Why Lutz?

We are all unknowingly accepting and adapting our language to suit the fallacious zeitgeist of politics, advertising, the military, and the legal system. In many cases the definition of a term is deliberately slanted and its meaning is obscured, lessened, and devolved to mislead a particular audience at a particular time -- which is both unethical and unacceptable.

Gloria Naylor wrote that "...the spoken word, like the written word, amounts to a nonsensical arrangement of sounds or letters without a consensus that assigns 'meaning'. And building from the meanings of what we hear, we order reality. Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power" (Roberts and Turgeon 250). When this meaning is assigned to them, words become symbols, which call up conceptions of things they are said to represent. They call a thing to mind, but they are necessarily separated from reality until then.

"Contrary to the stereotype, English teachers are not guardians of the purity of language, waiting to pounce with red pencil and scathing criticism on any poor soul who makes a mistake in spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage, or pronunciation." -- William Lutz, from Beyond 1984

In part, that is the nature of rhetorical fallacies: people assign meaning to words, phrases, and causes to build a consensus that suits their immediate needs, primarily based on flawed logic and fallacious reasoning. This is where William D. Lutz steps in. With his books Doublespeak, Beyond 1984: Doublespeak in a Post-Orwellian Age, and The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone is Saying Anymore, along with numerous articles, essays, and NPR spots, Lutz has literally brought rhetoric to the masses. He has championed the art of good, clear writing across numerous discourses and has constantly stressed the need for ethical responsibility in writing.

Lutz's battle cry for ethics in language go straight back to Aristotle, a man whom he admires very much. In a recent email "interview", Lutz mentioned that his greatest influence is Aristotle, "...who continues to amaze with his relevance. Perhaps in a sense I continue with Aristotle and his concern for the use of language to persuade, but I emphasize the (for lack of a better term) the morality of rhetoric. Using rherotic for ignoble ends is a concern, a major concern. George Yoos has written some good stuff on this. I guess I want to make rhetoric a useful, everyday tool for the analysis of the language that affects our daily lives.

As in Athens, rhetoric should be a survival tool that everyone can and does use. Which is why in my latest book I devote the last chapter to fighting back. As long as we view communication as a one-way process (sender to receiver) and not as an event that place in a context and that we participate -- both sender of message and receiver -- to create that message, that meaning, then doublespeak will flourish."

Along with the Fighting Back chapter, The New Doublespeak also includes a 50-term quiz where you have to match up bizarre phrases like "victim of habitually detrimental lifestyle" with their true meanings -- in this case "alcoholic". (219)

Lutz's ideas are reflective of what could happen if faulty logic, fallacious reasoning, and intentionally deceitful language run rampant in society, a notion expressed in George Orwell's nightmare distopia, 1984, and his article Politics and the English Language.

He also mentioned how he learned from author Neil Postman's work, particularly, "...how we go about making meaning in any act of communication and how doublespeak works."

Oddly enough, though, Lutz never intentionally focused his work on fallacies or fallacious reasoning. "I think that just happened from the kind of language that is the object of my attention", he said. "I focus on the language -- words, syntax -- and what that language does or does no do. In my first book I emphasize analyzing such language by asking who is saying what to whom, under what conditions and circumstances, with what intent, and with what results. I guess that process of analysis would reveal any fallacious reasoning."

In Beyond 1984, which he served as editor, Lutz mentions how the NCTE passed two resolutions in the early seventies dealing with language. He states that the resolutions were passed due to "...mounting concern over the manipulation of language by the government and the military in reporting and discussing the Vietnam war." (xi) These resolutions, passed before Watergate, led to the NCTE forming the Committee on Public Doublespeak and the eventual bestowing of the annual Orwell Award. The Orwell award was designed for "...work that effectively treats the subject of public doublespeak and makes an outstanding contribution to the critical analysis of public language." (xii)

On the dark side of the force there is the Doublespeak award, which Lutz presented for years as editor of The Doublespeak Review. This award is given the person most committed to obfuscation, deceit, and miscommunication each year. Past recipients include former President Reagan, former Vice-President Quayle, and House Speaker Gingrich.

Back to Table of Contents

His Work, His Themes

A recurring theme in much of Lutz's work is that when language is used for purposes other than what it was originally designed for to communicate it is usually not an accident or a slip-up; in most cases it is deliberate.

Lutz breaks doublespeak down into four major categories: the euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook, and inflated language.

