The Language Fascist strikes again!

[sabotabby]

I just came across the term "material solidarity" in an (otherwise well-intentioned) e-mail. What they meant, I think, was "aid."

Is anyone else getting sick of the way corporatespeak, or at least the structures of corporatespeak -- euphemism, jargon, etc. -- has infiltrated activist vocabulary? All of a sudden, I'm hearing about "point-people" and "bottom-lining." (One friend remarked: "You [the Wobblies] still use 'secretary'? Why?" Because it's the most accurate description of the task. Why else?)

It actually irritates me more than "wimmin" and "persyn," fundamentally misguided though those may be. Corporatespeak is pernicious in any context because it robs the language of meaning. In the realms of business and government, this is done for very specific reasons -- to shift accountability and to obscure information. ("The functionality of the copy machine has been compromised by our Associate Coffee/Errand Assistant I." vs. "The intern broke the copier.")

So what does it mean when we do it?

I'm out of here for the night. Politicos and language geeks -- discuss.

Comments

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Heck, "malt beverage" gets me irritated.

Euphemism should only be used if it contains a large load of snark.

[sabotabby]

Like "vertically challenged"?

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

I was thinking "oxygen waster".

[teapolitik.livejournal.com]

I hate all sorts of devaluation of meaning. But the thing that really annoys me the most is the extreme subjectivity so many (liberals) attach to words. "Oh, I didn't mean that," and "that's not what it means to me!" make my teeth itch. And it serves almost exactly the same purpose as the euphemism does to the powerful.

Dammit, now I'm angry. Thanks.

[see-my-glock.livejournal.com]

Words are subjective if only due to the nature of human condition. As one learns to use language one must build upon a current understanding of thought and form. Because these building blocks differ based on any number of contributing factors, ones understanding of the meaning of words must and will be highly subjective.

However to use language with the expectation that other people will understand exactly the same way you do is foolish at best [for all but the most skilled linguists].

[teapolitik.livejournal.com]

Yes. All of what you said is true. But it isn't really the phenomenon I'm describing. Subjectivity exists, of course. But abusing or scapegoating subjectivity to avoid being caught in an error is not an honest or effective way to communicate.

[see-my-glock.livejournal.com]

okay, i see what youre getting at. please excuse my error in comprehension, i was quite exhausted last night and have the flu.

[teapolitik.livejournal.com]

Oh, and that "High Tech Humor" website is also annoying me. Bulleted lists really are the best thing ever. No sarcasm necessary.

[sabotabby]

They can be useful. I've run into too many documents where they've been used gratuitously because an author can't be arsed to write in full sentences, though.

[teapolitik.livejournal.com]

They aren't a substitute for sentences. They're still the greatest thing in the world.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Your concerns have been noted by Assistant Media Manager #23, Ms. Peterson. They will be sent to the Central Committe for Wealth Redistribution where they will be reviewed by an assistant, summerized and presented for feedback. Thank you very much for your concerns, we will get back to you shortly.

=P

[sabotabby]

Don't you mean "reviewed, summarized, and presented with recommendations on how to impactfully implement their functionality"?

[wlach.livejournal.com]

I can't resist the urge to link to George Orwell's most excellent essay on writing[1]:

http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

Maybe the answer is, as Orwell says, that writing ambiguous and muddy prose is simply easier than sitting down and articulating your thoughts clearly. That, and the fact that some people just get off on using jargon where it's not necessary.

You are correct that this type of language is used in the realm of business and government to shift accountability and obscure information (e.g..: in the case that someone is fired), but such situations are generally more the exception than the rule. In most cases people have a choice, and they're simply more comfortable expressing themselves the way that they do.

[1] I can't remember if you're one of the people that I know who hates Orwell: if you do, try to put that aside because it's really good.

[sabotabby]

I don't hate Orwell. I don't think Orwell gets enough love sometimes, which is funny, because he gets a lot of love. I remember reading that essay ages ago and thinking that he was going a bit too far in a few places but was overall on the right track. I ought to read it again and see if I still agree with him.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Persyn? Fer real?

I had a sort of long argument once with a grad student friend about the fact that I had referred to myself as an American which apparently is a majorly important act of discrimination against Canadians (I'll let you make the call on that one), Mexicans, and Central and South Americans. My attitude, and it sounds like we're on the same page on this one, is: let's worry about that after things that actually hurt people are checked off the list.

[sabotabby]

One of my dear friends consistently uses "persyn." He picked it up from MIM. Interestingly, he wasn't the catalyst for my latest memo (as Minister Responsible For Not Making Us Look Stupid) on why we shouldn't use "wimmin" when writing for a general audience. That was another friend, and I'm afraid it's catching.

