Lost in the Forest of Empty Words

Caught part of an interview with the wonderful Don Watson on The 7.30 Report last night.

The admirable Mr Watson has been conducting a campaign for some time now against what he calls "weasel words" -- the kind of meaningless corporate-speak that clogs our airwaves, our newspapers, our workplaces and even our classrooms and football fields. He pointed out that kids in Grade 2 now have to write their first mission statements; eight year olds are being asked to evaluate their key performance indicators. I winced; this is all too true.

However, I must disagree with the fabulous Mr W on one point. He claims that all this jargon (value-adding, birthday-ing, lines of sight, synergies*) is burgeoning and multiplying in the name of efficiency. No. It's arse-covering. No-one wants to be held responsible for anything. If no-one can understand what you say you're trying to do, it's that much harder for someone to realise that you haven't done it. So we all float around in this cloud of vagueness, in the foggy foggy forest of weasel wordage, where no one says what they mean and no-one ever has to take the blame for anything.


*Michael, who works for...er, the government... can supply me with plenty of examples.

Abominable Words!

Why, when there are so many stupendous, expressive, vivid and neglected words in the world, do people insist on using abominable excrescences like incentivation and motivising?

My husband works in the public service, and he often brings home beautiful examples of this kind of thing. To be fair, it's usually not so much the individual words that are offensive, but the way they're combined to produce a jaw-dropping, eye-glazing litany of incomprehensible tedium: vertical skill-sets, quantitative easing, negative growth, etcetera.

But this one has to take the biscuit. From an IT memo: "design and productionalise." I'm guessing they meant produce, or hey, what about simply make? Or create? All perfectly good, straightforward words, which don't deserve to be abandoned.

No doubt someone will tell me that productionalise has a special, technical meaning, and no other word will do. But you know what? I don't believe you! I think people use language like this because they don't want anyone else to understand what they're talking about. And the main reason for that is that they don't understand what they're talking about either!