Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
As you know I like to do, let’s start off with a review of a fallacy we covered earlier this season, The Sunk Cost Fallacy. I want to encourage you to hit pause real quick and see if you can remember what The Sunk Cost Fallacy is! The Sunk Cost Fallacy is super simple. This happens when someone refuses to abandon a certain course of action simply b/c they’ve already invested heavily into it, even when it’s clear that it would be more beneficial to abandon that course of action than to continue in it.
So the question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing a Sunk Cost Fallacy: “Is it really a good idea to keep doing this just b/c I’ve been doing it?”
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back & check out Episode 85.
And, by the way, if you want an easy way to review the fallacies, you can purchase my e-book, which is super-creatively named Logical Fallacies, lol. Yeah, I need a better name for it…if you have any ideas for a clever name I could call it, send me an email and let me know. Anyways, I have compiled a printable, downloadable ebook that reviews each fallacy, giving the definition, an example and the question I give you at the end of each episode. I encourage you to print it off and keep it handy to help you & your teens review & remember! The link is in the show notes where you can get the e-book.
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Alright, let’s dive into today’s new fallacy, DoubleSpeak. And, I’d describe DoubleSpeak as more of a linguistic trick than a fallacy, but it’s a common one and it definitely leads to bad thinking, so I feel like it’s important to teach you about it! So, DoubleSpeak happens when someone purposely uses vague & ambiguous language to confuse or distract you from the real meaning of what they’re saying.
Here’s an example of DoubleSpeak from President George Bush in April 2003. He said this: “I reminded the soldiers and their families that the war in Iraq is really about peace.” Did you catch that? “The war is really about peace” Huh…You can probably see the DoubleSpeak in calling War Peace.
A famous literary example of DoubleSpeak is from the book 1984, written by George Orwell. One of the things people were taught and were required to repeat is: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” Now, if you’re thinking, What?!? You’d be right. It’s meant to confuse. It’s meant to make things fuzzy in your mind. And in that book, DoubleSpeak was used very intentionally to confuse, control & manipulate. This is why one of the most important things we can do to get us started on good thinking is to define words and use accurate language. It matters.
The problem behind DoubleSpeak is that it seems like it’s communicating something, but in reality it’s purposely misleading and distracting from the true meaning of certain words, concepts or ideas. Here’s the thing, guys: Words Matter. Words have meaning, and words have power. The Bible tells us that the power of life & death is in the tongue and we’re told over and over to be careful of the words we speak, so much so that we will have to give an account for the words we say one day. So, when someone wants to deceive, a lot of times they’ll use DoubleSpeak to make things seem not as bad as they really are, or to mislead you into thinking something isn’t what it really is.
Here’s a few of the different categories of DoubleSpeak:
The first is language that’s deliberately ambiguous that’s meant to mislead you.
The second is the use of euphemisms. Euphemisms are words or phrases used in place of other words or phrases that are considered inappropriate, harsh or unpleasant. For example, Sometimes people will say they used “Creative accounting” or “cooking the books” to refer to purposely lying about their accounting in their business. They’ll do this to avoid paying more taxes or to make it seem like they made more money than they did or even to hide money. Another example of euphemisms are: ‘Enhanced interrogation methods’ instead of torture. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ instead of genocide. Or how about ‘Downsizing or rightsizing’ instead of workers being laid off.
The third category of DoubleSpeak is Jargon - specific, often technical language that people use in their own industry but isn’t known outside that industry. People will often purposely use jargon with people who they know won’t understand it to make themselves feel smart or important or to make people feel dumb or confused. It’s often called Alphabet Soup and I did an episode on it back in episode 76.
A man named William Lutz, wrote a book about DoubleSpeak titled, get this, Doublespeak in which he says that the goal of DoubleSpeak is to “distort reality & corrupt thought” and he sums it up well in this quote: “Doublespeak is not a slip of the tongue or a mistaken use of language, it’s exactly the opposite. It is language used by people who are very intelligent, and very sophisticated in the use of language, and know that you can do an awful lot with language.”
If someone is using DoubleSpeak with you and it’s sounding confusing, the question to ask them is this: “Can you explain that to me in plain English as if I were a five-year-old?” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
