When_Language_Is_Used_to_Deceive_You_How_Doublespeak_Distorts_Reality
When Language Is Used to Deceive You: How Doublespeak Distorts Reality and Corrupts Thought (1989)
Publicado em 4 de abril de 2022 por Portal E.M. Cioran
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., “downsizing” for layoffs and “servicing the target” for bombing), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.
Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.
The word is comparable to George Orwell’s Newspeak and Doublethink as used in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, though the term Doublespeak does not appear there.
The term “doublespeak” derives from two concepts in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, “doublethink” and “Newspeak”, though the term is not used in the book. Another variant, “doubletalk”, also referring to deliberately ambiguous speech, did exist at the time Orwell wrote his book, but the usage of “doublespeak”, as well as of “doubletalk”, in the sense emphasizing ambiguity clearly postdates the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Parallels have also been drawn between doublespeak and Orwell’s classic essay Politics and the English Language, which discusses the distortion of language for political purposes. In it he observes that political language serves to distort and obfuscate reality. Orwell’s description of political speech is extremely similar to the contemporary definition of doublespeak:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…
The writer Edward S. Herman cited what he saw as examples of doublespeak and doublethink in modern society.[9] Herman describes in his book Beyond Hypocrisy the principal characteristics of doublespeak.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky comment in their book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media that Orwellian doublespeak is an important component of the manipulation of the English language in American media, through a process called dichotomization, a component of media propaganda involving “deeply embedded double standards in the reporting of news.” For example, the use of state funds by the poor and financially needy is commonly referred to as “social welfare” or “handouts,” which the “coddled” poor “take advantage of.” These terms, however, are not as often applied to other beneficiaries of government spending such as military spending. The bellicose language used interchangeably with calls for peace towards
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:00What can you expect from a company named Bell South?
00:00:05Exactly what you'd expect from one of the leading communications companies in the world.
00:00:11Bell South. Everything you expect from a leader.
00:00:17Coming up next, join us for Book Notes.
00:00:30In this segment, we will spend an hour with author William Lutz.
00:00:33We will talk about his book titled, Double Speak.
00:00:36This book deals with the ways languages are used to deceive.
00:00:40William Lutz, what is Double Speak?
00:00:56Double Speak is language designed to evade responsibility, make the unpleasant appear pleasant, the unattractive appear attractive.
00:01:06Basically, it's language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't.
00:01:10It is language designed to mislead while pretending not to.
00:01:14Is it done consciously?
00:01:16Oh yes, very consciously.
00:01:18Double Speak is not a slip of the tongue or a mistaken use of language.
00:01:22It's exactly the opposite.
00:01:24It is language used by people who are very intelligent and very sophisticated in the use of language
00:01:29and know that you can do an awful lot with language.
00:01:33Who's the worst offender?
00:01:35In sheer bulk?
00:01:36Yes.
00:01:37Sheer numbers of examples?
00:01:38The government.
00:01:39If we count government from the local level all the way up to the federal level,
00:01:42I had to stop writing the chapter on government double speak.
00:01:46It was going to take over the whole book.
00:01:48But interestingly enough, and this was a revelation in doing the book,
00:01:51about a half a step behind comes business with a tremendous amount of double speak.
00:01:56How long has the government been using double speak?
00:02:00I think of government as the third oldest profession
00:02:03and probably from the moment government was instituted double speak came with it.
00:02:07I cite examples from the 5th century B.C. in Greece.
00:02:12Julius Caesar when he pacified Gaul.
00:02:15Of course Nazi Germany thrived in double speak.
00:02:18So it's been around for quite a while.
00:02:20When did you first get interested in this?
00:02:22In 1978 I became head of the committee on public double speak
00:02:29and in 1980 I started editing the quarterly review of double speak
00:02:32and that's when I became very interested in it
00:02:35simply because as editing I have all the examples of double speak sent to me.
00:02:39So I wade through them all.
00:02:41What got you interested in it?
00:02:42My interest in rhetoric.
00:02:44In my Ph.D. I did work in rhetoric and I was interested in rhetoric.
00:02:49In 1977 I published a textbook called The Age of Communication
00:02:53which was a little different at the time.
00:02:55I tried to examine the rhetoric of television, radio, the mass media, advertising.
00:03:01Taking Aristotle's classical rhetoric and apply it to modern media.
00:03:06I had a lot of fun doing that and as a result of that textbook I was asked to join the committee
00:03:10and I saw rhetoric and language coming all together in double speak in an interesting way.
00:03:16Universities also have a problem with double speak, don't they?
00:03:20Oh yes.
00:03:21I continually bite the hand that feeds when I cite Rutgers
00:03:26and at least every issue I have an example from Rutgers University.
00:03:30One of my favorite.
00:03:31We don't have a physical education department at Rutgers.
00:03:34We have a department of human kinetics.
00:03:37Why?
00:03:40Well, I also point out in my book that people in physical education
00:03:45have come up with all of these different terms because they've gone professional.
00:03:50They now have their own journals so they have their own academic jargon
00:03:54and as the dean at Minnesota who wanted to change the name of his physical education school said
00:03:59we're not taken seriously unless we have a name like this.
00:04:03We can't get the grants.
00:04:04We can't publish the articles.
00:04:06How long have you been at Rutgers?
00:04:07Since 1971.
00:04:08What do you teach?
00:04:10I teach a variety of courses in the English department
00:04:14but I teach rhetoric, linguistics, and some Victorian literature
00:04:19and I also teach a survey course that's required of all students.
00:04:23We start with the Iliad and the Odyssey and work our way up.
00:04:27Is there any example in history, ancient history, in literature of double speak?
00:04:33Yes.
00:04:34One I cite just as a passing example is Thucydides in the 5th century B.C. in the Peloponnesian War.
00:04:40During the war there was a very vicious civil war in Athens at that time
00:04:45and Thucydides points out that at that time the very language itself became corrupted to their own ends.
00:04:52Acts of cowardice became acts of great bravery.
00:04:55Traitorous deeds towards friends became patriotic acts and he cites the whole list.
00:05:01And it's interesting that Thucydides cites this corruption of language
00:05:05as the ultimate in horror that occurred during that civil war.
00:05:09Do you ever personally find yourself using double speak?
00:05:12Oh yeah.
00:05:13When I was head of the department I had to engage in double speak.
00:05:17You have to write recommendations, you have to write personnel evaluation forms.
00:05:22I had to pitch for more money and so you use the double speak of bureaucracy as anyone else.
00:05:27If I were a bureaucrat who would function within the bureaucracy using straight language
00:05:34I wouldn't be taken seriously.
00:05:36It's a sort of ritualistic use of language.
00:05:39Are you in this whole world of double speak because you want to get rid of it?
00:05:43Oh yes.
00:05:44I don't think you'll ever get rid of it.
00:05:47I don't think we can.
00:05:48It is inherent in the function of language to use language as a weapon or as a tool to manipulate other people.
00:05:54However, I think there are two things we can do.
00:05:56First of all, we can all become much more aware of this language.
00:06:00We should be aware of it so that we can at least be defensive
00:06:04and defend ourselves so that we're not misled through it.
00:06:08But secondly, there are times when we simply cannot tolerate this language.
00:06:12When we talk about important public issues of national policy
00:06:16we should not use double speak as a nation.
00:06:18We should not use it ourselves.
00:06:19We should not allow the politicians who are speaking to us to use it.
00:06:24Language that way can be terribly corrupting in a society
00:06:28and can mislead all of us.
00:06:30And in a democracy that depends upon the active participation of its citizens
00:06:34it can lead to cynicism and resentment and a withdrawal from the political process.
00:06:39Does that have anything to do with the reason why only 50% of the American people voted in 1988?
00:06:45I have a hypothesis that I would love to test
00:06:48and I hope sometime to be able to do that.
00:06:51I would love to be able to track the pervasiveness of double speak
00:06:55as it grew along with the decline in voting.
00:06:58Because the reaction I get to double speak
00:07:00from a lot of readers of The Quarterly Review as they write to me is
00:07:03well of course I know this language.
00:07:05I see it all over the place.
