Collins & Patel 1

Moore Tends to Doublespeak

By
Justin Collins and Akash Patel

Professor Blair
UWRT 1102
10 October 2014

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Moore Tends to Doublespeak
Talks of gun control have been in the air of this country for a longtime. Whenever
someone starts shooting spree at a local school the President tells the people that there
will be stricter laws on guns. Politicians in our country have debated over gun control
whether to have stricter laws or to keep the laws the way they are. Many politicians use
unnecessary ways to get their point across a group of audience. One way is by using
fallacies to have the audience engaged. Michael Moore is a great example. We believe
that Michael Moore uses different kinds of fallacies unnecessarily to sound more
professional and appealing to his audience. Michael Moore uses inflated language and
euphemisms in his article. These types are known as doublespeak.
William Lutz writes in his article, Doubts about Doublespeak, that there four
types of doublespeak and two of them being inflated language and euphemisms. In
Michael Moores article, Its the Guns But We All Know, Its Not Really the Guns,
there are quite a few examples. Moore states we send in remote pilotless planes to
kill (Moore, 3). According to Lutz, inflated language is designed to make the
ordinary seem extraordinary (124). Michael Moore could have just stated we send
drones to kill instead of we send in remote pilotless planes to kill (Moore, 3).
Michael Moore also uses another doublespeak called euphemisms to sound for
professional in his article. He states we send our lower classes off to do the
killing(Moore,3). According to Lutz, the euphemism is a word or phrase designed to
avoid a harsh or distasteful reality (123). IN our opinion, Moore should not have said
lower class. Instead, he could have just said to soldiers and not have income to do

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anything with the idea of sending people overseas to kill. In other words, Moore really
means, we are sending the poor folks of our country to fight for our freedom/country.
The use of doublespeak has been seen in many speeches and articles by
politicians. We can see doublespeak in many of President Obamas speeches and former
President Bushs speeches. Both politicians tend to use dying metaphors to relate things
to the people could understand the situation better. Like Michael Moore, they tend to use
fallacies to communicate pointless words and to look and sound more professional.

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Works Cited
Lutz, William. Doubts about Doublespeak. Models for Writers. Eds. Alfred Rosa and
Paul Eschholz. New York: Bedford / St. Martins, 2004. 122-126. Print.
McClintok, Ann. Propaganda Techniques in Todays Advertising. The Longman
Reader. Ed. Judith Nadell. New York: Longman, 2003. 304-311. Print.

Moore, Michael. "It's the Guns - But We All Know, It's Not Really the Guns." The Huffington
Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 July 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.

Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. A Collection of Critical Essays.
New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1981. 156-171. Print.
Wood, Nancy. Essentials of Argument. Upper Saddle River: Pearson / Prentice Hall,
2006. Print.