I think anyone who gets offended by "American" is probably hypersensitive. I've been called an American as a result of the same logic -- well, I'm North American. I was rather offended. I can't confirm it, but I suspect most Mexicans would be offended at being called Americans unless they work for the Fox government.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

As I suspected, a quick google revealed that the etymology of person has nothing to do with "son," which I assume to be the objection. I was thinking: person is a romance word, son is Germanic. So unless the very phonetics of male words are offensive, it's silly beyond what words can say. I mean in that case you'd have to just say "per." And that would make one a very silly sounding per.

[sabotabby]

Heh. That's usually the case. I don't think that knowledge will deter anyone, unfortunately.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

My personal beef is that citizens of the US get called Americans. In French, the term Étatsunien is being seen in some literature to refer to Américains.

Parallely and colloquially, if the French visit English Canada, they are prone to call it "l'Amérique" and if they visit Québec, "le Canada". But that's more cluelessness than sheer stupidity, so I'm not too ticked about that one.

[sabotabby]

USians is one of those terms, like chimpresident, that I keep meaning to incorporate into my daily vocabulary and always forget until I see it in print.

[emak-bakia.livejournal.com]

i hate "bottom-lining."

[sabotabby]

Doing it or saying it? ;)

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

O.k., sabotabby's heard this before:

Corporate-speak, PC-gone-wakko language, jargon, techtalk — they're all examples of the same thing. They're in-group speak, and writers use them to speak to other members of the tribe, and either consciously or unconsciously to alienate others.

On a functional level, they restrict communication to within the in-group. If you're comfortable with "wimmin" and "persyn," then seeing those spellings isn't going to throw you out of the text. You're going to know exactly what they mean, and have some notion of why they're being used, and you'll be habituated to them. If you're not used to that, if you've only seen the standard spellings, you're probably going to have a "WTF?!" moment, which will distract you from the content of the text.

If you're comfortable with language like "We must facilitate the implementation of a system of content management to avoid reduplification of effort and redundancy in our internal processes," ditto—you're in the group, you speak the lingo, you're part of the tribe.

Back at the Comma Mines, sabotabby and I had a series of shorthands, some taken from netspeak and blogspeak, some fannish, some possibly original to us, which served the same function. Since none of the other comma miners read the same blogs or follow fandom, we were, essentially cutting them out of the communication loop, just as some of the Classics students and I used to do by speaking Latin to each other on campus.

There's nothing wrong with in-speak, when you're in-group. It may be ugly to someone else's ears, but if they're not the intended audience, who cares? If we all speak the same code/jargon/slang/bureaucratese, if we all accept that "persyn" means non-sexist [probably] carbon-based humanoid sentient being of indeterminate gender, but pretty specific political views," we can use those words and usages to communcate clearly within the group. Problems arise when we try to use in-speak to communicate outside the tribe. If I used "w00t!" in my comments to my aged authors, I wouldn't be communicating anything to them. Saying that an author's writing is cracktastic at a meeting isn't going to tell anyone at the textbook mills what I think. Similarly, using "wimmin" in a document meant for people who don't know anything about non-gendered, or anti-gendered language is going to alienate and confuse some of them. If your goal is to challenge their assumptions, fine. If your goal is to communicate something else entirely, maybe not so fine. And if you want to denote the person who takes minutes at the meetings, then most people are going to recognise either "secretary," or "minute taker." If, within your group, you want to refer to this person as "Scribe of the proceedings," that's fine. But don't expect the lingo to transcend the in-group.

[sabotabby]

Yes, but what's disturbing me isn't so much the use of in-group jargon. (That's old; Orwell was complaining about it in 1946. It's still alienating, and good writers still transcend it, but it's a different story.) It's the shift in where the jargon is coming from.

The terminology used by activists has historically come from revolutionary movements, government, unions, and academia. (For good reason, almost every activist is familiar with the terms used in Robert's Rules of Order, even if they don't know the origin.) Increasingly, I've been seeing the appropriation of business terminology for no apparent reason. It's doubly alienating -- it distances us from outsiders, but it also distances us from each other, because no one is exactly sure what these words mean.

I'm now very amused by the image of someone using netspeak/blogspeak at a meeting. Who isn't me. (I'm known for slipping up and saying that such-and-such idea is "teh awesome.")

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing a false dichotomy here, in the language of governments, unions, and academia (the latter represented here by "persyn," etc.) and that of business.

The language of business and the language of government weren't that far apart in the not-too-distant past. Business found that language inadequate to the levels of obfustication it needed, and government, which for some reason also feels the need to muddy clear waters cheerfully jumped on that bandwagon. Plain-language activitsts from Orwell on have been running behind, waving their hands, trying replace "implementations" with "setups."

I think it speaks to where the language-users are getting their ideas from -- lots more people work as low-level corporate drones than work in coal mines, in our immediate social circles. Lots more people are therefore exposed to and comfortable with bureaucratese. It's part of the background, for them, and they don't think about it, any more than they think about whether to call a plebiscite a referendum.

I would argue that the language of academia is equally alienating, though, even within the group.

Also, people who are insecure with their own language will almost always adopt what they perceive to be prestige language in an effort to cover what they see as their own inadequacies.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Synergy!