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Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism

Wednesday 06 September 2006

One of the central insights of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four concerned the manipulative use of language, which he called "newspeak" and "doublethink," and which we now call "doublespeak" and "Orwellian." Since the catastrophic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal government has routinely employed a disturbing new vocabulary -- or doublespeak -- to expand its police powers, claims a new Cato Institute study, "Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism." By compiling a laundry list of doublespeak terms used throughout the war, Cato scholar Timothy Lynch scrutinizes the government's manipulative use of language and exposes the underlying issues it obscures.

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