Intentional vagueness
Stating a position so loosely that every listener can hear what they wanted to hear and no listener can later say the speaker promised anything.
Precision makes enemies. A specific proposal can be costed, tested, and opposed; a vague one cannot. The device keeps the language at an altitude where agreement is easy and disagreement is impossible: "reform," "a new approach," "common-sense solutions," "doing what works." The audience fills the blank with its own preferences, so the speaker gets the approval of people who want opposite things, and later, when a specific act disappoints one of them, the speaker can point out that nothing specific was ever said.
It differs from glittering generalities, which use value words, and from weasel words, which hedge specific claims; vagueness is the absence of a claim dressed as the presence of one. Exploits Ambiguity Effect and Confirmation Bias.
Historical examples
Orwell's catalog of political language included the writer who "either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not." He gave the device its enduring diagnosis: "political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."
Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." Horizon 13, no. 76 (April 1946).
Stewart Chaplin's story "The Stained-Glass Political Platform," the source of the phrase "weasel words," is a satire on party platforms written to mean nothing to anyone who might object. The genre it mocked was already old, and the devices Chaplin listed, from the "elastic" plank to the resounding pledge to "principles," are the ones still in use.
Chaplin, Stewart. "The Stained-Glass Political Platform." Century Magazine, June 1900.
In advertising and commerce
"New and improved," "advanced formula," "clinically inspired," "the smart choice": the advertising phrase-book is built to imply an improvement without specifying one, because a specified improvement can be tested by a regulator or a rival. Ivan Preston's study of puffery showed how courts came to treat such claims as legally meaningless, which is the point of them.
Preston, Ivan L. The Great American Blow-Up: Puffery in Advertising and Selling. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.
Find a promise from a campaign or an advertisement. Write down exactly what would have to happen for the promise to be kept. If you can't, that's the technique.
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
"We will bring real change through common-sense solutions that put people first."
What to notice. No act is named. Every listener supplies their own, and none can hold the speaker to it later.
Asked whether the plant would close, the director said the company was "reviewing its options across the whole estate."
What to notice. A question with a yes-or-no answer is met with a statement that fits any outcome.
"New improved formula." The packaging does not say what changed.
What to notice. An improvement is implied and never specified, so it cannot be checked or contradicted.
Sources
- Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." Horizon 13, no. 76 (April 1946).
- Chaplin, Stewart. "The Stained-Glass Political Platform." Century Magazine, June 1900.
- Preston, Ivan L. The Great American Blow-Up. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. ISBN 978-0299067809
- Eisenberg, Eric M. "Ambiguity as Strategy in Organizational Communication." Communication Monographs 51, no. 3 (1984): 227–242. doi:10.1080/03637758409390197