not saying anything of substance.