3 ms·

For a thoughtful critique of language used badly, I've always liked Politics and the English Language (http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.

For a thoughtful critique of language used badly, I've always liked Politics and the English Language (http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.htm...) Most of the points mentioned in the article misidentify the problem or give bad advice. > Powerpoint is the ultimate in the depletion of English. It just doesn’t approve of sentences. It makes them into dot points. When a few words do the work of a sentence, I would not call that 'depletion'. > The invention of a mission statement is too late. The worst companies in the world are using mission statements. Let's not do X. The worst companies in the world do X. X could be just about anything. > The language I think is poisoned, generally. And it’s poisoned in the name of efficiency for some strange reason. It’s as if the whole culture has been corporatised in one way or another. Since the function of language is to convey meaning, language that is efficient is language that deftly conveys meaning, by definition. Assuming that all his complaints amount to wishing for language to be meaningful, it is a contradiction to say that efficiency is poisonous.

grellas 17y ago
Excellent points. To my mind, the biggest problem with corporate-speak (or legal-speak or academic-speak or political-speak for that matter) stems from the desire to sound self-important, which impulse tends to bloat the form of the expression and remove it from the sort of day-to-day tone in speech with which we are comfortable. For good corporate communication, one can't normally go wrong using a professional tone coupled with language that is straight-forward, i.e., neither folksy nor pretentious. I don't know why so many people in this field get this wrong except that they are imbued with some sense that they have to come off as sounding self-important.

grellas 17y ago

Excellent points. To my mind, the biggest problem with corporate-speak (or legal-speak or academic-speak or political-speak for that matter) stems from the desire to sound self-important, which impulse tends to bloat the form of the expression and remove it from the sort of day-to-day tone in speech with which we are comfortable. For good corporate communication, one can't normally go wrong using a professional tone coupled with language that is straight-forward, i.e., neither folksy nor pretentious. I don't know why so many people in this field get this wrong except that they are imbued with some sense that they have to come off as sounding self-important.