Editing Doublespeak (section)

== NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak ==
{{Main|National Council of Teachers of English}}

The US '''National Council of Teachers of English''' (NCTE) Committee on Public Doublespeak was formed in 1971, in the midst of the Watergate scandal. It was at a point when there was widespread skepticism about the degree of truth which characterized relationships between the public and the worlds of politics, the military, and business.

NCTE passed two resolutions. One called for the council to 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 called for the council to find means to study the relationships between language and public policy and to track, publicize, and combat semantic distortion by public officials, candidates for office, political commentators, and all others whose language is transmitted through the mass media.

The two resolutions were accomplished by forming NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak, a body which has made significant contributions in describing the need for reform where clarity in communication has been deliberately distorted.<ref name="Robert S.Zais">{{cite journal|last=Zais|first=Robert S.|title=Labels, Bandwagons, & Linguistic Pollution in the Field of Education|journal=The English Journal|date=September 1978|volume=67|issue=6|pages=51–53|doi=10.2307/815871|jstor=815871}}</ref>

===Hugh Rank===
Hugh Rank helped form the Doublespeak committee in 1971 and was its first chairman. Under his editorship, the committee produced a book called ''Language and Public Policy'' (1974), with the aim of informing readers of the extensive scope of doublespeak being used to deliberately mislead and deceive the audience. He highlighted the deliberate public misuses of language and provided strategies for countering doublespeak by focusing on educating people in the English language so as to help them identify when doublespeak is being put into play. He was also the founder of the Intensify/Downplay pattern that has been widely used to identify instances of doublespeak being used.<ref name="Robert S.Zais" />

===Daniel Dieterich===

Daniel Dieterich, former chair of the [[National Council of Teachers of English]], served as the second chairman of the Doublespeak committee after Hugh Rank in 1975. He served as editor of its second publication, ''Teaching about Doublespeak'' (1976), which carried forward the committee's charge to inform teachers of ways of teaching students how to recognize and combat language designed to mislead and misinform.<ref name="Robert S.Zais" />{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | headerimage= | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?10449-1/doublespeak ''Booknotes'' interview with William Lutz on ''Doublespeak: The Use of Language to Deceive You''], December 31, 1989, [[C-SPAN]]}}

=== William D. Lutz ===
[[William D. Lutz]], professor emeritus at [[Rutgers University-Camden]] has served as the third chairman of the Doublespeak Committee since 1975. In 1989, both his own book ''Doublespeak'' and, under his editorship, the committee's third book, ''Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four'', were published. ''Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four'' consists of 220 pages and eighteen articles contributed by long-time Committee members and others whose bodies of work have contributed to public understanding about language, as well as a bibliography of 103 sources on doublespeak.<ref name="Hasselriis 1991 28–35"/> Lutz was also the former editor of the now defunct ''Quarterly Review of Doublespeak'', which examined the use of vocabulary by public officials to obscure the underlying meaning of what they tell the public. Lutz is one of the main contributors to the committee as well as promoting the term "doublespeak" to a mass audience to inform them of its deceptive qualities. He mentions:<ref name="William Lutz2">{{cite news|title=A new look at 'doublespeak'|date=November 6, 1989|newspaper=Advertising Age}}</ref>{{blockquote|There is more to being an effective consumer of language than just expressing dismay at dangling modifiers, faulty subject and verb agreement, or questionable usage. All who use language should be concerned whether statements and facts agree, whether language is, in Orwell's words, "largely the defense of the indefensible" and whether language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".|sign=|source=}}