Public Language Awards Committee

The charge of the Public Language Award Committee is to:

• • identify, address, and promote interest in and knowledge of language used in public spaces;
  • promote discussion of public language use;
  • provide awareness of public language education;
• uphold these charges in selecting the recipients of the annual George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language;
• uphold these charges in annually identifying multiple examples of glaringly deceptive language to be known as The Year in Doublespeak;
• uphold these charges by contributing new lesson plans and/or revisions to older contributions to ReadWriteThink, with annually updated positive and negative examples of public language use.

The Public Language Award Committee administered the Doublespeak Award from 1974 to 2020. While the award was sunsetted in 2022, you can view the archive page here.

In addition to the Orwell Award, the Public Language Award Committee will annually produce a list of multiple examples of deceptive language from a public spokesperson or group, The Year in Doublespeak.  This list will begin in 2023. In addition to identifying examples, the committee will contribute to NCTE’s ReadWriteThink platform to house peer-reviewed lesson plans and other pedagogical resources that make use of the identified examples. This work will help literacy instructors to continue teaching students about and to participate in public language.