Since 1974 the committee has been presenting its Doublespeak
Award for the most egregious, pernicious examples of doublespeak each year.
Since 1975 the committee has been presenting its annual Orwell Award for the
work that most effectively addresses the problem of doublespeak. In 1974 the
committee began publishing a newsletter that subsequently became the Quarterly
Review of Doublespeak, highlighting examples of doublespeak from business,
government, education, the military, medicine, and other areas. Other activities
of the committte have included providing speakers through its Speakers’
Bureau, sponsoring publication of books and other materials, and organizing
panels at various professional meetings. Yet despite its effort through panels,
workshops, seminars, speeches, publications, and awards with attendant recognition
by the media—the committee has yet to fulfill one of its goals: to devise
and disseminate classroom techniques for preparing students to cope with doublespeak
of whatever variety and source.
Perhaps at least part of the problem resides in an apparently one-sided approach
to doublespeak detection, an approach whereby the analyst demonstrates how
the language is used to conceal or distort the reality that it purports to
represent. Charles Weingartner, one of the founding members of the Committee
on Public Doublespeak, observed in conversation some years ago that “people
don’t know enough about the subject [the reality] to recognize that the
language being used conceals, distorts, or misleads.” Even a cursory
look at the publications and pronouncements by the Doublespeak Committee and
its members reveals that the doublespeak cited has largely been a result of
the analyst’s substantive knowledge of the subject matter, the reality.
But if Weingartner is correct, where does that leave students—and the
committee’s lofty goals?
The answer to that question underscores the crucial need for every English
teacher—on every level, from the primary grades to graduate school, and
in every field of the profession, from rhetoric and composition to linguistics,
and all periods and genres of literature—to become an expert in teaching
about linguistic vulnerability. This needs to be taught not only as a peripheral
concern or an occasional “unit” inserted into putatively more “weighty”
material, but as a primary, continuous, and pervasive responsibility.
No one has made this point more cogently than Wendell Berry, who has argued
that “at the very root of the idea of the profession...is the imperative
to speak plainly in the common tongue” and to instill this ability in
students. “How to make and how to judge are the business of education,”
he continues, and “language is at the heart of the problem”(79).
As part of the solution to the problem, particularly that of which Weingartner
spoke, Berry further suggests that teachers of English should remember, and
teach our students, that words are not things, but verbal tokens or signs
of things that should finally be carried back to the things they stand for
to be verified. It is this human act of carrying verbal tokens back to their
specific referents and judging them on the basis of how accurately they conform
to their referential reality that should be taught. Failure to do so will
result in even greater problems of linguistic manipulation.
Doublespeak. . . Again?
One might well ask, “Why do English teachers need to be reminded yet
again about doublespeak and the need to teach students about its perils?”
Or, phrased differently, “What characterizes the present social and political
climate that makes it so important to keep the dialogue going?” On one
hand, perhaps little has changed in the several decades since the Committee
on Public Doublespeak was established—or the nearly five decades since
Orwell’s 1984 appeared. Unscrupulous politicians, advertisers, religionists,
and other doublespeakers of whatever stripe continue to abuse language for
manipulative purposes. As Orwell pointed out in “Politics and the English
Language,” that classic essay that seems admittedly quaint when read
today, the effect (manipulative language) can become a cause, “reinforcing
the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and
so on indefinitely” (Howe 249). That is precisely what continues to happen.
On the other hand, though, the present climate reveals some disturbing differences
over the past several decades—even beyond Orwell’s “intensified
form.” Not only does doublespeak “make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable [giving] an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” but also
the duplicity has become even more widespread and subtle. Regardless of one’s
political affiliation, who can deny that the linguistic duplicity of just
about anyone trying to persuade—whether to buy a certain product or vote
for a certain politician—has become fashionable, even assumed, expected,
accepted, and hence justifiable. Orwell’s plea to make pretentiousness
unfashionable has sadly gone unheeded. If, as he noted in “Why I Write,”
“good prose is like a windowpane,”the panes today are not only murky
but almost opaque. Even more disturbing at present is the assumption that,
just to win elections, politicians must, and therefore may justifiably, doublethink,
doublespeak, and doubledo.
There is the further sense that what is at stake, what we feel, is so crucial,
so deep, so complex that it can be expressed only by leaving behind quaint
notions of ethics, abandoning clarity and simplicity, and giving up even trying
to be truthful. The argument was made recently that because everyone knows
advertisements are not factual, why should anyone expect them to be? An equally
disturbing corollary attitude is the growing distrust of and cynicism about
language itself. E. J. Dionne Jr., in his book Why Americans Hate Politics,
argues that there is a growing “distrust of language, distrust of the
correct, distrust of practicality itself.” Students should be taught
a healthy skepticism about the use and potential abuse of language but duly
warned about the dangers of an unhealthy cynicism. (A teacher might well begin
with a discussion of the distinctions—both denotations and connotations—
between cynicism and skepticism; for example, cynicism involves a contemptuous,
pessimistic, disparaging—often bitter—disbelief with no implication
of further investigation; skepticism, on the other hand, involves the doubting
and questioning of the validity or authenticity of something that purports
to be truthful—but with the implication of ongoing probing and testing
of evidence.)
