All animals are equal, but …

One of the most critical minds of the 20th century, George Orwell is best remembered for his 1948 novel about the horrors of a repressive society, “1984.” One of the major trademarks of Orwell’s futuristic society was doublespeak – you know, the kind of speech where words come out but nothing is said.

To Orwell, it was all intentional. As a character in “1984” explains to Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? … Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

In real life, we’re fed with blatant example of doublespeak on a regular basis. Think of the terms “collateral damage,” “asymmetric warfare,” “asset elimination” or “neutralization,” “surgical strike,” “creation science,” “downsizing,” “preowned” or “pre-emptive strike,” “embedded journalist” and, of course, “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

But nobody has been better at deliberate obfuscation than Alexander Haig , retired Army general and former secretary of state. The two most famous examples of Haigspeak are: “The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.” And, “That’s not a lie, it’s a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.”

As Orwell once said , “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”