Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms, in which case it is meant to make the truth sound more palatable, it may refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most associated with political language, it originated as a Newspeak word from George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term "doublespeak" originates in George Orwell's book "1984". Although the term is not used in the book, it is a close relative of two of the book's central concepts, "doublethink" and "Newspeak". Another variant, "doubletalk" referring to deliberately ambiguous speech, did exist at the time Orwell wrote his book, but the usage of "doublespeak", as well as of "doubletalk", in the sense emphasizing ambiguity postdates the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Parallels have been drawn between doublespeak and Orwell's classic essay Politics and the English Language, which discusses the distortion of language for political purposes.
In it he observes that political language serves to obfuscate reality. Orwell's description of political speech is similar to the contemporary definition of doublespeak: In our time, political speech and writing are the defence of the indefensible … Thus political language has to consist of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness … the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms... The writer Edward S. Herman cited what he saw as examples of doublespeak and doublethink in modern society. Herman describes in his book Beyond Hypocrisy the principal characteristics of doublespeak: What is important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, to get away with it. Terrence P. Moran of the US National Council of Teachers of English has compared the use of doublespeak in the mass media to a set of laboratory experiments conducted on rats.
In the experiment, a sample of rats was first deprived of food, before one group was fed sugar and water and the other group a saccharin solution. Both groups exhibited behavior indicating that their hunger was satisfied, but rats in the second group died of malnutrition. Moran parallels doublespeak's effects on the social masses to the second group of rats upon whom an illusionary effect was created, he highlights the structural nature of doublespeak, notes that the mass media and other social institutions employ an active, downward-aimed approach in managing the opinions of society at large:This experiment suggests certain analogies between the environments created for rats by the scientists and the environments created for us humans by language and the various mass media of communication. Like the saccharine environment, an environment created or infiltrated by doublespeak provides the appearance of nourishment and the promise of survival, but the appearance is illusionary and the promise false.
Doublespeak has close connections with some contemporary theories. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky comment in their book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media that Orwellian doublespeak is an important component of the manipulation of the English language in American media, through a process called dichotomization, a component of media propaganda involving "deeply embedded double standards in the reporting of news." For example, the use of state funds by the poor and financially needy is referred to as "social welfare" or "handouts," which the "coddled" poor "take advantage of." These terms, are not as applied to other beneficiaries of government spending such as military spending. The National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Doublespeak was formed in 1971, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, it was at a point when there was widespread skepticism about the degree of truth which characterized relationships between the public and the worlds of politics, the military, business.
NCTE passed two resolutions. One called for the Council to find means to study dishonest and inhumane uses of language and literature by advertisers, to bring offenses to public attention, to propose classroom techniques for preparing children to cope with commercial propaganda; the other called for the Council to find means to study the relationships between language and public policy and to track and combat semantic distortion by public officials, candidates for office, political commentators, all others whose language is transmitted through the mass media. The two resolutions were accomplished by forming NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak, a body which has made significant contributions in describing the need for reform where clarity in communication has been deliberately distorted. Hugh Rank was its first chairman. Under his editorship, the committee produced a book called Language and Public Policy, with the aim of informing readers of the extensive scope of doublespeak being used to deliberately mislead and deceive the audience.
He highlighted the deliberate public misuses of language and provided strategies for countering doublespeak by focusing on educating people in the English language so as to help them identify when doublespeak is being put in
Card Factory is a chain of greeting card and gift stores in United Kingdom founded by Dean Hoyle and his wife Janet. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Dean Hoyle left school with no qualifications. With his wife Janet, from 1993 they began buying cards wholesale, selling them from the back of their van at car boot sales and public open air events. In 1997, they opened their first shop under within the holding company Sportswift Ltd, purposefully choosing secondary retail locations which were cheaper. After opening a few stores, whilst Janet founded and headed up the internal design and print function, Dean concentrated on expanding the business, with a nominal target of 500 retail outlets; this gave the company a profit margin advantage including Clinton Cards. The couple built a board to expand the business, including: Keith Pacey. On 28 November 2008, Card Factory purchased about 80 of the 288 stores from failed greetings card company Celebrations Group, as part of a rescue package, securing around 500 of the 1,800 jobs at Celebrations.
The couple put the business up for sale in January 2010 and on 8 April 2010, Charterhouse completed the £350 million purchase of the company. This enabled Dean Hoyle to buy Huddersfield Town F. C. On 14 July 2011, Card Factory purchased gettingpersonal.co.uk for an undisclosed sum. In May 2014, the company floated via an Initial Public Offering on the London Stock Exchange; the company operates some 480 stores. Macmillan Cancer Support is the company's chosen charity; the company has been prosecuted for Health and Safety infringements on a number of occasions. Incidents have included poor stock management, overstocking of stores, damaged equipment, inadequate risk assessments and staff training. Card Factory website Getting Personal website
Phileas is a bus rapid transit, developed by Samenwerkingsverband Regio Eindhoven, along with some other companies for the Cooperation Foundation Eindhoven Region. It is an advanced guided bus intended to deliver tram-like public transport at a low cost: the infrastructure is much cheaper, because of less maintenance, there are no rails and overhead lines; the project was initiated in 1998 to keep knowledge about technology and innovatio in the region and create jobs. The biggest feature of the bus is the recharging of the battery by means of electromagnetic induction; the project started in the late 1990s. The project has cost more than two billion euros, including infrastructure changes. Phileas is called after Phileas Fogg, the protagonist in Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne because of the high speed and ability to be on time; the Phileas drives on a bus lane, following a pre-programmed route defined by magnets built into the road. The FROG technique used allowed driverless operation, though in fact for legal reasons a driver is always present - the budget prevented the Phileas from being separated from ordinary traffic.
However several years ago the regional authority for urban transport in Eindhoven decided to stop using the magnetic guidance system. The computer system inside the Phileas buses is designed according to Safety Integrity Level SIL-4, it has a triple-redundant, fail-safe architecture. This means; each is installed in a different place in the bus, so as to avoid a complete system failure in case of a vehicle collision. Every single computer obtains data from all sensors via two CAN bus connections and compares them with the other two computers' results. In case of data mismatch, the bus is switched off and the entire system goes into safe state, which means that the bus stops and opens its doors. On 3 November 2005 a license & technology transfer agreement was signed between Advanced Public Transport Systems and the Korea Railroad Research Institute. KRRI developed the Korean version of Phileas vehicle by May 2011. In December 2009, APTS, the manufacturer of the Phileas Tram, signed a contract with Ballard Fuel Cells of Vancouver to supply zero emission engines for the Phileas.
The Phileas Trams are in successful operation in the Netherlands, Turkey and Israel. They were in use for a time in Douai in France, but persistent unreliability led to their replacement by traditional articulated buses just 4 years after their introduction. Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality purchased 50 Phileas bi-articulated vehicles for the Metrobus project. Due to overcrowding on vehicles, the hilly terrain of Istanbul, the Phileas bus needed modifications to the axles. Changes were made to accommodate the higher passenger traffic. Trolleybus Bombardier Primove ABB TOSA Flash Mobility, Clean City, Smart Bus www.apts-phileas.com PhileasNews Ballard Power of Vancouver signs with APTS to power Phileas Trams Phileas in Istanbul This article incorporates parts of the Dutch Wikipedia entry, nl:Phileas