Customer Reviews

Doublespeak Defined: Cut Through the Bull**** and Get the Point!

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William Lutz is out to save us from the doublespeak ogres. In this his third book on the subject Lutz provides hundreds of obtuse and difficult examples of contorted language from a variety of fields. The primary offenders, of course, are big government and big industry. Lutz assures the reader that his book is a "survival manual for the contemporary linguistic jungle." Without his help we might succumb to the confusing "substance abuse" and "passanger facility charges" of this brave new world.

Taken with an appropriate grain of salt, the book makes delightful reading for all of us normal, honest, truthful folk who must beware the doublespeak ogres all around us.

Lutz' "Doublespeak Redefined" is even better that his original "Doublespeak". The approximately 18 years between them has provided ample time for business and government people to forget plain Emglish and resort to all manner of euphemisms to obfuscate what they really mean.

Lutz is to be commended for taking perpetrators who are ruining our language to task in a reasonably controlled way. I don't believe I could have!

"Doublespeak Redefined" ought to be mandatory reading for high school juniors and seniors as well as collegians who hope to make their way in business, education, government, communica tions and related disciplines. It would be beneficial for all old college grads and equivalents to peruse it on occasion so they don't fall into the euphemism abyss.