Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Double speak

After reading examples of doublespeak in 1984, is when I actually started noticing doublespeak in our society a lot. but, I found one example to be extremely interesting. Winston says that the government executing people is not killing them but "vaporizing" them. saying the word vaporize is a lot cleaner and friendlier than saying killed slaughtered or murdered and can probably go undetected by most people. The way they use doublespeak makes their actions seem alot less server than they actually are. one night after watching the movie Hotel Rwanda, I finally caught the craziest example of doublespeak. When a genocide infests a country and starts to kill thousands of people, in order to keep other countries from getting involved and so other countries do not have to involve themselves, they refer to a genocide as "a civil war". and i guess if you are an outsider looking in, it looks like a civil war because you have one half of the country fighting another. except, the other side is getting wiped off the face of the planet and isn't trying to fight back. and then after a genocide is over and every country doesn't want to feel guilty about not intervining, they say it will "never happen again" and in textbooks can be referred to as a mass "ethinic cleansing".  Calling a mass killing of people definietly sounds alot better when you use doublespeak, because when you are a country who is not involved, it doesn't sound like a serious enough of a problem and if it is called a civil war you can't get involved at all. And, odds are, genocide is going to happen again. and when it does, we will continue to see more and more use of wonderful doublespeak, and millions of more people being "cleansed" and "vaporized,".

2 comments:

  1. First of all, LOVE that movie. Second, this is so thoughtful. We shouldn't be able to just say "it will never happen again" and move on without any guilt.

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  2. Great connections. I thought it was INSANE how the U.N. avoided being involved in the Rwandan genocide, and until you mentioned it here, I never connected doublespeak to this movie. It's a perfect example of how world leaders attempt to cover their tracks for their own personal interests.

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