00:07:06I see it all the time.
00:07:08But what else can you expect from politicians?
00:07:11They all lie.
00:07:12They all use double speak.
00:07:14It is that cynicism which leads to there's nothing I can do about it
00:07:18so people withdraw and pull back.
00:07:21This book is in the bookstores?
00:07:23Yes it is.
00:07:24It's $17.95?
00:07:26Yes.
00:07:27How did you do this book?
00:07:29I did the book.
00:07:31Somebody asked me how long did it take you to write the book?
00:07:34I said it took me 10 years to research it and 6 months to write it.
00:07:37I sat down and tried to make sense out of all the double speak that I've been collecting.
00:07:42Because there is a tendency to have a perception that it is scattered hither and yon.
00:07:47The function of the book is to gather it and focus it to show you that there is a pattern
00:07:51and a progression to this language.
00:07:53And I structured the book to have a lot of fun in the beginning
00:07:56and the humorous uses of double speak.
00:07:58But leading to the more important uses of double speak by government,
00:08:01the Pentagon, and the issues of nuclear war and peace
00:08:05and how double speak corrupts that whole process.
00:08:08A couple of little things.
00:08:09How did you choose Harper and Row?
00:08:11Actually there were 2 or 3 publishers and I chose Harper and Row
00:08:15because of the editor at Harper and Row, Hugh Van Dusen,
00:08:17who is one of the most respected editors in the profession.
00:08:20And it was someone I thought would understand the book
00:08:23and would help me focus it and guide it.
00:08:28And that's why I went with Harper and Row.
00:08:30Did you name it?
00:08:32Well, yes I did.
00:08:34I had a whole bunch of titles.
00:08:36And I was advised not to call it double speak
00:08:39to come up with some other kind of descriptive title.
00:08:43Because a lot of people aren't sure what they mean by double speak.
00:08:46So I put the subhead in there,
00:08:47from revenue enhancement to terminal living.
00:08:49People recognize that immediately.
00:08:51They may not be quite sure what double speak is,
00:08:54but boy they know what revenue enhancement is and terminal living.
00:08:57They've seen enough of that language around.
00:08:59Is it selling?
00:09:00It's in the 4th printing.
00:09:02What's that mean?
00:09:03It means that they sold out the 1st printing,
00:09:05they sold out the 2nd printing,
00:09:06they sold out the 3rd printing and they're into the 4th
00:09:09and the bookstores can't keep it on the shelves.
00:09:11A lot of bookstores don't have it because it's back ordered.
00:09:14They sell them as fast as they can get them in the stores.
00:09:16How big is it printing?
00:09:18Well, the 1st printing was 17,500.
00:09:21The 2nd and 3rd printings were 6,000 copies each.
00:09:24And I think the 3rd printing was bigger,
00:09:26but I'm not sure how much.
00:09:27I haven't found out how much that is.
00:09:28So it's at least another 6,000.
00:09:30Have you had any feedback?
00:09:32The feedback I've gotten from reviewers,
00:09:35which generally like the book,
00:09:37the only thing I've been faulted for is my humor.
00:09:40I guess I'm a little too funny at times for their taste.
00:09:43Otherwise, the response from the press has been interesting.
00:09:47Awful lot of reporters.
00:09:48Associated Press did two stories on the book.
00:09:51There were wire press stories in England
00:09:53and you can't even buy the book in England.
00:09:55And I've done interviews with the BBC
00:09:57and a friend of mine who lives in Ireland called me up
00:09:59and said it was all in the newspapers there.
00:10:02And he said you can't even buy the book here
00:10:04and they were all interested in it.
00:10:06So the press, the working press,
00:10:08has been fascinated by the book
00:10:10and I've gotten a lot more reaction from the press
00:10:13than I have from the traditional book reviewers.
00:10:15Have you been on the book tour?
00:10:17Yes, I've done the book tour.
00:10:19And I'm an academic.
00:10:21This is my 9th book, but it's my first trade book.
00:10:24I was unprepared for the world of trade publishing.
00:10:27My wife is a novelist.
00:10:29She's done two novels.
00:10:30She knows the world of trade publishing
00:10:32and she has cautioned me about it.
00:10:34What's the word trade mean?
00:10:35Trade as opposed to academic.
00:10:37You go into the bookstore and you can buy the book.
00:10:39Academic publishing is done by university press
00:10:42and is more restricted
00:10:44and you will find these generally in the bookstore.
00:10:46And it's a much smaller audience and smaller press run.
00:10:50This is mass market.
00:10:52This is writing to the public.
00:10:54And so when I did the book tour,
00:10:56I was introduced into the world of trade publishing.
00:10:59I found it fascinating when I was in Washington, D.C.
00:11:02for my tour.
00:11:03Just ahead of me was Judge Bork
00:11:07and just behind me was William Colby.
00:11:10We were all making the tour, pushing our books.
00:11:14You would go from radio station to TV station
00:11:17to press interview.
00:11:20I found that fascinating.
00:11:22I met a lot of other authors.
00:11:23I met Steve Allen and a few other people.
00:11:25But we're all pushing the book.
00:11:27It doesn't make any difference who you are.
00:11:29What surprised you most about the book tour?
00:11:33It is tough.
00:11:34It's physically demanding.
00:11:36It's mentally exhausting.
00:11:38And everyone does it.
00:11:39It doesn't matter.
00:11:40Emma Bombeck, Steve Allen,
00:11:42big names that you would think
00:11:44name alone would sell the book.
00:11:46They're out there doing exactly the same tour.
00:11:48And I think that that's important though
00:11:50because I get a sense of audience
00:11:52when I talk to interviewers
00:11:54and you talk to a variety of people.
00:11:56You see how your writing is perceived.
00:11:58A writer never really knows
00:12:00what the audience sees in the text.
00:12:02So every time I went in,
00:12:04I would be asked something about the book
00:12:06that I hadn't even thought about.
00:12:07Or something that I didn't think was significant
00:12:09or important or particularly interesting.
00:12:11I just put in there for whatever reason.
00:12:13They thought it was the most fascinating thing
00:12:15and zeroed in on it.
00:12:16What's the most often asked question?
00:12:19The chapter on food and food doublespeak.
00:12:22Everyone goes after that one.
00:12:24Is it true that you can put sugar free
00:12:28on a product and still have sugar in it?
00:12:30It's probably the one question
00:12:31I've been asked most often.
00:12:33Because people simply can't believe
00:12:34that that happens.
00:12:36How can it happen?
00:12:37Because sugar free simply means
00:12:39they haven't added table sugar or cane sugar to it.
00:12:42They can add monos, fructose,
00:12:44any of the syrup sweeteners
00:12:46and still call it sugar free.
00:12:48So you know when you eat something
00:12:49that's sugar free, there's sugar in it.
00:12:50Oh yes, and by the way,
00:12:52I found out in a radio interview
00:12:54when they had people in the audience calling in,
00:12:57a man called in and said,
00:12:58do you mean that there's sugar in there?
00:13:00I said, well yes, there's sugars in that food.
00:13:03He said, well I'm a diabetic
00:13:04and my wife makes sure she buys only the sugar free.
00:13:07I said, you can't eat those.
00:13:09You have to use only the dietetic
00:13:11because that's governed by law.
00:13:13Sugar free isn't.
00:13:15Here's a man who was threatening his health
00:13:17through this kind of false labeling.
00:13:19It was absolutely amazing.
00:13:21But the food chapter has really,
00:13:23I guess we're all interested in food for some reason.
00:13:26I've been asked endless questions on that chapter.
00:13:29Is there a particularly unusual question
00:13:31that you were asked on one of those call-in shows?
00:13:34Usually on the call-in shows,
00:13:35people call in to give me their examples of doublespeak,
00:13:38which I always like because I get to write things down.
00:13:41But the most unusual question I think I was asked was,
00:13:48I'm trying to think of how he put it.
00:13:52He wanted to know how many examples of doublespeak,
00:13:57to that effect, if there was an account.
00:13:59He wanted to know if I'd counted it.
00:14:01And I'd never even thought of that.
