Officialese and Straight Talk in Socialist Europe of the 1980s

Abstract

Can linguistics help to study those countries in Europe which were called ‘socialist’ and to explain differences among them? Of the various possible approaches, one that has been little explored is the way language is considered in these countries. The issue of the language of political power, or ‘officialese’ (in French: ‘langue du bois’), is indeed a hackneyed subject and it will not be dealt with here. The object I propose to investigate has rarely been studied as such. It is the alternative discourse to officialese, the claim to speak a language that is not stiff or dull or false, but true and alive: in other words, ‘straight talk’. I shall try to build a typology of different East European countries based on the various works produced on officialese, according to the standard image of the anti-officialese which can be drawn from these works. This approach should cast new light on former socialist countries, given that one sees in the attitude towards the relationship between language and political power a reflection of political thought in the different countries.