Preparing Students to Cope with Doublespeak
Belletrists, who have both demonstrated the effective use of language and
warned against its abuse, can teach much about the responsible use of language.
For example, poet William Carlos Williams, in a letter to Robert Creeley,
noted that “to write badly is an offense to the state since the government
can never be more than a government of words. If the language is distorted,
crime flourishes.”How can we demonstrate to students that language has
the potential to cause crime to flourish?
Obviously, there are no easy answers to this question, but the recent work
of various critical theorists provides some useful ideas. For example, Judith
Butler’s Excitable Speech: A Politics of Performance, particularly the
introductory chapter, “On Linguistic Vulnerability,” is illuminating.
According to Butler, “the assertion that some speech not only communicates
hate, but constitutes an injurious act, presumes not only that language acts,
but that it acts upon its addressee in an injurious way.”Further, she
argues that offensive language can be “returned to its speaker in a different
form and defused through that return” in “a kind of talking back.”
Students can be taught this process of “talking back” through exercises
and activities requiring them to return to the referent, judge the accuracy
of the language, and then translate the doublespeak into its realistic counterpart.
For example, when we encounter such expressions as “terminological inexactitude,”
“reality argumentation,” or “political credibility problem,”
the “talkback” translation is simply “lie,” and a “sufferer
from fictitious disorder syndrome” is simply a “liar.” When
we see or hear “substantive negative outcome” or “immediate
permanent incapacitation,” we translate it simply as “death.”
“Positive restructuring” is “bankruptcy”; “dysfunctional
behavior” is “criminal activity”; “after-sales services”
are “kick-backs”; “wet deposition” is “acid rain”;
“temporarily displaced inventory” is “stolen goods”; and
so on.
Like it or not, television and the media have a lot to teach us about communicating
with young people who have grown up under the enticement of the media’s
electric carrot. In the English classroom, teaching about doublespeak should
be grounded, first, in applicability and practicality; that is, teachers should
begin where the students are, with their own referential reality. They should
choose examples that are meaningful and applicable to student experience.
For example, students can be asked how they feel about a soft-drink vending
machine being called “an immediate consumption channel,” or a bag
of ice cubes being called “a thermal remediation unit,” or a drop
in test scores being called “a negative gain in measured academic achievement.”
Second, students’ own linguistic vulnerability should be demonstrated
in a meaningful and convincing way. How would they react, for example, if
while shopping they encounter “vegetarian leather” for plain, cheap
vinyl; or “synthetic glass” for plastic; or, in place of down payment,
they get “customer capital cost reduction”?
Third, they should be made more sensitive to language and how it works, not
just denotation but connotation, concrete versus abstract terms, specific
versus general, adjectives as evaluative projections of a speaker or writer,
slanted language, and much more. For example, they can be asked to consider
how many times in a year they buy something simply on the persuasive appeal
of words rather than on the genuine merits of the product, whether that product
is sunglasses, clothes, vehicles, or food. Especially illuminating in developing
sensitivity to language are exercises that ask students to distinguish differences
in connotation among lists of so-called synonyms. For example, which of the
following would they like to be called—and why: boy/girl, lad/lassie,
kid, young person, youngster, tyke, juvenile, future citizen, Generation X-er,
member of the rising generation? Lively discussions can be conducted on the
connotative effects of the language of advertising. For example, why are certain
words taboo in advertising, requiring the substitution of euphemisms: not
“fat” but “full figured,” not “cheap” but “inexpensive,”
not “used car” but “preowned automobile,” not “smell”
but “aroma.” (A recent example of doublespeak for “stink”
is “exceed the olfactory threshold.”)
Fourth, students should be taught not only to read critically but also to
speak and write re responsibility Wasn't’it Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
who noted that a writer should be prepared to stand cross-examination on every
word? And as for reading critically, perhaps Thomas Carlyle said it best:
“If we think of it, all that a university or final highest school can
do for us is still but what the first school began doing—teach us to
read.” Isn’t that at least a significant part of the English teacher’s
job description?
Finally, students should be taught how to “talk back” by disarming
and defusing doublespeak through what Judith Butler calls “counter-appropriation”
(or what Hugh Rank has called “intensifying” and “downplaying”
in his Doublespeak Schema). Recent communication theory offers further direction
for discussing doublespeak in the classroom. For example, even a brilliant,
well-organized, and illustrated lecture on language manipulation may have
limited success (the doublespeaker would call it “counterproductive”).
