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Doublespeak is not a frivolous game about humorous euphemisms, such as "sanitation engineer" for one who collects garbage, or "sanitarians" (who "deroach" buildings) for pest exterminators, or "automotive technicians" for car mechanics, or "field service technicians" for repair people. Rather, doublespeak in all too many cases is an insidious practice whereby the powerful abuse language to deceive and manipulate for the purpose of controlling public behavior-the public as consumer, as voter, as student-by depriving us of our right to make informed choices. Before teachers of English at any level are permitted to "practice" in the classroom, we should subscribe to a linguistic equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, an Orwellian Oath perhaps, whereby we commit to (1) use language clearly and responsibly ourselves; (2) combat doublespeak wherever we find it; and (3) seek effective pedagogical ways of making students sensitive to language and aware of linguistic vulnerability in all forms.
Such goals were part of the rationale for two resolutions passed by the NCTE at its sixty-first annual meeting in 1971. One was on "Dishonest and Inhumane Uses of Language": "Resolved, That the National Council of Teachers of English find means to study dishonest and inhumane uses of language and literature by advertisers, to bring offenses to public attention, and to propose classroom techniques for preparing children to cope with commercial propaganda." The other was on "The Relation of Language and Public Policy": "Resolved, That the National Council of Teachers of English find means to study the relations of language to public policy, to keep track of, publicize, and combat semantic distortion by public officials, candidates for office, political commentators, and all those who transmit through the mass media." The NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak, established two years later, has done much to achieve these goals. 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 committee have included providing...