*Reprinted on the NCTE Web site with permission from The Herald Times (Bloomington, IN).

Bush wins again! Not the presidency. That's old news. For the second consecutive year, George W. Bush has been named the winner of the National Council of Teachers of English's Doublespeak Award.

The award is scheduled to be announced today at the 94th annual convention of the teachers' association in Indianapolis.

The group calls the Doublespeak Award an ironic tribute "to American public figures who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory."

Bush, the Committee on Public Doublespeak decided, "has set a high standard for his team by the inspired invention of the phrase, 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities' to describe what has yet to be seen."

In its official announcement, the committee also took note of the president's description of an open forum as a place where "you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."

It also gave dishonorable mentions to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for describing the torture of Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib as "the excesses of human nature that humanity suffers" and for changing the Vietnam-era term, "body bag" to the innocuous sounding "transfer tube."

Some people will read this and think that Bush's political enemies are still at it. Actually, it could well be said that the NCTE's Doublespeak Committee is a conservative group, because its mission is to preserve clear and accurate language and decry the intentional abuse of words to hide or confuse their meaning.

Charles Bazerman, chairman of the NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak, said by phone last week that politics had nothing to do with its award to Bush. Nominations were submitted by individuals in the 60,000-member organization and "there was wide agreement that the administration was the source of many misrepresentations and manipulations obscuring the facts. This was not a controversial decision by the committee," the professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara said.

Bazerman agreed with the suggestion that one could legitimately call into question the administration's often repeated statement that U.S. troops are fighting for freedom in Iraq. Whose freedom? America's? Iraq's?

"Precisely," he said. "They are taking words that are very meaningful and powerful and applying them where they are totally inappropriate, so that they are not only misusing the word but the force of the word. And what's even more troubling is that it undermines the meaning of the word so you can no longer think clearly with it.

"If that word becomes tainted as acclaim about the removal of one regime ("Operation Iraqi Freedom") without any sense of the new conditions of life the Iraqis have been put in, it loses meaning," Bazerman said. "Does it mean the actual ability of people to make choices in their lives or simply the removal of order? That is actually the meaning of doublespeak: to create a condition of doublethink so you are not troubled by contraries. You're not troubled by contradictions."

The Doublespeak Award has been given by the teachers' group annually since 1974. The word itself is a combination of the concepts of "newspeak" and "doublethink" that were made famous in George Orwell's novel, "1984."

The NCTE is so concerned with misleading language that it launched an initiative last year to promote the reading and discussion of Orwell's novel in high school and college English classes. Reports will be presented at the organization's annual convention about how deliberately deceptive and misleading language has permeated politics, journalism and corporate culture.

"The teaching of language and the use of language is what we do," Bazerman said. "'1984' is a very timely vehicle at this moment in history to raise questions of language and meaning in public discourse."

At the other end of the spectrum, the English teachers will honor writers Seymour Hersh and Arundhati Roy with their George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. "Only when we can properly name what our global corporations, international financial institutions and governments do in our name, can we struggle intelligently for a more moral, more just, more equitable world. Clear language makes possible clear planning, and clear planning can direct us towards effective action," Bazerman said in a prepared statement.

Columnist Mike Leonard can be reached at 331-4368, or by e-mail at HideAddr('mleonard','heraldt.com','">');HideAddr('mleonard','heraldt.com','');mleonard@heraldt.com.

 
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Currently Reading The Call of Stories : Teaching and the Moral Imagination By Robert Coles see related

Summer school ended Friday.  I am officially done with my first full year of teaching.  Wess is at Young Life camp and Mom’s plane arrives in an hour and a half. 

I came to a realization last night as I was falling asleep that if my mom wasn’t coming to keep me company for this week that Wess is gone, I don’t know what I would do with myself.  I have not invested into building real relationships with other women here and I regret that.  One of the goals I have for the coming year is to work to make intentional contact with other women and work to have deep relationships.  I think that it is often my own unrealistic expectations that keep me from creating space in my life for those relationships.  I treat them as though they are all or nothing, and I certainly don’t have time for all… so instead I give nothing. 