He describes a euphemism as being "...an inoffensive word or phrase used to avoid a harsh, unpleasant, or distasteful reality". He makes an immediate distinction between euphemisms that are not doublespeak and those that are.

Saying someone has "passed away", for example, is not doublespeak because it is said out of concern for someone's feelings and out of these types of euphemisms are common knowledge: everyone knows that "passed away" means "died".

But when a euphemism is used to deceive, it becomes doublespeak. Lutz cites an example of how the State Department announced it was replacing the term "killing" in its future reports with the phrase "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life" in order to avoid or minimize discussion on CIA-sponsored terrorist groups down in Central America.

"Who is saying what to whom, under what conditions and circumstances, with what intent, and with what results?" -- William Lutz, from Doublespeak

Much like the euphemism, jargon -- the specialized "trade" language within a professional group -- also has its acceptable and unacceptable forms. If the jargon stays within the specific professional group, for instance if doctors discuss medical terminology among themselves, it isn't doublespeak because they all understand the terms. However, if jargon is used outside of that group it becomes doublespeak because the intended audience won't be familiar with these terms. He mentions how jargon is deceptively used to "...make the simple appear complex, the ordinary profound, the obvious insightful." (4) The act of smelling something becomes "organoleptic analysis", while if your house is broken into it or destroyed it suffers an "involuntary conversion."

Lutz mentions that gobbledygook, also known as bureaucratese, is unacceptable in any shape or form. Gobbledygook is probably the easiest type of doublespeak to perpetrate on an unsuspecting audience, because all that's needed is to endlessly pile on words and overwhelm whomever is listening. This way the person in question can give the appearance (a key word!) of authority and creditability of a subject and intimidate his or her audience into submission.

For years, Alan Greenspan a former Nixon official and current Chair of the Federal reserve, has been doing just that. In his Doublespeak book and on NPR, Lutz gives Greenspan an enormous pie-to-the-face. For example, in answering a question during a Senate committee hearing, Greenspan once stated, "It is a tricky problem to find a particular calibration in timing that would be appropriate to stem the acceleration in risk premiums created by falling income without prematurely aborting the decline in inflation-generated risk premium." (5) Any more questions for Mr. Greenspan?

The fourth type of doublespeak, inflated language, is perhaps the most common and is the opposite of the euphemism. Inflated language is designed to "...make the ordinary seem extraordinary; to make everyday things seem impressive." In relatively harmless settings, this is where garbage men might refer to themselves as "sanitation engineers", or where used cars are called "previously distinguished vehicles." Lutz then points out the more nefarious uses of inflated language, such as when a fire in a nuclear power plant was described as a "rapid oxidation."

Back to Table of Contents

Pedagogical Concerns

In an effort to sound "academic" (whatever that means) many students resort to using Lutz's four main kinds of doublespeak particularly gobbledygook and inflated language in their papers.

Whether or not this comes from secondary school conditioning to "write for college", or from a genuine uncertainty in knowing what English teachers expect, is uncertain. Perhaps students think of inflated language as an easy way out toward meeting the required page length of a given assignment you can only tweek the margins so much, right?

Considering inflated language does exactly that inflate it almost seems like a no-brainer for students to endlessly string together prepositional phrases, indulge in pretentious terminology and noun-stacking, and generally achieve maximum density with a minimum of content.

However, unlike Lutz's definition of doublespeak, the language of deceit, I'm not certain students resort to it with that same intent. They don't intentionally write to mislead, misdirect, and deceive; they usually do it because they don't know any better they probably think they are writing well. This is probably the main point of Lutz's book: to be aware of the implications of what is being said and how it is being said, in other peoples' writing and our own. For both students and teachers, this lesson is invaluable.

It can be argued that Lutz's viewpoints are somewhat left of center and that his book is simply a politically-biased attack on conservatives within our government. For example, in Doublespeak, he lays waste to Alexander Haig (for his statement that "...a continued weapons buildup is absolutely essential to our hopes for meaningful arms reduction."), George Bush, Bob Dole, Oliver North, James Baker, James Watt, Marlon Fitzwater, and the entire Republican regime of the 1980's. Nearly all of these examples invoke strong responses (usually laughter or revulsion) in the classroom, which I believe helps students retain the knowledge better.

