The Invasion of Management Speak - Don Watson

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/02/27/AC_Grayling_Its_All_Gone_To_The_Dogs

Author Don Watson laments the encroachment of corporate-style language into other aspects of daily life. He cites ironic examples from a government seminar he attended on "plain English," as well as a recent pastor's letter that caught his attention.

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Have we taken "managerial language" too far, to the point where it makes no sense? At the Perth Writers' Festival -- author and former speechwriter for Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating -- Don Watson sits down with philosopher AC Grayling to discuss how language is evolving at the expense of logic and clarity. Is the point of good language now to mask, misdirect and obscure? Is it time to bring back the teaching of Latin in schools? - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Don Watson is one of Australia's most distinguished writers and public speakers. He grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash and was for ten years an academic historian.

He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the former Victorian Premier John Cain. In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.

Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Don contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.

His latest book, American Journeys, is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States post-Hurricane Katrina. Traveling the railways and highways, he writes about religion, race, class, places, politics and people; the noble dreams and confounding paradoxes of the world's greatest democracy and superpower. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and again won both the The Age Book of the Year Non-fiction and Book of the Year Awards.

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[ndyt]

@ProNorden, I would say it undermines morale because it makes the workers think they are working for people with their heads shoved up their asses.

[synchronium24]

New word: nebulosity

That's what management speak is. I won't copyright the word, but i'd appreciate at least a token donation if you make exhorbitant profits by including it in your writing one of the many tell-all books with which literature is currently being desroyed.

[gamesbok]

I think the lessions of history are clear.

When they brought in Management Consultants to improve the building of the Tower of Babel......

[wakeupscreaming]

The worst phrase really is "moving forward". Where else were you going to go? Moving sideways? Do you have a time-machine? Were you going to travel to the past? Horrible language. I consider it in bad taste to use that phrase. It's interesting, because swear words have always been frowned on because people use them as nouns, verbs, etc. It looks poorly as if the person using it doesn't have any creativity to express themselves. I would say anyone using "moving forward" is in the same boat.

[Caleeeman]

why is this the only video on youtube addressing corpspeak? Other than the Orwell piece, is there anything contemporary to look at/read for those interested in cutting through the nonsense (professionally).

[ProNorden]

@nr900 ..Great recommendation. And I wonder if anyone's written a thorough satire of both the 'corpspeak' and the cliche metaphors that circulate in corporate culture (of 'frogs boiled slowly', etc.).

[Snowflake70]

HERE HERE ! Bravo!

What WILL it take for the babble to be arrested and sent to prison??

[nr900]

I recommend you check out Orwell's article called "Politics and the English Language". It's a 60-year-old article but it has never been more true than now.

I'd say that Orwell belives that Jargon like this is caused by people's lazyness. People use it because they think they're being clever but in fact they are being intellectually lazy. Using muddy terms and bad metaphors allows peoeple to go into a kind of auto-pilot.

[MultiUniv3rsal]

@ProNorden Absolutely, newspeak was merely the elimination of any words with negative connotations. Listen to it again and let the hairs on your arm curl.

[seankhn]

corporate lingo is designed to convey rules and indicated authority in language that on its surface appears benign

[petehjr1]

Yeah I'm working as an hourly guy in a large retail chain and I'm already sick of the Corp. Speak. Opppss I've set fire to the store money vault. My boss: that's an oppotunity for growth!...