ty and overtones of approval or contempt." Ambiguity refers to a word's connotation changing from good to bad as the context changes (Traugott 94).
This duckspeak, as Orwell labels it, speaks from "the larynx . . . to the gut." For example freedom will probably send chills up peoples' backs, and the word fascism will probably evoke disgust in people (Chilton 29; Orwell). These words do not appeal to logic. When they are spoken by the president or printed in the newspaper, an individual does not ordinarily ask, "What do you mean by freedom?"
It is impossible to think clearly and logically without knowing what is being said or what is meant by a specific word. George Orwell, in his famous essay, "Politics and the English Language," remarks that:
As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricat
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