Word: doublespeak
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Shedding almost all its English allusions, the show is thoroughly Amer- icanized and pervasively vulgar. Littlechap shoots for the presidency and makes it, the first Black ever to do so. Running for office on a ticket of doublespeak, Davis capitalizes on his command of antic mimicry. Donning shades, he struts his way toward the black vote. He woos the hispanics with hip-swiveling tangomania...
...mouths of bureaucrats, language is too often used to obfuscate rather than communicate. But not with impunity. For the past six years, the National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Doublespeak has presented a "dishonorable mention" to a particularly offensive official utterance. Last week the committee singled out the Pentagon for terming the neutron bomb, which kills every living creature within its reach but leaves physical structures unharmed, "a radiation enhancement weapon." The Defense Department did not send a representative to accept the award, but it did designate Army Colonel Jack Munsey as "doublespeak person" to respond...
Runners-up in the council's doublespeak competition...
Teachers are capable of doublespeak too. During last week's award ceremony, a spokesman for the award committee was asked to define doublespeak. "It's an umbrella term," he replied after an awkward silence, "a high-level abstraction to describe pernicious use of language." At least he winced as he said...
...brutality toward the civilian population was not common to all wars. They saw the racism toward the Vietnamese, the army's official refusal to acknowledge the damage the army was inflicting on a civilization. But it took correspondents a while to understand the size of the gap between official doublespeak and reality...