Blogs > Cliopatria > Doublespeak 2004

Dec 8, 2004

Doublespeak 2004


by Cliopatria


George W. Bush has followed in his father's footsteps again, becoming only the second president to be a two-time winner, with his administration, of the National Council of Teachers of English 2004 Doublespeak Award, given to"American public figures who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory.""Public figures" is somewhat misleading (!), as the award almost invariably goes to those who abuse language in the service of power, and agents of government make up the bulk of the winners. Greatest hits of the year include:

  • President Bush:"weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" and"[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."
  • Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Abu Ghraib:"the excesses of human nature that humanity suffers"
  • special mention always for the constantly shifting language of death at the Defense Department: the renaming of"body bags" as"transfer tubes" (even"human remains pouches" which was the last war's term, is too obvious now)
Past winners include
  • the New York States Regents (2002) for stripping references to Judaism and Jews from Isaac Bashevis Singer texts used on exams
  • Clinton, Lott and Gingrich (1997) for using"balanced budget" to refer to unbalanced budgets.
  • Department of State (1984):"unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life" replaces"killing" in human rights reports
Only one award in the past three decades has gone to a foreign leader: the domestic competition is intense. That winner? The recently departed Yasir Arafat for his 1975 statement"We do not want to destroy any people. It is precisely because we have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood."

A great collection of NCTE Doublespeak materials from their"1984 + 20" collection is here, including"best of" excerpts from the now defunct and greatly lamented Quarterly Review of Doublespeak.


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Jonathan Dresner - 12/9/2004

Usually the award isn't for a single statement, but that certainly qualifies as a candidate, you're right.

For what it's worth the Doublespeak Award occupies a very small portion of the NCTE's time, being mostly the province of one or two people. But it gets them more attention than almost anything else they do, so it's worth it, to them.

Richard Henry Morgan - 12/9/2004

The NCTE passed up an instant classic -- a classic already enshrined in the latest edition of Bartlett's Quotations: "That dependes on what the meaning of is is." Perhaps the NCTE would have been better served if it had concentrated more on instruction, and less on politics disguised as pedagogy. If they had done so, they wouldn't have inflicted the whole language reading methodology on millions of students -- a methodology almost universally recognized by reading instruction experts as inadequate as a sole basis for instruction.

Jonathan Dresner - 12/8/2004

Nominations for the Award

The NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak is now seeking nominations for next year's Doublespeak Award, which is given to a glaring example of deceptive language by a public spokesperson. The words must originate from an American. The committee needs a one-page description of the context in which the statement occurred and a copy of the print media source in which the quote appeared (with date). In the case of broadcast media, list the program, time, place, and date.

Nominations are also sought for the Orwell Award, which honors an author, editor, or producer of a print or nonprint work that contributes to honesty and clarity in public language.

The nominations deadline is July 31, 2005. Eligible nominations are those appearing or published between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2005. Send nominations to the Committee on Public Doublespeak, c/o Margaret Chambers, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096; fax: 217-328-0977; mchambers@ncte.org.

Manan Ahmed - 12/8/2004

I am shocked that my personal favorite of double-speak [neé WTF] came just this past weekend in a Bush/Musharraf press conference:

One of the interesting lessons that the world can look at is Pakistan. You see, there are some in the world who do not believe that a Muslim society can self-govern. Some believe that the only solution for government in parts of the world is for there to be tyranny or despotism. I don't believe that. The Pakistan people have proven that those cynics are wrong. And where President Musharraf can help in world peace is to help remind people what is possible. And the solution in the Middle East is for there to be a world effort to help the Palestinians develop a state that is truly free -- one that's got an independent judiciary, one that's got a civil society, one that's got the capacity to fight off the terrorists, one that allows for dissent, one in which people can vote. And President Musharraf can play a big role in helping achieve that objective.


Yes, a military dictator responsible for most terrorism in Kashmir from a country with no civil society to speak of, long record of selling nuclear secrets, jailed journalists and rigged "referendums" can surely show the Muslims how it is done.