noun: double-speak --- deliberately euphemistic, ambiguous, or obscure language.
The reason the despotic entity ‘big brother‘ in ‘1984’ used ‘double-speak‘ was to intellectually cripple the population so they couldn’t resist, couldn’t question their lives, couldn’t talk or think about anything in any depth. They proclaimed ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,‘ such as that, in order to degrade the language and limit the imagination of the population.
Advertisers do it all the time, and so do football coaches, real estate developers, anyone who benefits from the client’s confusion is apt to twist language and obscure what actually is, the facts. In the current tide of word sludge from all sides, it takes a fair education and a streak of personal persistence to even begin to know what’s true, what’s important. For this reason consequential matters, contracts and such, use precise, direct language, each term carved in stone, whereas common usage is usually a little looser.
Nowhere is language as arbitrary as any two pages of an art magazine, commentary untethered to any physical coordinates anywhere. It all supports itself somehow, a veiny soap bubble of cross referencing, name-dropping word-puree subject to pop and splatter if ever the real thing comes along. Mark Rothko for the living room, really? Big, who has a wall that big, and boring, maybe not the first time, but there are hundreds of them out there, essentially monosyllabic color patches, worth millions, really?
If the ‘experts,’ in the news this week, can’t spot a fake Rembrandt, how much less likely are they to know which Warhol came from his ‘factory,’ or was just printed at the sign shop in the strip mall across the street? Actually there’s no way to tell, no authority to appeal to, and it’s sorta ugly anyway. What are we even talking about? There are no terms chiseled in stone to guide us, just this ‘anything can be art’ mosh pit, double-speak on steroids. Rich folks conveniently speak this language and so do many others who want to be like them, and finally it all boils down to what’s ‘collectible,’ a dollar amount.
Infamous ‘artspeak,’ a specialized form, is a court language among cultural elites not shared with the beer swilling sports fans who actually pay the taxes that supports the museums and institutions who converse in it. Still, they have lives, happiness and sorrows, maybe time to notice the sunlight as it falls across the kitchen table early in the morning, the silvery light on a lake like they saw once in a painting. The antidote, it turns out, for muddy language is seeing what’s there, and it’s art’s job to help.
The reason the despotic entity ‘big brother‘ in ‘1984’ used ‘double-speak‘ was to intellectually cripple the population so they couldn’t resist, couldn’t question their lives, couldn’t talk or think about anything in any depth. They proclaimed ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,‘ such as that, in order to degrade the language and limit the imagination of the population.
Advertisers do it all the time, and so do football coaches, real estate developers, anyone who benefits from the client’s confusion is apt to twist language and obscure what actually is, the facts. In the current tide of word sludge from all sides, it takes a fair education and a streak of personal persistence to even begin to know what’s true, what’s important. For this reason consequential matters, contracts and such, use precise, direct language, each term carved in stone, whereas common usage is usually a little looser.
Nowhere is language as arbitrary as any two pages of an art magazine, commentary untethered to any physical coordinates anywhere. It all supports itself somehow, a veiny soap bubble of cross referencing, name-dropping word-puree subject to pop and splatter if ever the real thing comes along. Mark Rothko for the living room, really? Big, who has a wall that big, and boring, maybe not the first time, but there are hundreds of them out there, essentially monosyllabic color patches, worth millions, really?
If the ‘experts,’ in the news this week, can’t spot a fake Rembrandt, how much less likely are they to know which Warhol came from his ‘factory,’ or was just printed at the sign shop in the strip mall across the street? Actually there’s no way to tell, no authority to appeal to, and it’s sorta ugly anyway. What are we even talking about? There are no terms chiseled in stone to guide us, just this ‘anything can be art’ mosh pit, double-speak on steroids. Rich folks conveniently speak this language and so do many others who want to be like them, and finally it all boils down to what’s ‘collectible,’ a dollar amount.
Infamous ‘artspeak,’ a specialized form, is a court language among cultural elites not shared with the beer swilling sports fans who actually pay the taxes that supports the museums and institutions who converse in it. Still, they have lives, happiness and sorrows, maybe time to notice the sunlight as it falls across the kitchen table early in the morning, the silvery light on a lake like they saw once in a painting. The antidote, it turns out, for muddy language is seeing what’s there, and it’s art’s job to help.
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