Linguistic reframing lets firms profit while denying misleading intent

Evidence

In a cynical innovation, Goldman Sachs secretly bet on the failure of the subprime mortgage bonds they were selling to their unwitting clients. In a linguistic sanitization, Goldman Sachs claimed they did not mislead investors but merely gave them “incomplete information” (Prins, 2014). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1495

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Incomplete information’ is a textbook euphemistic labeling/language sanitization move — a Bandura disengagement mechanism at the institutional level.
• DEFINE: Shows euphemistic labeling: reframing deception as mere omission.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1495