00:14:04And I have no idea of how many examples I have
00:14:07because all of the examples that I gather,
00:14:10I have in a computer database
00:14:12so I can call them up quickly and search very quickly.
00:14:15I have no idea how many I have in there.
00:14:17I do know I have a lot.
00:14:19Was there any part of the country
00:14:20that was more interested than others?
00:14:23Washington, D.C. was far more interested in it
00:14:28than any other parts of the country.
00:14:30It was interesting.
00:14:31When Harper & Row went to market the book,
00:14:33there was very little interest in it
00:14:35by West Coast distributors.
00:14:37There was a minimal interest in it.
00:14:39I think they took copies
00:14:40simply because the first print run was so large
00:14:42they figured you can't really ignore a book like that.
00:14:45But they weren't.
00:14:46In fact, I had phone calls from Los Angeles.
00:14:49George Carlin uses a lot of the doublespeak in his routines
00:14:53and he always credits me.
00:14:55And he called me up and he said,
00:14:56I want your book but I can't find it.
00:14:58I said, try ordering it.
00:15:00He couldn't even get it in his bookstore.
00:15:02He said he was trying to get the bookstore
00:15:04to stock it for me.
00:15:06So that part of the country wasn't interested.
00:15:09But the Midwest was interested.
00:15:11But the East Coast, New York and Washington, D.C.,
00:15:14the book took off immediately.
00:15:16Is there anything to the possibility
00:15:19that because we here in this town
00:15:21are the champions of doublespeak,
00:15:23do we know we're the champions of doublespeak
00:15:26and can't get out of it?
00:15:27I think it's that people in Washington, D.C.,
00:15:31that I'm kind of proud about that.
00:15:33Well, we really know this stuff.
00:15:34Cabbies tell me this.
00:15:36You're here for the book tour.
00:15:37What's your book?
00:15:38And I tell them, boy, we know that.
00:15:40And the cabbies will start giving me examples.
00:15:42I think people in Washington, D.C. and New York
00:15:45are extremely sensitive to language.
00:15:47They live in a language environment
00:15:48that is probably more intense
00:15:49than other sections of the country,
00:15:51and they're more aware of it.
00:15:52So I think the book struck a responsive chord
00:15:55for that reason.
00:15:57I find that people,
00:15:58a couple people that I've talked to,
00:16:00the first thing they did when they got the book,
00:16:01they'll pick it up and they'll look.
00:16:03There's an index of doublespeak terms
00:16:04to see if their favorite term is in there.
00:16:06That's the first thing they want to know.
00:16:07And then they'll say, well, you didn't include...
00:16:10And that's the reaction.
00:16:11It's a personal reaction.
00:16:12It seemed like you self-consciously pointed out
00:16:15in the early part of this book
00:16:17that there are no footnotes.
00:16:18Is that because you're an academician
00:16:20and you always had footnotes in all the other books?
00:16:23Yes.
00:16:24I write footnotes a lot.
00:16:26And I think I wanted to reach a wide audience,
00:16:30and I had a choice.
00:16:31Either I could...
00:16:32Even documenting it, by the way,
00:16:33putting the footnotes in the back and end notes,
00:16:35anybody reading a text that sees
00:16:37all these little numbers all the way through it,
00:16:40they just don't...
00:16:41I think that it scares them off
00:16:43and it changes the whole tone of the work.
00:16:45So I wanted to say, all of these examples are real.
00:16:49I can document all of them,
00:16:50but I'm not going to include the documentation here.
00:16:53And in those instances where I've been asked
00:16:55to document them, I've documented them.
00:16:58It's only got 290 pages, small book.
00:17:01I think it's long, actually, for the material.
00:17:04It's pretty dense material.
00:17:05And the challenge in the book was to make it readable.
00:17:08I didn't want it to be just a listing of terms.
00:17:11I wanted to show that there's a coherence to this,
00:17:13first of all,
00:17:14and secondly, that this can be fun and enjoyable to read
00:17:17at the same time that it's educational.
00:17:19I don't see anything wrong with laughing and learning
00:17:21at the same time,
00:17:22and that's the kind of book that I wanted to write.
00:17:25What are the other books that you've done?
00:17:27You don't have to go through every one of them,
00:17:28but in general, what are they?
00:17:29Well, at the same time that I published that,
00:17:31I published a collection of essays on doublespeak
00:17:34by the National Council of Teachers of English
00:17:36in which I asked a group of scholars
00:17:38to each contribute an essay on an aspect of doublespeak.
00:17:41So I edited those and published that book.
00:17:44I edited the revised edition of Webster's New World Thesaurus,
00:17:49published by Simon & Schuster.
00:17:51I'm probably one of the few people
00:17:52who has ever read the dictionary from cover to cover twice,
00:17:57and I edited that thesaurus.
00:18:00And then a variety of textbooks on rhetoric and on writing,
00:18:05and a book on revolution and revolutionary theory.
00:18:08What did you learn
00:18:09when you read that dictionary from cover to cover?
00:18:12Boy, did I learn a lot about words.
00:18:15I learned a lot of archaic words,
00:18:17a lot of archaic definitions.
00:18:19But, you know, the dictionary is fascinating to read.
00:18:22You can pick it up and flip it open and start reading.
00:18:25A good dictionary.
00:18:26Too many of the best dictionaries are so edited down
00:18:29that there's no life to the language or life to words.
00:18:32If you get a good dictionary
00:18:34that gets into the backgrounds of the words
00:18:37and the words in context,
00:18:39words are fascinating and fun
00:18:40and language comes alive on the page.
00:18:42And in writing the thesaurus,
00:18:44you get into the shades of meaning,
00:18:46the nuances and the power of words
00:18:49and the images that they can create in your mind.
00:18:53What are the best dictionaries?
00:18:55Well, the unabridged is the dictionary
00:18:58you always want of reference.
00:19:00What does that mean, unabridged?
00:19:01Unabridged means absolutely everything is in there.
00:19:03They have edited out nothing.
00:19:04Every definition, every meaning of the word, every example,
00:19:07which is why the unabridged is about that thick.
00:19:10All the dictionaries that we deal with are abridged,
00:19:13which means that they take out a lot of the specialized words
00:19:17and try to boil it down to a core of words
00:19:19that are everyday usage.
00:19:20And then they'll cut back even the meanings of the words.
00:19:23Even in the thesaurus,
00:19:24a word like fix, a verb fix,
00:19:27can have up to 28 different meanings.
00:19:29But you normally don't list all 28.
00:19:31You'll maybe pick 14 or 12 of common usage.
00:19:35What's the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus?
00:19:38A dictionary gives you the meanings of the words,
00:19:40all the meanings and a strict definition for each one.
00:19:43A thesaurus gives you synonyms for the word.
00:19:46So if you want to look up the adjective busy,
00:19:49you want synonyms for that word,
00:19:52words that say the same thing,
00:19:54but not quite shades of meaning.
00:19:56One of the phrases I gave was in conference.
00:19:58I just had an experience a couple weeks ago
00:20:03where somebody saw one of these shows
00:20:05and criticized me for using a word incorrectly.
00:20:11And I think the word was parochial.
00:20:17I was referring to something that was, you know,
00:20:20special for a small group, parochial.
00:20:22And she said, you're just not using it.
00:20:25The word is provincial.
00:20:26So I trotted off to my dictionary
00:20:28and found out that I was right.
00:20:29And so was she.
00:20:30Yes.
00:20:31So how do you...
00:20:32Who writes these things?
00:20:34Who writes the dictionary in the first place?
00:20:36Lexicographers write it.
00:20:38The World Dictionary is produced in Cleveland.
00:20:41If you go to Cleveland, Ohio,
00:20:42you will find in a building downtown
00:20:44that there's a floor that Simon & Schuster has
00:20:46for their dictionary staff.
00:20:47And there's a group of people who sit around and they read.
00:20:51They read magazines, newspapers,
00:20:53and they look for words and new meanings of words.
00:20:56And these are pulled out and entered into the computer.
00:20:59And that's what you do.
00:21:00And what company is Simon & Schuster?
00:21:02What's the name on that dictionary?
00:21:04Webster's New World Dictionary.
