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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[emak-bakia.livejournal.com]

i hate "bottom-lining."

[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.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Synergy!