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Attack of the Corporate Weasel Words
theodp writes "Does it bother you that churches have a Mission Statement touting their Core Values? That even the CIA has a Vision? In his book Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language and in this Newsweek interview, Australian author Don Watson argues it's time to protest the mind-numbing business jargon that infests our schools, churches and political speech. Examples that people have sent to him can be found on Watson's website."
my favorite from TFB would have to be the "Damaging energy exchange". I think it means accident. Although the report in which it was included was at pains to point out that "accident" was an inappropriate term for a "damaging energy exchange", and that the British Medical Association Journal had banned the use of the word "accident" in its articles.' And of course, to "Add value", which is obviously 'to agree with one's boss.'
...the pointy haired boss from Dilbert is not just a myth. Without these words, that I find to be a detestable sore upon my tounge for each utterance, there are managers that would say "Ooh, that doesn't sound so good... why don't you uhh... perk it up a little bit....yeah." Basically we need to find the Lumbergh gene in the human race and erradicate it so we can stop making the stupid bosses happy, then we can dispose of these garbage words.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
The worst mission statements are the ones that are just so disconnected from reality- The ones that were dreamed up in a boardroom where no one had ever seem the manufacturimg facility. I bought a pair jeans and on the tag it said that "we strive to create the best most durable blah blah blah" and when I put them on, a button fell off....
How about some honest ones- "We seek to have a complete monopoly on unreliable operating systems..."
I love the ones that have nothing to do with the product... "Our mascara comany seeks to delight our customers, create world peace, and give out random orgasms...."
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
From Amazon's book description: "... reflects on the way language has been abused so that, instead of being a means of communicating the truth and entering more deeply into it, and of the acquisition of wisdom, it is being used to control people and manipulate them to achieve practical ends. Reality becomes intelligible through words. Man speaks so that through naming things, what is real may become intelligible. This mediating character of language, however, is being increasingly corrupted. Tyranny, propaganda, mass-media destroy and distort words. They offer us apparent realities whose fictive character threatens to become opaque."
One of the best counters to this kind of nonsensical speech is the Socratic method of inquiry. Basically, you keep asking questions about what specifically they mean by a certain phrase, and then what they mean by the BS phrase they use to explain the first BS phrase, and so on. This gets rid of a lot of the nonsense speech assuming, of course, that the person speaking such nonsense is doing so out of habit. If the person you are addressing is BS'ing everything because it is to his advantage, then this will go on until the end of time (or at least until one of you gets tired). My step-father actually tried this once with a blowhard and just gave up at a certain point, because the blowhard appeared to have infinite energy for showing that he was "obviously correct".
Similar to the upcoming US election results
If you had read the article properly you would have noticed that all the examples you are quoting are examples he has received from contributors, the opinions on the phrases are also the contributors opinions.
I agree with you that some of those points are uneccesarily nitpicking and anal but I have to say that Detention Centre is certainly a good description of a prison but sort of implies that it's somewhere you can drop in and out of at will when you wish to be detained.
The problem, usually, is that everyone wants to keep these things generic, bland, and inoffensive. They shouldn't be. For an example of a good mission statement, consider this one I wrote for a computer store I'm a partner in:
No weasel words, no paradigms--shifting or otherwise--and no nonsense. What we mean by these terms is spelled out in our values statement (which I won't reproduce here.) Because I have this statement, I can hold my employees accountable to it.A mission or vision that nobody understands is worthless. But a good one is priceless.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Hey all right! Someone beat me to posting it. I am... so touched!
... yeah, over the years I have gotten literally thousands of e-mails about it, from addresses all over the place, including countless big-name corporations whom I won't name to protect the guilty. You know who really loves it, though? The government. I've gotten more e-mails from the military, government agencies, and big government contractors like Boeing than I can even count. My all-time favorite is still the guy from NIMA (which I believe is now called the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency ... think spy satellites).
... they learned English as a second language and they're already familiar with this kind of speech. Now that's just ... sad.
Anyway, yeah, it is a little ancient, but judging from the response I still get to it, it's definitely still relevant.
This strip was once printed in the Industry Standard magazine and in PC World New Zealand, of all places. Not to mention that Xerox once used it as a print sample for some of their color printers. But it's mostly known for having "escaped the lab" and been e-mailed to people all over the world.
And, fear not! I know for a fact that it's pasted on all kinds of cubicles all over the planet. In fact, my boss claims that one of the reasons I was hired at my current job is because of that comic strip.
(In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm the guy what drew it.)
Anyway
Even stranger, though, are the e-mails I get from people in countries where English isn't even the native language. Get your head around that one
Breakfast served all day!