Word: doubletalk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Instead activists quickened the death of their cause by carrying its self-righteousness to new extremes. Unlike past years when SASC offered teach-ins to educate less-informed fellow students, the only lessons activists offered this spring were ones in doubletalk and cowardliness...
Your Essay on euphemisms [Jan. 9] mainly took to task government officials who deal in doubletalk. But now even veterinarians are getting into the act. NEUTER IS NEATER said the poster in the vet's office. Neuter merely sounds negative, whereas castration implies something final. We decided that we would have our dog neutered...
...same dilemma: talking about the bad news may make matters worse. The prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. As a result, says Correspondent Lawrence Malkin, who reported from Europe for this week's cover story on international debt: "Monetary officials speak in guarded code words, and commercial bankers in doubletalk." Like many other economic analysts, Malkin suspected for some time that a serious global debt problem was at hand but felt cautious about his suspicions. Not until a banker in Basel dropped his defenses over a beer and unambiguously warned him of the frailty of the Eurodollar market did Malkin decide...
...magician uses sleights of hand to create his fiction; the writer uses sleights of mind. Edgar Allan Poe, whose stories and poems have put generations of readers into a gothic trance, took time out to satirize the tricks of the literary trade. His Eureka uses metaphysical doubletalk to "explain" philosophy. The patter creates credibility, leading Poe to conclude elsewhere that "pleased at comprehending, we often are so excited as to take it for granted that we assent." In "Diddling: Considered as One of the Exact Sciences," he offers the ingredients of a good con: "Minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance...
...problem is that too many people are still taking it on themselves to speak for the Administration. Says one British Cabinet minister: "The disarray and doubletalk at the higher levels of American foreign policy has become so pronounced as to make us wonder who really is in charge." Another problem is that the State Department has not coordinated well with the White House staff; as a result, National Security Adviser Richard Allen is not laying before Reagan the detailed analyses of foreign policy problems and options that previous Presidents got from stronger aides. A third difficulty is that Secretary...