Invasion of the Business-Speakers

MSNBC has a great interview with Don Watson, author of "Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language." I haven't read the book, but it has been added to my list.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8514826/site/newsweek/

Working in a professional atmospheree, I have always thought that 'business speak' is crazy. There is no word I hate more than 'proactive.' What does that really mean?

For everyone that has ever giggled at a memo, here are some great excerpts and examples:

Does it infuriate you that everyone, from the local pastor to your kids school principal, seems to have a mission statement touting their core values.

He laments the fact that librarians are now referred to as: information needs identifiers, and that his 12-year-old granddaughters report card said that she had developed a variety of products in history class. He cites a John Deere tractor safety notice that warns customers to lock the brake or unexpected non-powered tractor movement may occur.

We are all customers. Even the CIA talks about having internal clients. Im quite sure that in another iteration, the Army will talk about enemy clients. Once they decide were all customers then the consequences for basic relationships in civil society are not good.

I think it happened when we decided to a greater or lesser extent that we live in an economy, not a society. Its become badge of honor for people in their professional lives so theyll bring it home with them. Soon theyll be saying: Were going to watch 'The Wizard of Oz' together in a family scenario.

In the book, you quote President George W. Bush as saying: We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates.

Ive collected examples that people have sent in on the Web site [www.weaselwords.com.au]. One of my favorites is from a high-school [evaluation]: Just as the skill and processes are not compartmentalized in the creation process, the evaluation of outcomes will occur against a background of understanding that separation of outcomes into discrete components is subordinate to the evaluation of the total process as a comprehensive outcome. Nobody has any idea what that means.

When you turn language into an assembly line, you take all the potential out of it. You can't write a poem in this language. You cant tell a joke, you can't convey feeling. You can't discover new meanings. This writing is incapable of taking you anywhere. It's deliberately circumscribed. It's almost an abuse of human rights.

Here's how we beat it:

How do we fight this abuse of language, or as you say, become a refusenik? When people use this jargon, ask them what they really mean.

But, there is hope:

Even after all the harm that American corporations have done to the language, there's still Mark Twain. Americans do great good for the language; they keep it alive and moving.