Range Rover or no, this isn’t a sign of economic health.
Although Orwell never used the term “doublespeak” (he preferred the more insidious “doublethink”), the term has become indelibly associated in the modern day with the dystopian totalitarian future of his classic novel 1984. In its common usage, “doublespeak” refers to any language that exploits linguistic ambiguity in order to describe a negative reality in positive terms. For most Orwellian-inspired users of the term, it generally has a political connotation. It refers to political speech that tries to mislead citizens and subjects, towards the end, as Orwell put it, of “the defence of the indefensible.” But I think the most skillful current users of doublespeak are the corporate promotors and wild-eyed futurists of Silicon Valley, along with their natural allies, the armies of TED talk speakers that have infested our public discourse. The evangelists of the new digital age have perfect the art of packaging proletarianization as progress, and making us thank them for it. Read more
