Dictionary Battles: The Fight to Find Meaning in Doublespeak

Words matter.

Ask P.J. Crowley, who was until recently the State Department’s spokesman. Ignoring the calm decorum and cautious doublespeak that has characterized diplomacy for centuries, he spoke bluntly about the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks conspirator Bradley Manning.

"What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defense," Crowley said. He resigned not long after.

Or ask Sarah Palin, who last year created a controversial neologism in refudiate and yesterday wondered if the situation in Libya is a war or a “squirmish,” (a rather apropos malamanteau of “squirm” and “skirmish,” both of which seem, in fact, to be occurring in and about Libya).  These verbal blunders give ammunition to her political opponents and may help scuttle her as-yet-to-be-determined presidential bid.

It may seem foolish to give so much weight to a few sentences. Regardless of whether actions taken in Libya are an “intervention,” as described by President Obama, or simply an international addendum to what is ultimately a civil war, U.S. missiles fell on Libyan soil.

In George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language,” written in 1946, he wrote, “Political language–and with variations, this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists–is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

Orwell, raging against what he sees as the dying of the English language, wants us to say what we mean and mean what we say. But what if we don’t know what we mean in the first place?

In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh examined whether the U.S. is, as many experts claim, currently embroiled in a wide-scale cyber-war, or (less explosively) parrying with other countries engaged in cyber-espionage. With no clear definitions and a language that is still lagging behind technology, there is no right answer. Choosing a term, though, sets the stage for both which government agency will take the lead (the military? DHS?) and which body of laws bounds the government’s actions. China hawks and privacy advocates square off in a battle best fought in dusty dictionary pages.

Of course, one needn’t dive into the midst of international upheaval to find wars over words; Language Log recently posted on a long-standing (and rather pugilistic) dispute over whether the model train scale should be written HO or H0.

No less a word maven than David Foster Wallace explored the academic angst over prescriptivism and descriptivism, whether language should be bound to the rules that define it or allowed to evolve as usage changes.

Heck, even the announcement of new words in the OED sends the blogosphere into a tizzy. (LOL and OMG may have gotten the most attention for making the cut, but I love the fact that the Seinfeldian usage of “muffin top” is making it in to English’s most comprehensive dictionary.)

In politics more than in model railroad speak, chosen words can have far more effect. Because of this, political speech has often involved choosing any word but the most direct one.

Orwell lamented: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.”

What is needed, often, is not a better writer or more concise speech, but the courage to stand behind one’s actions without a protective veil of doublespeak. However, in return, the listener (we) cannot railroad the honest speaker for simply telling us what we should already know.

It is easy to bemoan the risk-adverse politician or the dissimulating speechwriter. They are, though, what we have made them. A plain-speaking politician is a rarity not because of an innate traits of another breed of human, but because we have voted them out of existence. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, and perhaps the greatest constraint on our politicians, is the use of words in the 24-hour, constantly televised news cycle. To call it a discourse of hyperbole seems a disservice to both words. A valuable lesson could be learned from Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, which consciously attempts to remain levelheaded and calm during a crisis.

In the end, words matter. Crowley stands by his description of Manning’s treatment; although technically legal, and perhaps deserved, it is certainly counterproductive. And he used words that described the situation bluntly, without the layer of dissimulation or patina of propriety we’re used to. “Actions can be legal,” Crowley reminds us, “and still not smart.”

Likewise, words may be correct, and still not right. We should not shy away from the right word when warranted, nor force a word to do our bidding when it’s not.