The Art of Sugarcoating

In the essay written by William Lutz, named Doubts About Doublespeak, the author describes doublespeak to be "a language which pretends to communicate but doesn't." To me, doublespeak means the same thing as sugarcoating. In this essay I learned that the four main kinds of doublespeak are euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook or bureaucratese, and inflated language. Some of these are harmful while some are useful and could be for the best.

He describes emphemism to be "a phrase designated to avoid a harsh or distasteful reality." In my opinion this is a good type of doublespeak. The reason being because this kind of doublespeak is used to not hurt people's feelings when being criticized. Some people are sensitive when dealing with certain issues and euphemism might help cope with that bad feeling of other people's bluntness. A perfect example of this doublespeak would be to say "I think we should take some time apart" instead of saying "I don't want to be with you anymore." It means the same thing but in a nicer way.

The second type of doublespeak he describes is jargon. Jargon means "the specialized language of trade." Lutz informs us that this allows people who work together to communicate with each other in a faster and more efficient way. The examples he provides for us are doctors and lawyers who have a certain codes t communicate with each other in their fields and if they were to speak to anyone outside of their working groups is where the jargon would take place. By speaking to someone in a way they do not understand. An example of this would be trying to speak to someone about something they don't know much about and assuming they had some kind of knowledge about it, because they might feel lost. It might be easier to work better using jargon, but when it comes to the real world, normal and easier ways to communicate would be more efficient so no one has to feel awkward, but I believe this type of doublespeak is harmless.

Gobbledygook or bureaucratese is the third type of doublespeak. The authors describes this doublespeak as "a matter of overwhelming the audience with words." This is when you load up a sentence of a phrase with many words in order to loose your audience in the procedure. This is often done in long documents or speeches with meanings that don't fully describe what they are about. This is a dangerous type of doublespeak because it can make you lose track and acquire false information because of the simple fact that you got lost in transaction.

And the last kind of doublespeak which I believe is also harmless is inflated language which is designed to make the ordinary sound extraordinary. This type of doublespeak isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is not the best thing, it depends under what circumstance you are using it under. For example, you might think it is okay when people use it to elevate their job title because that does not harm anyone, but when stores put out sale advertisements that sound really great but in reality are not, this becomes an issue to some people. I do not like going to a store where they are promising me great deals but I end up walking out with only a 10 percent discount.

This doublespeak to me sounds like a bunch of sugarcoating but that is what our world consists of. In our nature there is the dominant trait of being hypocrites, liars, and two faced even if we don't want to admit it. This is were sugarcoating comes in as part of being ourselves.