Political Language

Doublespeak

Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness, wrote George Orwell in 1946. When 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, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. The historical context of his remarks was very different, of course, and today's idioms are often newly minted rather than exhausted— but the underlying warning is as important as it was 70 years ago.