Like it or not, television and the media have a lot to teach us about communicating
with young people
Looking for examples of doublespeak can be a group activity. One key lesson
is the usefulness of narrative, of story, of anecdote. Everyone loves a story—and
who more than students? Observe how advertisers try to persuade us to buy
a certain product or service through a brief dramatic story with conflict
and resolution—all in a compact sixty-second segment. For example, the
housewife (“domestic engineer?”) is expecting guests for an important
dinner but at the last minute discovers embarrassing water spots on her goblets,
whereupon her faithful friend recommends the right detergent that saves the
day—and the hostess’s reputation. Succinct vignettes that draw and
hold attention through the use of narrative conflict and suspense are often
used in TV commercials: Will the young man needing new tires for his car get
to the dealership before closing time? Yes, he slides—on his stomach—into
the discount tirestore at the last second for his new tires and is graciously
served after closing time, and a feisty little lady returns her tire, throwing
it through the window to the fulsome thanks of the proprietor.
Teachers of English should have no trouble devising narratives or, better yet, basing the study of doublespeak in literature itself. A useful narrative for teaching about doublespeak, especially in the early grades, is Evaline Ness’s Caldecott-winning book Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine. The story is about Sam (Samantha), a little girl who has “the reckless habit of lying” (“not even the sailors home from the sea could tell stranger stories than Sam”). “Moonshine” is the word for all the fibs Sam tells. Only when Sam’s little friend, Thomas, and her cat, Bangs, are almost lost because of her “moonshine” does Sam come to learn the importance of speaking "Real and avoiding Moonshine. Other similar books are Jean Little’s One to Grow On, about a little girl who has the habit of “embroidering the truth,” and Emily Cheney Neville’s The Seventeenth Street Gang, also about the serious consequences of “two-faced exhibitions.”
On a higher level, much can be taught about doublespeak from such familiar narratives as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck struggles, for example, with the linguistic manipulation by his Pap, who spoke of “lifting” or “borrowing” watermelons, whereas the Widow Douglas said that was “but a soft name for stealing”; later Tom insists that “when a prisoner of style escapes it’s called an evasion." Such language manipulation can be tied to Tom’s appalling subjection of Jim to the cruelties of visionary rescue, when he knows all along that Jim is already free. Similarly, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie can be used to teach about illusion (along with dangerous language) and reality, as well as sensitive discrimination between a responsible use of euphemism to spare feelings and the pernicious use to cloak reality for the purpose of manipulation. In the play, near the end of Scene Five, Amanda Wingfield tells her son Tom, “Don’t say crippled! You know that I never allow that word to be used!” Tom replies: “But face facts, Mother. She is and—and that’s not all...She’s terribly shy and lives in a world of her own and those things make her seem a little peculiar liar to people outside the house.” “Don’t say peculiar,” Amanda insists. Students can be asked who is right—or whether either character is totally correct.
Besides narrative, the use of dialogue, of conversation, of creative role-playing
is effective in teaching about doublespeak in the classroom. Carrying on a
dialogue with students and getting them to do the same with each other in
meaningful ways can be very effective in teaching about language manipulation.
For example, students can be asked to discuss and give possible examples of
William Carlos Williams’ statement, cited above, that “the government
can never be more than a government of words” and that “if the language
is distorted, crime flourishes.” Or they could be asked to discuss and
exemplify Toni Morrison’s observation, in her Nobel Prize acceptance
speech, that “oppressive language does more than represent violence;
it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits
knowledge." Quite simply, they can be asked to share and discuss examples
of how they have been violated by language.
A third technique is the use of proverbs, apothegms, or slogans. For example,
that old saw, that egregious lie that has been used to mislead children for
years—“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never
hurt me”—can be the provocative focus of a discussion of doublespeak
and manipulative language. Words, of course, can do a lot worse than break
bones; they can break hearts and even lives, spawn hatred, and provoke psychological
violation and even physical violence. Students can also discuss more obviously
false slogans, such as Orwell’s from 1984: “War is Peace”;
“Freedom is Slavery”; “Ignorance is Strength.”
Ultimately, the most powerful weapons against doublespeak are belles lettres
and humor. If Martin Luther was correct in his notion that “the best
way to drive out the devil...is to jeer him and flaunt him, for he cannot
bear scorn,” then perhaps the best way to expose and dispel doublespeak
is through scornful laughter. Ironically, it is the devil himself—Mark
Twain’s “mysterious stranger” in this case—who reminds
us of our “one really effective weapon—laughter.” Laughter,
he says, can blow “the colossal humbug...to rags and atoms at a blast,
for against the assault of laughter nothing can stand”(164–65)—not
even, we might add, the duplicity of language manipulation. We can teach students
the strategies of satire, in its purely honorific sense, and how to be skeptical
without becoming cynical.
Quite likely there are numerous English teachers, at various levels, who are
already teaching about language manipulation. Wouldn’t it be beneficial
to pool our materials and methods to become a resource for English teachers
throughout the country? To this end, please send to either or both of us whatever
language-centered, doublespeak-detection materials, methods, exercises, class
activities, or lesson plans you have successfully used so they can be put
together in a collection for distribution.