On a closely related note, one of the highlights of the last year has been fellowship and relationships that have been allowed to develop.  At the beginning of the year it was our life group with church where we were able to share our need for community.  Life group sadly did not live up to my expectations in the long run; under a change of leadership the group dynamic changed and we seemed less able to just gather to talk about our lives with Christ.  I still treasure those relationships that were begun there, but I am learning about the role leadership plays in community building.  This is an important lesson for my classroom… I want it to be a place of real trust and growth for my students (again those unrealistic expectations) and be unlike a traditional classroom in that.  I know I didn’t reach that goal last year—to watch and observe communities around me so that I can learn how to lead and facilitate that atmosphere in my own classroom is what I now need to do.  Back to fellowship in the last year—for the last three weeks Wess and I have been meeting with some friends in the spirit of the old Monday night Bible study.  We are trying to recreate what we had there in some sense, while knowing that it cannot be the same nor would we want it to be.  This week we had several people over and had a truly encouraging time of worship and exhortation.  I was reminded again of how much we need each other.  I learn so much about God just through the way my brothers and sisters talk to Him and about Him.  I am humbled in knowing how others seek to know and serve God.  There is so much danger in spiritual isolation—a tendency toward complacency, pride, a feeling of satisfaction of where I am and not yearning to go further, deeper.  I had slipped into these and more and am now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The way back will be long, but I know the importance of relationships within that.  Wess has been meeting with Jamie for a while to have some time for specific accountability, and, I have to admit, I have been really jealous.  I am so glad for both of them because I can see how Good it is… but I long for something similar in my own life and am too afraid to seek it [in the beginning it is so uncomfortable being transparent].

Hmmm… I think this is a good bite for me to chew on for now.  Until later, then…

I am finished with spring break.  I have nine point five weeks left until summer break.  I know that I am going to miss my students; although I feel I have done them a great disservice as a first-year teacher experimenting on them daily, I also feel that we have been through a lot together.  I love those kids.  That helps me remember the feelings that drove me to this field--the deep love for and desire to be with people, serving them in some way.  Teaching is an excellent ground for that.  It's funny, I feel like a failure still in so many ways, yet I still have "daydreams" about being a teacher, still have my highest hopes set on one day being an excellent, life-touching teacher.  It is who I desire to be.

I just finished emailing my sister and brother and am feeling a self-reflective inclination.  I have had more contact with both my sister and brother recently, and this, to me, is really a huge deal.  My family is so important to me and at the same time full of the awkwardness and discomfort that comes through sin.  I love both my brother and sister and think they are amazing and yet I do not know how to relate to them despite our shared childhood.  I am coming to the place where I am realizing the importance of putting those feelings out there and telling my sister I am aware of her hurt and sorry for my role in it and I want to start a fresh friendship.  Yet, knowing this, it is still uncomfortable and difficult to say.  Lord willing, we will establish an authentic friendship.

Wess and I resigned from the church plant team we had been a part of for about six weeks yesterday.  We really feel that this is not where the Lord is leading us, and it was relieving to be able to tell our teammates that.  Now we are able to focus more on the ministries we are already involved in—Wyldlife, young life’s junior high ministry for Wess, and teaching in a public middle school for me.  I am in prayer about how I can take a more active role in spiritual life in Glendale and at my school.  I have had some encouraging things go on in that sphere of late.

I talked with my Dad and Mom yesterday, and we are planning to go visit some California national parks together in August.  I am so excited.  First of all, I love my parents and they are my best friends; I look forward to spending time with them.  Second of all, camping trips to national parks are a huge segment of my memories of family and childhood; it will be peaceful to revisit those memories.  Wess has only just tasted our national parks and is looking forward to this even more than I. 

The Lord is pouring down blessings on us and we are thankful.

I am at school presently with no students.  This is the last day of my first semester of teaching; we have a student-free day for processing grades.  I have a to-do list a mile long and can’t seem to focus on any of it. 

I woke up this morning thinking “I did it.  One semester of teaching.  I haven’t quit and won’t this year, and I am even planning to teach next year.”  This is a day I thought would never arrive.  Teaching has challenged me and caused me to question my own abilities and intelligence as well as purpose and commitment.  And I am still here.  I have been questioning the purpose of the “English” class, particularly at my school.  And the Lord answers those questions, quietly, periodically.  I teach so that students brains continue to grow, so their horizons broaden.  I teach so that teenagers grow in their ability to critically examine the world around them.  I teach English because we need each other to grow, and literature is a great resource to know one another.  Literature can lead to understanding of people and situations outside of our experience, can make us more empathetic adults, more active for a good cause.  Anyhow, this is the beginning of a continued desire to know more and teach better.

I miss Ohio.  I miss my mom and dad, brother and sister.  I miss slow backroads.  I miss eighth street.  But I do love Pasadena.  I have been blessed here with so many friends, even a few close ones already.  I know the Lord has lead me here, and I feel safe in that.