00:21:06Unabridged.
00:21:07They're working on an unabridged.
00:21:09The unabridged...
00:21:10I'm not sure when the next date is coming out.
00:21:12They have a huge collection of new meanings and new words.
00:21:17And whenever they pick those out,
00:21:19they have to take the sentence in which it was used,
00:21:22what's called a citation,
00:21:23so that the meaning is perfectly clear in that sentence
00:21:27for that shade of meaning.
00:21:28One of the things that I did in my book,
00:21:30I learned from them.
00:21:31All of my examples of doublespeak are not only real,
00:21:35but I have the original context in which the phrase occurred,
00:21:39or I won't use it.
00:21:40So I have file drawers filled with clippings
00:21:43and memos and letters that have been sent to me
00:21:46in which the word is used in context
00:21:49so that I can see that the example of doublespeak is real,
00:21:52it's serious, and how it is used.
00:21:55And that's the only way that I'll accept an example.
00:21:58I'll get off this dictionary in a second,
00:22:00but this is interesting.
00:22:01How many people are involved
00:22:02in producing the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary?
00:22:05Oh, gosh, there's a lot of people.
00:22:07This is a big undertaking.
00:22:08You'll have...
00:22:09I met the senior editorial staff that I met
00:22:12consisted of eight people.
00:22:13These are the senior editors.
00:22:15And below them will be all kinds of other editors
00:22:18and citation checkers and any number of people.
00:22:23You're talking a lot of people to do this.
00:22:26I suppose it sells millions of copies?
00:22:29Well, it will sell over a period of...
00:22:32The life of the book will be 20, 30, 40 years,
00:22:36and then periodically updating it as they go along.
00:22:40But it is labor-intensive.
00:22:41Computers have really helped.
00:22:43They used to keep all these citations and index cards,
00:22:45by the way, in boxes.
00:22:47Now, of course, they can keep it in a computer database
00:22:49and pull things together.
00:22:50The Random House Dictionary
00:22:51was the first dictionary produced by a computer
00:22:54when they brought out the Random House Dex Dictionary.
00:22:56That was the first one.
00:22:57Webster's, Random House, other names?
00:22:59Let's see.
00:23:00There's Webster's.
00:23:01There's Random House.
00:23:02American Heritage.
00:23:04Those are probably the three best dictionaries.
00:23:06Oh, then there's the Webster's 7th Collegiate Dictionary.
00:23:11What's that mean?
00:23:127th edition?
00:23:137th edition.
00:23:14Now they're up to the 9th edition or something.
00:23:16It's Webster's, whatever number they use.
00:23:18What about overseas?
00:23:19Oxford, do they have a dictionary?
00:23:20Well, there's the Oxford English Dictionary,
00:23:22which is the ultimate dictionary in the world.
00:23:25That's just a joy and a delight to read.
00:23:28It traces the entire history of a word,
00:23:31from its first occurrence in English all the way through,
00:23:33giving you the dates, the source, and the citation.
00:23:37You can look up a word and find its entire history.
00:23:40If you go to the OED, as it's called,
00:23:43you can look up the word nun and nunnery,
00:23:46and you will understand why when Hamlet turns to Ophelia
00:23:50and says, get thee to a nunnery,
00:23:52she runs off the stage in tears.
00:23:54If you go to the OED and look up the meaning for nunnery
00:23:58at the time of Hamlet when the play was written,
00:24:01you'll find out that it meant brothel.
00:24:06Devil Speak is your book,
00:24:08and you say it's in its fourth printing.
00:24:12Do you want this to change anything, this specific book,
00:24:17and have you seen any evidence besides the journalists
00:24:22and the call-in shows and all that kind of stuff,
00:24:24that somebody is taking this book and using it to change things?
00:24:27Boy, what a great question to ask.
00:24:29I just got a clipping, a newspaper clipping,
00:24:32in which there's a letter to the editor quoting my book
00:24:36to support the argument that the person is making
00:24:39about deceptive language.
00:24:41So, as my mother said when she sent me this clipping,
00:24:43she ran across it, and she said,
00:24:45somebody bought your book and read it, it seems.
00:24:48I would hope that I will change things by...
00:24:52I produce what I like to think of as a handbook
00:24:55for survival in the 20th century,
00:24:57in the age of the media,
00:24:59so that people will become critical consumers of language.
00:25:03We talk about the consumer movement
00:25:05where you have to be aware of the product that you buy
00:25:07when you go and purchase something.
00:25:09You have to be aware of the language that's used in our society.
00:25:12You are just as much a consumer of language
00:25:15as you are a consumer of goods,
00:25:17and so you have to be a critical consumer of language,
00:25:20just as you're a critical shopper.
00:25:22And if you run across language that's defective,
00:25:25take it back, just like you take back the defective toaster,
00:25:29and say, I want an exchange on this one.
00:25:31Give me language that works. Give me clear language.
00:25:34In your acknowledgments, something popped out of the page.
00:25:37I would like to thank the gracious women
00:25:39of the Four Arts Club of Elkhart, Indiana,
00:25:42who listened to an early version of Chapter 2
00:25:44and laughed at all the right places.
00:25:46Tell us more.
00:25:47Oh, that was...
00:25:48I had been interviewed on the Today Show,
00:25:51and a woman called me up from Elkhart, Indiana,
00:25:54and said that they had this club
00:25:57and they would love to have me come and talk.
00:25:59And I said, I'm really too busy.
00:26:01But they were so nice, I finally gave in,
00:26:03and went, and had an absolutely wonderful time.
00:26:06The Four Arts Club in Elkhart, Indiana, by the way,
00:26:09is very impressive.
00:26:10It's a very large group of women who are dedicated to the arts.
00:26:14They have their own arts center,
00:26:16and they work very hard at supporting the arts
00:26:18and do a very, very good job of it.
00:26:20And I was their luncheon speaker.
00:26:22And I was in the midst of writing this book,
00:26:24and I had no idea of my audience,
00:26:27who was reading this and would be responding to this.
00:26:30And that's very difficult.
00:26:32So I took a long chapter two,
00:26:34and I read a chunk of chapter two as my talk.
00:26:37And I apologized.
00:26:38I said, I should probably give you a prepared talk
00:26:41of a particular kind, but I would like to read this.
00:26:44And they did indeed laugh.
00:26:46And then afterwards, as part of the luncheon,
00:26:49there was a reception line where I met each one of them,
00:26:53and they each thanked me for coming.
00:26:56And the audience was 200 or 300 people, by the way.
00:26:59But they were so wonderful in telling me what they thought of
00:27:03what I had just read from this manuscript,
00:27:06what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it.
00:27:09So I was really gracious to them.
00:27:13Here's what chapter two is all about.
00:27:15Therapeutic misadventures, the economically non-affluent
00:27:19and deep-chilled chickens, the doublespeak of everyday life.
00:27:22Everyday living, excuse me.
00:27:24What is a therapeutic misadventure?
00:27:27I will tell you the incident, and then you can figure it out.
00:27:30In 1982, during a Caesarean operation,
00:27:34the anesthetist turned the wrong knob and killed the mother and child.
00:27:38The hospital called this a therapeutic misadventure.
00:27:41Three weeks ago in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times,
00:27:45in a series of incidents that the pathologist called
00:27:49incredible stupidity and incompetence,
00:27:52the surgeons killed the patient.
00:27:54It included slitting the patient's throat during surgery.
00:27:57This was called a therapeutic misadventure.
00:28:00How about economically non-affluent?
00:28:03That's what the president of the City University of New York
00:28:06called the poor students attending the city university.
00:28:09They came from economically non-affluent families.
00:28:12Deep-chilled chickens.
00:28:15Frank Perdue filed a complaint with the Department of Agriculture
00:28:19that his competitors were selling frozen chickens as fresh.
00:28:24And the Department of Agriculture investigated and said,
00:28:27no, granted the chickens are packed in ice
00:28:30at a temperature of 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:28:33These are not frozen chickens.
00:28:35These are merely deep-chilled chickens and can therefore be sold as fresh.
00:28:40I suggested that we pack the same Department of Agriculture bureaucrats in ice.
