Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a "communication bypass". Such language is associated with governmental, military, and corporate institutions.
Doublespeak may be in the form of bald euphemisms ("downsizing" for "firing of many employees") or deliberately ambiguous phrases ("wet work" for "assassination"). Doublespeak is distinguished from other euphemisms through its deliberate usage by governmental, military, or corporate institutions.
The word doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is often incorrectly attributed to George Orwell and his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The word actually never appears in that novel; Orwell did, however, coin newspeak, oldspeak, and doublethink, and his novel made fashionable composite nouns with speak as the second element, which were previously unknown in English. It was therefore just a matter of time before someone came up with doublespeak. Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's lexicography, as the B vocabulary of Newspeak, words "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them."
Doublespeak is most reminiscent of Orwell's "newspeak" when it is used by a government agency to cover up something unpleasant. The government may find the need to talk about something that has negative connotations to large portions of the public, and avoids backlash by replacing the term with a new one that most people will not recognize as the same thing. Thus "area denial munitions" means "landmines", "physical persuasion" means "torture", and "operational exhaustion" means "shell shock".
A stray 2,000-pound bomb causes "a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile." Government doublespeak can also involve simple euphemisms, like "wet work" meaning "assassination".
Doublespeak was very common in the Third Reich. Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Ministry of the Reich for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) coined thousands of new German words. Other examples include: "Concentration camp" (labor/death camp), "Heim ins Reich" (occupation of Austria), and particular new meanings for "Volk" (people) and "Rasse" (race).
A prominent example of doublespeak in the corporate world is the number of different phrases that all describe the action of "firing lots of employees", usually obliquely. These phrases include "layoffs", "downsizing", "right-sizing", "headcount adjustment", "RIF" (reduction in force), and "realignment." The Dilbert comic strip satirizes this in one strip in which an employee understands none of these terms and is unable to figure out that he has been fired. Corporate doublespeak can also involve downplaying problems, such as calling a fix for a software bug a "reliability enhancement".
Police and court officers use jargon and terms of art that can be seen as doublespeak when they are used to cover up brutality or corruption. "Fines on the spot", for example, are bribes taken during traffic stops. What police call "aggressive enforcement" may be called "racial profiling" by others. To "pacify" someone, euphemistically, is to subdue them by force.
In some instances, such as the "Dirty 39th" Precinct in Philadelphia, this has been the term of choice for excessive and unjustified force.
When illegal activity is routine, it often acquires its own specific jargon.