But its deliberate corruption to mislead, distort, deceive, inflate, circumvent, or obfuscate is a plague for our times. It is a form of Doublespeak, which is itself an extension and elaboration of the Newspeak of Orwell s 1984 . According to coiner of the term, William Lutz, it is not a matter of subjects and verbs agreeing. It is a matter of words and facts agreeing. It is the incongruity between words and what they refer to.
Good communication is active, clear, and concise.
It conveys meaning crisply with the fewest possible words. In what is loosely referred to as health care, the corruption of language borders on lunacy. One might even imagine a plot in which administrators and others bamboozle patients with fuzzy prose that also serves to hide their own foolishness from criticism. Let's start with the complete inversion of the term health from its original meaning. Health once meant a condition of soundness and wholeness.