Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but doublespeak seems to be prevalent even in casual conversation
In special, the sort of doublespeak where someone lists something as a bonus of whatever the person defends, but as a malus for what he doesn’t like. Often through different and partially overlapping words, such as one program being “traditional and tested” and another “archaic and outdated”. Or one politician being “in sync with the voters” and another being “a demagogue”.
Oh yeah, I hate that. I find it sad that there’s a market for that kind of content. It’s not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.
It’s not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.
That requires us* to focus on the objective matters. We can’t do that. We need to wallow in all that precious, oh so precious, subjectivity. But we can’t show it, because then we can’t claim “it’s facts”, and we’re opening room for disagreement.
In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word “toxic”.
*by “we” I mean “people in general”, not necessarily you and me.
I suspect a lot of people make the mistake of seeking out analysis, but not stopping to consider if they actually understand more after reading it, as well. They figure because they spent half an hour reading they must now be smarter, when that’s not necessarily the case, and from a writer’s perspective that gives an opportunity to make money by producing giant quantities of boilerplate text. Or at least did, before GPT and friends showed up.
In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word “toxic”.
Can you give an example? The first thing that comes to mind is “toxic masculinity”, which is more of a “set expression”, and then “toxicity” in online spaces which in context refers to an abundance of hostility or negative emotional content.
I suspect a lot of people make the mistake of seeking out analysis, but not stopping to consider if they actually understand more after reading it, as well.
Yup. Or stopping to analyse the analysis, it isn’t just because someone analysed it that it’ll be necessarily worth a damn.
from a writer’s perspective that gives an opportunity to make money by producing giant quantities of boilerplate text.
Similarities with “self-help” are not a mere coincidence.
Can you give an example?
Sure. Made up and a bit forced, but it should be typical enough to highlight what I mean:
- [Alice] Bob, I think that you should cut your hair.
- [Bob] Alice, this is toxic. I didn’t ask your opinion!
Bob clearly doesn’t like uncalled advice. That’s fine for me, I don’t like it either, and it would be also fine if Bob said “hey Alice, I don’t like this, stahp”. But that’s still someone (a subject) not liking something - in other words a subjective matter. It’s an opinion and it should be treated as such.
And, yet by labelling the behaviour “toxic”, Bob makes it look like it’s something about the object (the behaviour) thus objective, something intrinsically true, shielded against the criticism that an opinion would get. But it’s still an opinion, so you can’t even criticise it as a true/false statement - you can’t “prove” an opinion.
Note that even the description that you’ve provided hints this duplicity: hostility is objective, but “negative emotional” is subjective.
(I didn’t include “toxic masculinity” because I didn’t really think about it. Plus as you said it’s a fixed expression, those tend to vary in meaning too much from the component words. )