00:28:46When they hit 28 degrees, we might ask them if they're deep-chilled or frozen.
00:28:51You point out that there may be as many as 1 billion people in the world who speak English.
00:28:56Yes. The estimate is 750 to 1 billion who speak English as a first or second language.
00:29:03Why English?
00:29:04It's become, well, it's simply from both the British Empire,
00:29:10and then we replaced the British as the dominant economic and political force in the world.
00:29:16And it's natural in history that that nation which has the greatest political and economic influence,
00:29:22that language is adopted by all people in the world.
00:29:26Rome had the same function, Latin functioned the same way.
00:29:30And so if you saw the story of English that McNeil did, Robert McNeil did,
00:29:37he has the great episode where he goes to the shipyard in Singapore.
00:29:41And you have a shipbuilding yard in Singapore where the people ordering the ships are from Japan, they're Japanese.
00:29:49The workers are Singapore natives.
00:29:52The financing is coming from Hong Kong.
00:29:55And somebody else from the United States has an interest in it.
00:29:59They all speak English, everyone.
00:30:02It's the one language that they can all share, so they don't have to worry about other languages.
00:30:07So it's become what's called by linguists the lingua franca,
00:30:10the language of trade and commerce in the world.
00:30:13Obviously, you're trying to total that.
00:30:15You've got 250 million Americans, 58 million Brits, 17 million Australians, 26 million Canadians.
00:30:24Do all the Indians in India speak English?
00:30:26A great number of Indians speak English.
00:30:28Great number of people in China, Japan.
00:30:32You can go to particularly the Far East and the Near East and find a lot of people.
00:30:38Go to Greece.
00:30:39One of the television channels in Greece is all English.
00:30:44It's broadcast in English.
00:30:46What about the Soviet Union?
00:30:47Oh, a large number too in the Soviet Union.
00:30:50When I taught in China for a while and my students were all, they not only spoke English,
00:30:57they were learning to write proficiently in English,
00:31:00that they would have a mastery of the written language,
00:31:02which is extremely difficult when you learn a foreign language.
00:31:05And for them, becoming very proficient in English was important for their economic success.
00:31:12One of my students had as his goal to be a high-level government translator, for example.
00:31:18At the very least, they could be tourist guides and have other functions.
00:31:22But being proficient, and English wasn't their only language, by the way.
00:31:25They had to know at least two.
00:31:27Most of my students were proficient in English and Russian.
00:31:31But for them, English was extremely important.
00:31:33And many of them wanted to be able to study in England or America or a similar country.
00:31:38And proficiency in English would allow them to do that.
00:31:40Did you ever study another language?
00:31:42Oh, yes.
00:31:43My minors as an undergraduate were Latin and Greek.
00:31:47And then I also learned some German as a reading language for my doctorate.
00:31:51Is English easy or difficult?
00:31:54As a linguist, no language is any easier or more difficult than any other language, a linguist will tell you.
00:31:59As a practical matter, in pronunciation, after you reach a certain age of maturity,
00:32:06you will never be able to speak a language like a native speaker
00:32:09because your physical properties of producing speech will evolve in such a way
00:32:15that you can't produce certain sounds as accurately as a native speaker.
00:32:18It's simply a physiological fact of life.
00:32:21But you can still learn that language.
00:32:23What you really learn when you learn a language,
00:32:25and this is why you should learn a foreign language,
00:32:27you learn a whole different way of looking at the world.
00:32:30It's tied in with doublespeak.
00:32:32Language is a way of perceiving reality.
00:32:34It's the only way we have of looking out there,
00:32:37seeing something and turning to another person and saying,
00:32:40this is what I see.
00:32:42Now, we can both look out there and you can say,
00:32:45I see a predawn vertical insertion.
00:32:47And I can say, gee, I see an invasion.
00:32:51But it's through language that we talk about this reality
00:32:54and we give some kind of means of expressing that reality.
00:32:59When you learn a foreign language,
00:33:01you will learn a slightly different way of looking at the world
00:33:05and interpreting that world.
00:33:07Chinese is fascinating because Chinese is so different from English.
00:33:12The Chinese don't have pronouns.
00:33:15They don't have gender in their pronouns.
00:33:17It is impossible in Chinese to say,
00:33:20well, my son, he is going.
00:33:24They just don't have that.
00:33:26They don't have is going, what we call the present progressive tense.
00:33:29It does not exist in Chinese.
00:33:32The verb tense becomes different.
00:33:34Number becomes different.
00:33:36English is, we have singular and plural.
00:33:39And we never even think of that.
00:33:41Plural is defined as two or more.
00:33:44In many languages, plural is three or more.
00:33:48There is singular, single, dual, meaning just two,
00:33:52and then plural, which is three or more.
00:33:54It's a different way of seeing things and dealing with things,
00:33:57which is why it's always interesting to learn another language.
00:33:59Although I do think at times that doublespeak is in a different language,
00:34:02but it probably doesn't qualify as a foreign language.
00:34:06At the beginning, again at the preface,
00:34:08you quote George Orwell.
00:34:10And the reason I mention this is because in appendix C,
00:34:13you give the list of recipients of the George Orwell Award
00:34:17for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
00:34:21We'll talk about that in a second.
00:34:23George Orwell, from Politics and English Language, 1946.
00:34:27Most people who bother with the matter at all
00:34:30would admit that the English language is in a bad way.
00:34:34Orwell's throughout this entire book.
00:34:36Why did you pick him?
00:34:38Well, Orwell in his two works, his essay,
00:34:42Politics in the English Language,
00:34:44and then really giving full-blown thought to that essay in his novel, 1984,
00:34:51addressed the importance of language in society
00:34:55and the control and manipulation of language
00:34:58to control and direct society.
00:35:00I think the most important point in 1984
00:35:03is that power grows not out of the barrel of a gun.
00:35:05Power grows not out of the thought police and rule by terror.
00:35:10It grows out of the power of language in that novel.
00:35:13The revolutionary act committed by Winston Smith
00:35:16right at the beginning of that novel is to keep a diary.
00:35:19In keeping a diary, any person who keeps a diary
00:35:23uses language to communicate with the self.
00:35:28You're talking to yourself and you're thinking through words
00:35:32about the world around you and about how you feel.
00:35:35That's why a diary is such a revolutionary act in 1984.
00:35:39Because you are reasserting personal control over language.
00:35:43Then at the end of the novel, to parallel that scene,
00:35:46when Winston Smith has been found out
00:35:49and O'Brien, his torturer and guide, says to him,
00:35:54What is reality?
00:35:56Reality is not external.
00:35:58Reality exists not in the mind of the individual, which soon perishes,
00:36:03but in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal.
00:36:07What the party says is reality is real.
00:36:11And how else can the party do that?
00:36:13Except by language.
00:36:15The party has taken control of language and has taken it away from the individual.
00:36:19That's the power.
00:36:21Because those in power who control language
00:36:23control the way we see the world.
00:36:26Let's talk about political parties for a second.
00:36:29Let me name three for you
00:36:31and tell me which one is the worst abuser of doublespeak.
00:36:35The Communist Party, the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in history.
00:36:40I'd give them all three.
00:36:42They're right in there by the nature of politics.
00:36:45I would say that the Communist Party would be leading the other two
00:36:49simply because, under the time of Stalin and others,
00:36:52language was used to justify mass murder.
00:36:55Murder of millions of people.
00:36:57Exactly the same as the Nazis did.
00:36:59Use language to justify murder.
00:37:02But as we see, any politician in power starts using doublespeak.
00:37:07The Democrats did.
00:37:09I love Jimmy Carter's comment on the failed raid to free the hostages in Iran.
00:37:13He called it an incomplete success.
00:37:15He did that without even thinking about it.
00:37:18He was just automatically using that kind of language.
00:37:21But we had used language in Vietnam to justify our actions in Vietnam.
00:37:26The Republican Party, once attaining power,
00:37:29has used doublespeak to justify and explain and silence their critics.
00:37:34But I don't see that as being different from any other politician.
00:37:38What Orwell says in Politics and the English Language is
00:37:41it is clear that the corruption of language
00:37:44ultimately has political and economic causes.