"People who can define are masters." -- Stokely Carmichael

If his opinions are politically biased, then should we be using a book favoring a particular political viewpoint to teach students? Probably not. However, I don't think Lutz had ulterior motives here, nor do I think it is politically biased, for one simple reason: This book was published in 1989 which means it was probably written in 1987 or 1988. During that time Michael Douglas declared "greed was good" in Wall Street, our government was dominated by Republicans, and the Democrats were in full retreat. Lutz's examples, more than anything else, are merely a reflection of the 1980's zeitgeist; he picks on more conservatives because there were more of them to pick on.

Lutz confirms this. "My first book on doublespeak had a lot of Reagan and Bush because they were in power. My latest book takes off after everyone, including Clinton and others. I take my targets where I find them."

If anything, this is all the more reason to use the book in class. Since most underclassmen were probably children in the 1980's, Doublespeak gives them more insight into the times they grew up in. This may seem trivial, but remember: the '80's are now considered "classic". Most of the bad, 1980's TV shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island are in syndication right now; many bars and clubs feature "Retro '80's Nights", and not a week goes by without seeing an advertisement on TV for '80's compilation albums. Doublespeak has the potential to teach English and history at the same time.

Back to Table of Contents

Examples

What They Say / What They Mean (all taken from various pages of Doublespeak)
From The Doublespeak of Everyday Living:
"water landing"	An airplane crash into the ocean
"previously thawed" poultry	frozen chicken
an "energy document"	a gas bill
From The Doublespeak of Advertising:
"virgin vinyl"	fake leather
"genuine imitation leather"	also fake leather
"real counterfeit diamonds"	real fake diamonds
From The Pentagon War Machine Grinds on , Your Government at Work, and Nuclear Doublespeak
"human remains pouches"	body bags
"preemptive counterattack"	an invasion where we strike first
"predawn vertical insertion"	we strike first, and when it's still dark
"collateral damage"	civilian casualties
"disinformation"; "misspoke"	lied, lied
"energetic disassemblies"	nuclear explosions
"radiation enhancement devices"	nuclear weapons

Numerous other examples of doublespeak within politics, academia, the military, and the world around us, can be found on the web at American Newsspeak and This Shit Doesn't Stink, to name a few. Lutz himself plans on starting his own official doublespeak web site this Summer. Once it's up and running, he said he plans to "...encourage people to contribute so it can become a focus for active exchange/interchange of information, ideas, etc.

Back to Table of Contents

Conclusions

In most of his work, Lutz covers a broad range of fields ranging from advertising and politics, to corporate and academic America. His tone and writing style are user-friendly, yet extremely engaging and informative.

Lutz's work is an ideal tool for classes involving cross-disciplinary writing. It exposes those who would attempt to collectively pull the wool over our eyes, mislead us, and just plain lie, while indirectly showing us what to watch out for in our own writing. His examples range from the humorous to the sardonic; his tone from light (or is it "lite"? He devotes several pages to that!) to cynical. With Bush saying the economy was in a state of "negative growth" in 1992, Dole stating that tobacco "isn't necessarily addictive", and Clinton calling the FBI file scandal a "bureaucratic snafu", I am certain Lutz will have more than enough material for a third installment of Doublespeak.

This cross-disciplinary critique of language is Lutz's greatest strength, his greatest contribution to the field of rhetoric. He has taken the traditionally "closed loop" of scholarly writing in the field of rhetoric and has made it relevant to those outside that loop. And he has made it fun in the process.

At the end of The New Doublespeak, Lutz states that, "The struggle against doublespeak will be won only when we refuse to let those who would use doublespeak go unchallenged. We won't win the fight in one big battle, but only after a long time and after many small skirmishes. ...But we will win." (217)

Back to Table of Contents

"The renaming of things is the essence of conquest." -- unknown

Sources

Lutz, William. Doublespeak New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989.

Wuriman, Richard Sal. "WiIliam Lutz" TED7. Online. 1 March, 1997.

Lutz, William, ed. Beyond 1984: Doublespeak in a Post-Orwellian Age Illinois: NCTE, 1989.

Roberts, William H., and Gregoire Turgeon, eds. About Language, third edition Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.

Lutz, William. The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone is Saying Anymore New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 1996

Orwell, George. 1984 New York: Hardcourt, Brace, and Company, Inc, 1949.

Branwyn, Gareth. "This Shit Doesn't Stink: it exceeds the odor threshold". Stim.com. Online. 28 February, 1997.

Grytting, Wayne. "American Newspeak". Seattle Community Network. Online. 23 February, 1997.

Back to Table of Contents