www.goodwordsbadwords.fun - Impostures & obfuscations

Jargon is language of the trained liar, it is everything slang is not: Centrifugal, evasive, drably euphemistic, unthreatening, conformist. While slang belongs to the gutter, jargon belongs to the executive estate. It is the clumsy, graceless, inelegant, aesthetically bereft expression of houses with three garages … It is delusional, it inflates pomposity, officiousness and self-importance, rather than punctures them.

Jonathan Meades

Politics and the English language, by George Orwell

For [George] Orwell, the corruption of language in public life threatened the intelligent discourse on which democracy depends.(...) We need to feel safe in the assumption that words mean what they are commonly understood to mean. Deliberate ambiguities, slides of meaning, obscure, incomprehensible or meaningless words poison the democratic process by leaving people less able to make informed or rational decisions. They erode trust. Don Watson, 'Gobbledygook'.

Verbal gargoyles and Bad words, by Tony Proscio

Some of the jargon glowering down at anyone who dares to join a civic debate.

This jargon disease is choking language, by Robert Fisk

Only this week I received another request, this time to join "ethics practitioners" to "share evidence-based practices on dealing with current ethical practices" around the world. What on earth does this mean? Why do people write like this?

Doublespeak and The world of doublespeak, by William Lutz

Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't; it does not extend thought but limits it.

Are you going forward? Then stop now, by Lucy Kellaway

Blue sky thinking, pushing the envelope - the problem with office-speak is that it cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language.

Private Eye No. 1541

One man's war on clichés, by John Rentoul

When he published a list of key phrases he wanted banned, he had no idea in any way, shape or form what would happen going forward...

A guide to contemporary newspeak, Centre for Policy Studies

Why is it that jargon and resort to ‘buzzwords’ so offends us? There is the blighting of a wonderful language that riles. There is the challenge to comprehension, the obscuring or blurring of meaning, the cluttering of clear thought by a language of frosted glass. But what we see is not just poor use of language. It is the inflation of words and terms. It is particularly evident in the grandiosity of title and function that is now rife across public administration in the UK.

I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Bad Language: The Use and Abuse of Official Language. House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee

The language used in politics and government matters because politics is a public activity and the services that government provides are public services. The public nature of government and its activities means that politicians and public servants should be required to communicate with people in a straightforward way, using language that people understand.

"I have what I call a bollocks list where I just sit in meetings and I write down some of the absurd language we use—and we are all guilty of this, myself included. The risk is when you have been in government for eight years you begin to talk the language which is not the language of the real world." Tessa Jowell, MP.

No comfort in council communications, Sustainable Scotland website

Corporate: There are quite a few “corporate” officers about in the weird and wonderful world of local government.

An A-Z of modern office jargon, by Steven Poole

Drill down into this guide and you could be talking like a boardroom legend.

10 of the worst examples of management-speak, by Steven Poole

Only if you have the core competencies will you be able to action the key deliverables...

Davos jargon: A crime against the English language? , By Joe Miller

A short list of bewildering terms and phrases overheard or read at Davos, and attempted to decipher them, with limited success.

A sound bite society is one that is flooded with images and slogans, bits of information and abbreviated or symbolic messages--a culture of instant but shallow communication. It is not just a culture of gratification and consumption, but one of immediacy and superficiality, in which the very notion of 'news' erodes in a tide of formulaic mass entertainment. It is a society anaesthetised to violence, one that is cynical but uncritical, and indifferent to, if not contemptuous of, the more complex human tasks of cooperation, conceptualisation, and serious discourse...
The sound bite culture... focuses on the immediate and the obvious; the near-term, and the particular; on identity between appearance and reality; and on the self rather than larger communities. Above all, it is a society that thrives on simplicity and disdains complexity.
Jeffrey Scheuer: The sound bite society: how television helps the right and hurts the left. Routledge, 2001

Scott Adam Dilbert

Management guff, by Lucy Kellaway

The fungus of jargon.

Postmodernism disrobed, by Richard Dawkins

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate?

Word tricks & propaganda, by Edward S. Herman

I want to focus here on the tricks of language that serve propaganda ends, although it should be recognised that biased word usage is closely tied to the other modes of bias.

The office of assertion, by John Leo

The words of bureaucrats may twist tongues, but language on today’s college campus can truly twist minds.

On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this.

Bible spiritual guide

"Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-haresh."-- Isaiah 16:11.

A STATEMENT

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming here today. I should like to make a short statement. Copies will be available on your way out. For legal reasons, I shall not be taking questions:

Firstly, may I say that our thoughts are with family and friends at this most difficult time.

We take all such allegations extremely seriously.

Let me be clear, we always strive to give our customers the best levels of customer service, but fell below our high standards on this occasion. We’ll look into what happened to try and avoid the same issues arising in future.

Some recollections may vary but lessons will be learned. And I shall be seeking professional help.

If – and I emphasize the word if – if I have unintentionally offended, bullied, sexually-harassed, abused, raped, murdered anyone. Or misspoken. Then I apologize unreservedly.

I have always had the greatest respect for diversity, equality and woke-ism, and if anyone has ever felt uncomfortable or disrespected in this regard, then I do, of course, apologize.

However, I strenuously, categorically and vehemently deny any suggestions to the contrary and dispute all allegations.

For the foreseeable future, I shall be stepping back from my duties, pending further inquiries.