00:37:48Who are your favorite people in the world
00:37:51that have used language over the years
00:37:54that you think use less doublespeak
00:37:57than a lot of the others that are in this book?
00:38:01I'm not sure about less doublespeak.
00:38:04I think more of people who were aware of the power of language
00:38:08and how to use it, and use it effectively.
00:38:11Or maybe I should ask you, who are the straight shooters?
00:38:14Who are the people that you say really give it to us straight?
00:38:18Hit you between the eyes?
00:38:19Boy, that's a tough question because
00:38:21the closest I could come would be
00:38:24Colin Powell, for his explanation of the war,
00:38:33my term, in Panama.
00:38:36There have been a few politicians who have been quite blunt.
00:38:41Senator Moynihan can, when he chooses to be.
00:38:44He can also use doublespeak, but he can be pretty blunt
00:38:47when he wants to be, and pretty forceful.
00:38:50There are a few people in Congress and the House of Representatives
00:38:54who, when they choose, can be quite blunt.
00:38:57What I find interesting about that use of language,
00:39:00those are people who are very conscious of when it is
00:39:03the ritualistic doublespeak that they're going to use,
00:39:06and when they think they can achieve more
00:39:09by using blunt language,
00:39:11so they can turn it on and turn it off.
00:39:14John Kennedy understood the power of rhetoric.
00:39:17This isn't to say he didn't use doublespeak, which he did,
00:39:20but he understood that language had the power to move us
00:39:24and to inspire us and to set a public agenda
00:39:27and define ourselves as a nation.
00:39:29And we haven't seen such language in quite a while.
00:39:32Harry Truman was probably the bluntest speaker
00:39:35we ever had as a president
00:39:38for not caring about the consequences, he would just say.
00:39:43And I think we have looked back on him now and said,
00:39:46boy, you know, he really was pretty straightforward.
00:39:49I have a rule about presidents and presidential speeches.
00:39:54I do not watch them when they are given.
00:39:57I read the text of the speech first.
00:40:00Then I watch the speech, so that I am not influenced
00:40:03by all of the visual trappings that go with the speech.
00:40:06And if you look at the words in the page,
00:40:08you'll get a quite different message quite often
00:40:11than the message you'll get from the visual image.
00:40:14I did that with Oliver North's testimony,
00:40:18which comes across quite different on the printed page.
00:40:21Harry Truman's comments now seem blunter than ever
00:40:24when read on the printed page.
00:40:27Richard Nixon doesn't seem quite as flat
00:40:31on the printed page as he was in life,
00:40:33because I think his persona overshadowed his words.
00:40:37And at times his language isn't as duplicitous
00:40:41as some people thought it was in some instances,
00:40:43although he was capable, as we saw during Watergate,
00:40:46of using a lot of doublespeak.
00:40:48So there is always a mixture of language,
00:40:51because anyone who reaches any position of power
00:40:55must either instinctively or knowingly
00:41:00know how to use doublespeak,
00:41:03and know how to use it at a certain time
00:41:06and when to turn it on and off, and to what degree.
00:41:09You can simply track that in the rise to power.
00:41:13I'm trying to think of the great Spencer Tracy movie.
00:41:16It's a classic film where he's running for president.
00:41:20He's the ordinary man who gets caught up in the presidential race
00:41:23and he becomes a national hero.
00:41:25And one of the things they do in the movie
00:41:28is show that as he moves closer to getting the nomination,
00:41:31he starts using more and more of what we would call doublespeak,
00:41:35until finally there comes a scene at the end of the movie
00:41:38when he gets so disgusted with what he has become
00:41:41that he quits the race.
00:41:43Even though he has by this point become a shoe-in for the nomination,
00:41:47if not the election, he just quits it.
00:41:49But the movie has traced the compromises
00:41:52that he makes through language in order to achieve it.
00:41:55And I think that the American public believes that,
00:41:59that in order to get that far, you have to sell off so much
00:42:03that there's not much left at the other end,
00:42:06and that it's reflected in the language that you use.
00:42:09When you write, where do you write?
00:42:12I am fortunate to have my own little study.
00:42:16I have one. I'm on one side of the hall.
00:42:19My wife is on the other side doing her next novel.
00:42:21And I have a computer and sit and write,
00:42:29trying to do as much as I can.
00:42:34I have a rule about writing,
00:42:36which I discovered when I wrote my dissertation,
00:42:39that you never write a book.
00:42:42You write three pages, or you write five pages.
00:42:46I put off writing my dissertation for a year
00:42:48because I couldn't think of writing this whole thing.
00:42:51And then I discovered that you don't write a book,
00:42:53you write three pages.
00:42:55And I had put off doing this book for quite a while,
00:42:57and my wife said, you've got to do the book.
00:42:59And I said, yes, I'm going to, just as soon as I...
00:43:02Of course, I did every other thing I could possibly think of before that.
00:43:05And then I realized one day that she was right,
00:43:08I had to start writing.
00:43:10But I was thinking of writing a book.
00:43:12Every time I start a book, I go through this.
00:43:14So one day, I sit down and I say,
00:43:16I'm going to write five pages. That's all.
00:43:19And when I'm done with five pages, I'll reward myself.
00:43:22So I do the five pages.
00:43:23Or the next time, I'll do ten pages,
00:43:25or whatever number of pages.
00:43:27But I set a number of pages.
00:43:29And after a period of time, you have a manuscript.
00:43:32Do you write a lot at one time?
00:43:34It depends.
00:43:36When I was writing that book, I came downstairs and said,
00:43:39gee, I just did 28 pages,
00:43:41which is a phenomenal amount of writing.
00:43:43But I hit a section where it just really flowed.
00:43:46And I always begin a writing session
00:43:48by sitting down and rewriting what I wrote the previous day.
00:43:51That's the first thing.
00:43:52And it does two things.
00:43:53First of all, it makes your writing a little bit better,
00:43:56because rewriting is the essential part of writing.
00:43:58And the second thing is it gets you flowing again,
00:44:00gets you back into the mainstream.
00:44:02Truman Capote once gave the best piece of advice
00:44:05for writers ever given.
00:44:07He said, never pump the well dry.
00:44:10Always leave a bucket there.
00:44:12So I would never stop writing when I ran out of ideas.
00:44:16I always stopped when I had something more to write about.
00:44:20And I would write a note to myself.
00:44:22This is what I'm going to do next.
00:44:23And then I stopped.
00:44:25The worst feeling in the world is to have written yourself dry
00:44:29and then have to come back the next day
00:44:31knowing that you're dry
00:44:32and not knowing where you're going to pick up at this point.
00:44:35Do you write at home?
00:44:36Yes.
00:44:37All the time?
00:44:38Yes.
00:44:39And where is home?
00:44:40It's in a little town called Haddon Township, New Jersey,
00:44:42which is right outside of Philadelphia.
00:44:44Is there a certain environment,
00:44:46late evening, early morning, dark room,
00:44:48all those things that make it easier for you?
00:44:51There is an environment, that's true.
00:44:53I once wrote an essay on this, by the way.
00:44:55I was asked to contribute to a book called How I Write.
00:44:57And they asked a group of writers to describe it.
00:44:59And in writing about how I write,
00:45:01first time I ever thought about it,
00:45:02I realized that there is a ritual that I engage in in writing.
00:45:05And I think every writer does.
00:45:07You have to have a certain environment.
00:45:08I like my office.
00:45:09And it has to be clean.
00:45:11When it gets too messy, I can't write.
00:45:13So I'll spend the day cleaning it up.
00:45:15And then, generally, I have to start
00:45:18either in the morning or in the late evening,
00:45:20one or the other.
00:45:21The middle of the day seems to be a bad time for me.
00:45:23I'll waste a lot of time in the middle of the day.
00:45:25But I can write late at night,
00:45:27or I can write early in the morning,
00:45:28get up and get started.
00:45:29My wife writes very late at night.
00:45:31I mean, she's the person who says,
00:45:33it's 2 o'clock, it's time to start writing.
00:45:35And she can write from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.
00:45:37It's absolutely amazing.
00:45:39How did you two get together?
00:45:42When she published,
00:45:43she had been a graduate student in the English department
00:45:45when I was chairman.
00:45:46And after she published her first novel,
00:45:50she'd given me a copy.
00:45:52And, you know, it was a former graduate
00:45:54who had gone on to success, and I'm quite proud.
00:45:57And so I asked her out to dinner.
00:46:01And a few years later, we were married.
00:46:05Is it two writers together? Does it work?
00:46:08She says it doesn't.
00:46:10And she said, why did I ever marry a writer?
00:46:13I know I should have never married a writer.
00:46:16Because she's a novelist, and she creates.
00:46:18And the creative process of writing a novel
00:46:20is quite different from writing nonfiction.
00:46:23I've learned an awful lot about writing,
00:46:26and I've learned an awful lot about literature from her,
00:46:29from watching her write
00:46:31and watching the creative process at work.
00:46:34And when she goes to writing conferences,
00:46:39and sometimes I go with her,
00:46:41and there are other writers, novelists there talking,
00:46:44and they all talk the same way.
00:46:46To watch a novelist write a novel
00:46:49is tremendously impressive.
00:46:52I don't think I have ever appreciated as much
00:46:56the creative act as that.
00:46:58To create a world,
00:47:00to create people that are real in a novel,
00:47:03and these people...
00:47:05As she explains to me and to her students
00:47:08in her creative writing classes,
00:47:10what you see in a novel is about one-tenth
00:47:13of what the novelist knows about these people in this world.
00:47:17She could tell you absolutely everything there is to know
00:47:20about these characters, where they went to school,
00:47:22what their favorite foods are.
00:47:24That may never be in the novel.
00:47:26But she has to know these people that well
00:47:29in order to write about them in a novel,
00:47:31and a novelist knows that.
00:47:33And so a lot of her writing will be...
00:47:36She has a couch in her office,
00:47:38and she'll just be lying on the couch two, three hours.
00:47:41Because there's the gestation period going on
00:47:45of these people coming to life,
00:47:47and then she'll write for a while,
00:47:49and then she'll go back to thinking.
00:47:51And to watch this process,
00:47:53boy, that's a piece of cake for me to write.
00:47:55I mean, this is nothing,
00:47:57and I wouldn't want to be a novelist for anything.
00:47:59There's too much pain and suffering
00:48:01and just damn hard work in writing a novel.
00:48:04In the liner notes, it says,
00:48:06quote, Bill Lutz is the 1990 George Orwell, Larry King.
00:48:11Which Larry King is that?
00:48:13That's Larry King, Larry King.
00:48:15I was on his show twice,
00:48:17and we had a lot of fun in doing the book.
00:48:22And when the book came out, I had sent him a copy,
00:48:25and he was kind enough to give me that blurb.
00:48:28But the first time I was on his show,
00:48:30we spent two hours going through doublespeak
00:48:33with people calling in and that,
00:48:35and he really enjoyed it.
00:48:37The reason I ask is I want you to go back to the George Orwell thing,
00:48:40because we want to talk a little bit about the awards
00:48:42and the time we have remaining.
00:48:43Who was George Orwell?
00:48:45George Orwell was a British essayist, reviewer, critic, novelist
00:48:50who published the now classic novel, 1984.
00:48:54But in 1947, he published
00:48:58Politics in the English Language,
00:49:00an essay which, by the way,
00:49:01is the most reprinted essay in the English language.
00:49:05It's just endlessly reprinted,
00:49:07in which he warned about the corruption of thought through language.
00:49:12The examples he used all came from Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.
00:49:17He had, during the Second World War,
00:49:19served in the British Ministry of Propaganda or Information
00:49:22and was introduced to the inside of the propaganda process.
00:49:25And he wrote 1984 as a novel of the future
00:49:29in which, given the growth of the power of communications
00:49:33and the sophisticated use of language,
00:49:35totalitarian governments would base their power
00:49:37upon the control of minds through language.
00:49:40And he really believed that.
00:49:41When did he die?
00:49:42He died in 1948 of lung disease.
00:49:49You think he would have, if he'd lived,
00:49:52he'd have been surprised about two things.
00:49:54One, the popularity of 1984 as a novel.
00:49:58And two, what actually happened
00:50:00in those totalitarian governments in 1989.
00:50:03By both of those.
00:50:04First of all, there's a whole discussion
00:50:09over why this novel became so popular.
00:50:11It was originally titled, by the way,
00:50:12The Last Man in Europe.
00:50:14And it got the title 1984 by flipping the last two digits of 48.
00:50:20Oh, by the way, he died in 49
00:50:21because he died right after the novel came out.
00:50:23The novel did only modestly well.
00:50:25After he died, however, it got tremendously popular.
00:50:28He also published Animal Farm, that classic,
00:50:31which was soundly denounced by the Communist Party
00:50:34and also got a lot of press.
00:50:36But it wasn't until after his death
00:50:37that the novel became as popular as it was.
00:50:40In 1984, that novel sold 50,000 copies a week
00:50:46in the United States.
00:50:48In 1984?
00:50:49In 1984. In the year of 1984.
00:50:52Did the fact the novel existed or exists
00:50:58have any impact on making sure that it really didn't happen?
00:51:03Well, during 1984, there were, of course,
00:51:06a flurry of conferences and discussions about,
00:51:08has the world of 1984 come to pass?
00:51:11And, of course, there were people who said,
00:51:12no, look, we haven't.
00:51:14And people said, oh, yes, it has.
00:51:16That's a judgment call.
00:51:18I think that, in some ways,
00:51:20it's far worse than the world that Orwell envisioned.
00:51:22On the other hand, it's not as bad as he envisioned.
00:51:25The events in Eastern Europe show us
00:51:27that it is becoming almost impossible
00:51:31to control the information environment
00:51:33as tightly as Orwell envisioned it.
00:51:35The only country I can think of that can do that now
00:51:37is North Korea.
00:51:38They're the only one that is completely,
00:51:40they're hermetically sealed from the rest of the world.
00:51:42Romania is trying to be hermetically sealed,
00:51:44and I don't know how successful they will be.
00:51:46But as the Chinese government found out,
00:51:48the existence of telephones and fax machines
00:51:50and personal computers simply makes it impossible
00:51:53to control language and, therefore, ideas
00:51:56in the way that Orwell saw it in 1984.
00:51:59But I think that what governments have done,
00:52:02they've just gone a step beyond that.
00:52:04They will let the information flow.
00:52:06They will just try and control the way that,
00:52:08the content of that flow of information.
00:52:11Now, the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution
00:52:13to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language,
00:52:16Donald Bartlett, or Barlett, and James Steele,
00:52:19reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 88?
00:52:22Yes. Oh, in 88, it was Edward Herman,
00:52:25professor of finance at the, oh, that was 88.
00:52:28That was 88.
00:52:30They did a series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer
00:52:33on the tax reform bill showing that
00:52:35through false, deceptive language
00:52:38that was inserted into the bill,
00:52:40billions of dollars in special tax breaks
00:52:42were given away to individuals and companies and corporations.
00:52:46And it was all done through deceptive language
00:52:48that no one knew understood the language.
00:52:50It was written in such a way that it applied only to one individual.
00:52:53Great example.
00:52:55One business was defined as a family farm in that bill,
00:52:59thereby giving them the special tax breaks for farmers.
00:53:02That business employs 25,000 people
00:53:06and has a gross income of over $1.5 billion a year.
00:53:10The tax bill called them a family farm.
00:53:1287 was Noam Chomsky for On Power and Ideology.
00:53:1686 was Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
00:53:2085 was Torben Verdergaard and Kim Schroeder.
00:53:25Yeah, they're two Danish professors.
00:53:27And one more, 84 was Ted Koppel,
00:53:29moderator of ABC's television program Nightline.
00:53:32In general, who gives the George Orwell Award
00:53:35and what's usually the reason?
00:53:37Well, the committee on public doublespeak
00:53:39of the National Council of Teachers of English.
00:53:41We take nominations from anybody who wants to give us nominations.
00:53:44We vote. We have 35 members on the committee.
00:53:46They're all teachers of English.
00:53:48We have one statistician and one philosopher on the committee.
00:53:50And we vote.
00:53:52What we look for is someone who has contributed
00:53:54to clarity in language and public discourse.
00:53:56Nightline, I think, is a good example.
00:53:58Ted Koppel, I think, is famous for saying,
00:54:00wait a minute here, can we back up and explain that one for a minute?
00:54:04I mean, he's very good at doing that.
00:54:06We think that that contributes to clarity in discourse.
00:54:10We gave it to Bartlett and Steele
00:54:12because of revealing that intricacies of that tax law
00:54:15were needlessly done
00:54:17and that the language was deliberately opaque
00:54:20to give special tax breaks to a lot of people and corporations
00:54:23that tens of billions of dollars worth.
00:54:25We think that that's important, that people know about that,
00:54:28that this language is being used to take money out of their pockets
00:54:32because somebody's going to have to make up for that missing tax revenue.
00:54:36So we're looking for people who contribute to honesty in language,
00:54:39clarity in language that way.
00:54:41Okay, the recipients of the Doublespeak Award.
00:54:44Same group give out?
00:54:46Yes, the same group.
00:54:48We vote each year from the nominations that we receive.
00:54:51And we try to give the award as a symbolic award
00:54:54to an American public figure who has used doublespeak
00:54:57that has consequences of some kind on public policy or a public issue.
00:55:01In 1989, we gave it to Exxon Corporation
00:55:05for calling the 35 miles of shoreline in Alaska environmentally clean
00:55:10when reporters pointed out that there was still oil all over the place.
00:55:14An Exxon spokesman said,
00:55:16well, clean doesn't mean that every oil stain is off every rock.
00:55:19It means the natural inhabitants can live there.
00:55:22Let me go quickly through the list to the 80s.
00:55:2580 was Ronald Reagan.
00:55:2781 was Alexander Haig.
00:55:2982 was the Republican National Committee.
00:55:3183, Ronald Reagan.
00:55:3284, the Department of State.
00:55:3385, the CIA.
00:55:3586, NASA.
00:55:3687, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.
00:55:38And 88, Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci,
00:55:40Admiral William Crow and Rear Admiral William Fogarty.
00:55:44A political question to you.
00:55:45If someone read that list,
00:55:47they would think possibly that this is a one-sided award
00:55:50to only one side of the political spectrum.
00:55:52Well, for this reason,
00:55:54the Republican Party has been in power for eight years.
00:55:57So, you know, when Jimmy Carter was in, he got it.
00:56:00So, you know, these are the people who have the power
00:56:02to affect public policy through their language.
00:56:05As I point out, Democrats don't get quoted too much these days.
00:56:08They're not in power.
00:56:10If they get in power,
00:56:11they'll be right in there in the list with everybody else.
00:56:13I don't see it.
00:56:14I mean, we cited Dukakis during his campaign for his doublespeak,
00:56:17which he used.
00:56:18And if he had been elected president,
00:56:20he'd be in the running along with everyone else.
00:56:22Either Republican or Democratic Party better than the other
00:56:24when it comes to doublespeak?
00:56:27It seems to go with the territory.
00:56:29Our point is that, as Orwell said,
00:56:32it's political language,
00:56:33and political language tends to, in the 20th century,
00:56:36to be this kind of misleading and deceptive language.
00:56:39Whether it's Johnson...
00:56:40By the way, the legacy from the Johnson administration
00:56:43was the language of Vietnam
00:56:45and the language of the poverty program,
00:56:47which stopped calling people poor
00:56:49and started calling them disadvantaged
00:56:51and stopped talking about slums and ghettos,
00:56:53but the inner city.
00:56:54I mean, that's a heritage of doublespeak
00:56:56from the Johnson administration.
00:56:57Let me go back to when we started this conversation.
00:56:59I asked you, I think, in the beginning,
00:57:00is this done on purpose and with calculation?
00:57:03And you said yes.
00:57:04Yes.
00:57:05In fact, I cite a couple incidents in the book
00:57:08where I can document it was done.
00:57:10One is revenue enhancement.
00:57:11They had a meeting in the Office of Management and Budget.
00:57:13They said, we need a phrase to replace tax increase.
00:57:16They came up with revenue enhancement.
00:57:18When Lawrence Kudlow, the economist,
00:57:20was asked why they did that,
00:57:22he said, because there's no better way to sell economic policy
00:57:25than the euphemistic route.
00:57:26He was quite proud of the fact that they came up with that phrase.
00:57:29And Peacekeeper, as the name for the MX missile,
00:57:32again, Robert McFarland chaired the committee meeting
00:57:35in which he facetiously suggested
00:57:37that they couldn't name it Widowmaker, could they?
00:57:40So instead, they came up with Peacemaker.
00:57:43But later, President Reagan misread his cue cards
00:57:47and said Peacekeeper.
00:57:50And since it was a televised speech,
00:57:52it became the Peacekeeper.
00:57:54And it was a name that was deliberately designed
00:57:56to make a nuclear missile sound nice.
00:58:00Does it work?
00:58:02Yes.
00:58:03Oh, of course, it works.
00:58:04Most people don't hear it.
00:58:06They will hear some of it, but not all of it.
00:58:08One of my favorite examples from this past year
00:58:10is the resource development park
00:58:11that they were going to establish in Kansas City
00:58:13until the good folks in the neighborhood
00:58:16where they were going to put the park asked,
00:58:18what's a resource development park?
00:58:19Do you know what a resource development park is?
00:58:22In Kansas City, it's a dump.
00:58:25They were going to put a dump in their neighborhood
00:58:27until somebody asked what it meant.
00:58:29They deliberately invented that phrase
00:58:30to try and slip a dump into the neighborhood
00:58:32without anyone noticing it until it was too late.
00:58:35We just have a short time left
00:58:36and there are a number of things
00:58:37that our audience may be interested in.
00:58:39I've got here in my hand
00:58:40the quarterly review of Doublespeak.
00:58:43Is there an organization that you can join
00:58:45if you want to get into this?
00:58:46You don't have to join.
00:58:47You just subscribe to that.
00:58:48In fact, most of the subscribers are civilian public
00:58:51and not even English teachers.
00:58:53It's $8 a year.
00:58:54It's subsidized by
00:58:55the National Council of Teachers of English.
00:58:58That's why the cost is so low.
00:58:59Where do you get it?
00:59:01You can simply write to
00:59:02the Quarterly Review of Doublespeak
00:59:05in Urbana, Illinois.
00:59:07I've got the 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois.
00:59:11Yes.
00:59:1261801 National Council of Teachers of English
00:59:16and $8 and you're a subscriber.
00:59:18And you're a subscriber.
00:59:19And what will you get out of this?
00:59:21I edit it.
00:59:22You will get all the latest examples of Doublespeak
00:59:24that are sent to me,
00:59:25which I put in there.
00:59:26Articles on Doublespeak,
00:59:29book reviews on books of interest,
00:59:31cartoons,
00:59:32short pieces on what's the latest
00:59:34in advertising Doublespeak
00:59:36and I try to make it fun and funny
00:59:38and interesting and entertaining at the same time.
00:59:40You also learn things like
00:59:42how to read public opinion polls
00:59:44so that you're not misled by the results.
00:59:46One last question.
00:59:48Your favorite Doublespeak word or phrase?
00:59:51The Department of Defense,
00:59:53which until 1947 was the Department of War.
00:59:56The book is called Doublespeak
00:59:59and it's written by William Lutz,
01:00:01published by Harper and Row in your bookstores.
01:00:03Thank you for joining us.
01:00:04Thank you.
01:00:14Music
01:00:29That concludes this interview with author William Lutz.
01:00:32You can see Book Notes every Sunday evening
01:00:35at 8 o'clock Eastern Time on C-SPAN
01:00:37when we will spend an hour with a noted author.
01:00:40We will take a short break now.
01:00:42Now then, it's Capitol Agenda.
01:00:44Meryl Peterson gives a lecture
01:00:46on the Golden Age of the Senate.
01:00:48Music
01:01:01The National Academy of K-