Customer Reviews

Death Sentences : How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was recommended by a friend in Australia, where it was a best seller. Watson's points--that management and political jargon are the enemies of both clear writing and the more poetic kind, while serving to obscure facts--are well taken. But they could easily have been made in 30 pages, rather than 150. A few examples of how to fix some of the sentences are useful, but the real-life examples of jargon like "Key Performance Indicators" (KPI) quickly grow tedious.

To get the same lessons in one-tenth the time, skip this book and re-read Orwell's essay "Politics and the English language".

Nothing should be easier than to agree with than a book that takes exactly the same position on a subject dear to my heart--writing clearly and succinctly. Yet "Death Sentences," which does a good job of trotting out a shoebox full of mangled bureaucratese, only shows why clear writing is not the same as clear thinking. Australian writer/intellectual Don Watson's work starts sanguinely enough. He lists scores of examples of the deadening incomprehensible corporate-speak, military-speak and advertising-speak. "Employment outcomes," "quality participation opportunities," and "major change drivers," are just some of the oleaginous verbal slop thickly slathered on as mission statements, empowerment manifestos, or the proclamation of multicultural diversity.

At the beginning of the book I felt myself nodding in agreement with the many examples of the problem, a problem that not only offends sensibilities (of requiring writing to be understood), but which seems almost designed to conceal meaning.

Yet, after 40 pages of examples interspersed with homilies, I began to experience a sense of uneasiness. O.K., professional writing is going down the tubes; now what? By 60 pages I became impatient. Yes, much corporate-speak is abominable; what's next? Why, other than being ugly, is this bad? And is there a cure?

Well, there was nothing next--only another 120 pages of more of the same. No indication of the extent of the problem. No explication of any actual harm. And no cure was mooted. The only change of cadence was a lurch into a series of anti-Bush barbs, as if he were the only American politician who ever mangled the English language. Malapropisms cherry-picked from the presidential campaign were notable only by the complete absence of a single Kerry grammatical flip-flop.

The result is a 167-page listing of linguistic laments, annotated by the author, that could as well have been Xeroxed on a half-dozen pages. What is needed now is a sequel to this book to describe clearly and succinctly, why clear writing would make for good politics or good business. (Maybe it wouldn't.) Unfortunately, Watson's book starts a good argument that he fatally fails to finish.

Let me dissent from the praise this book has received.

I found Watson's style overblown and pompous. He criticises modern discourse for lacking both passion and clarity. Fair enough. But he confuses the two; passion doesn't make for clarity. Often, the opposite.

Some occasions demand a cool head, and the writing which describes them should reflect that.

For example, Watson spends most of page 31 arguing why he prefers the phrase "universities are under siege" to "universities are under pressure". The second phrase smells of "21st century secular Methodists", whereas the first calls to mind the Trojans, who, like their counterparts in academia, live behind walls and who "have something the besiegers want--not a woman in this case, but their submission certainly."

To use an old-fahioned Australian phrase, get your hand off it. "Under pressure" will do just fine, thanks.

Colour and metaphor are great. But too much makes for verbal sludge, just as thick and gooey as the bureaucratic double-speak Watson criticises.

I really don't need to hear that modern official language obscures rather than informs. Orwell and others established that long ago. Where's the new spin? Watson gives none.

On p. 139, he observes that Martin Luther King knew a good speech is like a song. A good book isn't. I personally found Watson's constant chorus of disgust a little hard to listen to, over and over, gilded with obscure references and going nowhere.

The premise of this book is sound, but as other reviewers have said, it is an unstructured mess. It starts off well enough, but after a few chapters of directionless examples of bad language, one starts to become bored.

Then, part way through the book, Watson starts showing his true colours. On page 103 he takes an inoffensive quote from Australia's ex-PM (John Howard), that being "As a people, we have traditionally engaged the world optimistically. Our open, friendly nature makes us welcome guests and warm hosts", and then spends the next page arguing that this echoes the propaganda of the Third Reich. Earth to Don: the Nazis wore shoes, but all people who wear shoes aren't Nazis. We know you're a red-hot Labor man and hate Howard's guts, but be a good fellow and keep it out of your book about public language.

The book is replete with this type of stuff. Avoid.

The author makes excellent points about the wind of pompous, meaningless jargon and deceptive spin that has swept through government, business and academia. I personally trudged through a lot of this muck in the social "sciences" and share the author's concern for the erosion of the language. We are losing our ability (or is it will?) to say what we mean in a way that is easy to understand and worth the reader's time.

Chapter 1 should be digested by everyone whose job requires them to write or speak. In the beginning I thought the book was a 4; by page 58 I was thinking 3 stars; and by chapter 3 it was in freefall. His own writing bogs down in muddy thinking and poorly chosen examples. I lost sight of his sails as he drifted off point and disappeared in a fog of philosophical opportunism.

I still recommend chapter 1, but get it from your library. It's not worth the money.

Don Watson's book makes a significant contribution to fighting one of the great intellectual plagues of our time: the corruption of language by spinspeak and the resultant undermining of rational thought. A major antidote to the mnemonic poison manufactured daily by the spindocs throughout our society is sunlight. Watson helps spread that with dozens of outrageous examples.

Don Watson, Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words, and Management-speak Are Strangling Public Language (Gotham, 2005)

Are you sick of the idiocy that seems to be inherent in mission statements? Have you ever attempted to read a book of laws--the rules by which we are all supposed to live in this country--and given up in utter frustration at your inability to understand any word other than "the"? Do you wonder why no one's said anything original in a TV commercial in decades (assuming you don't simply record everything and fast-forward through the commercials, as I've been doing for years)? In that case, Australian curmudgeon Don Watson's rant on the dumbing down of the English language is right up your alley.

I tend to like my grammar books replete with footnotes and diagrams, but Watson is pointing out features of the modern language that don't require them; it's easy to find a plethora of examples of everything he attacks by just looking around us. Open up a company's annual report, or just look at the polished bronze plaque with the company's mission statement on the wall, and you've got examples out the wazoo. And lord help you if you attempt to read some of the crap that gets introduced in Congress. (Given that no one in Congress actually reads the legislation they vote on, which is common knowledge these days, you have to wonder--who's writing the stuff? No, I don't know either.) It all makes Watson (whose government, it seems, is as awful as ours when it comes to this stuff) want to beat his head against something pointed, and I have to agree with him. Given the book's bestseller status, I'm not the only one by a longshot.

No matter how much you agree with a book's premise, though, if it's badly-written, you'll get less out of it than you otherwise would. Death Sentences is a wonderfully entertaining little book on top of it all, and that makes a great deal of difference. Anyone can rant, but it takes a true auteur to do it with style. Watson (a speechwriter by trade) knows how to rant with all the style necessary and then some. Pick this one up and take it to heart. ****

It's too bad that this book didn't come out a few months ago when we were in the midst of the political silly season. Rarely have I heard so many words spoken that had so little meaning. All of those guys were truly expert in answering questions with a bunch of words that said nothing that could possibly offend.

It is unlikely that this book will change the way they talk. Politicians, corporations, news media and the rest have learned how to talk without communicating. After all, if you say anything, it cna't help but offend someone. Taken out of the context in which they were intend, it is certainly funny to see the words that the author uses to illustrate his points.

One point that he doesn't mention is the growth of paper written by non-English speakers. You see this often in instructions on products made in the far East. How can anyone plan to sell a product in the English speaking world and not convert the writing from Chinglish or Japlish. Perhaps that can be his next book.

If enough people read Don Watson's book, maybe we'll all be able to speak normal once again.

As a ccommunication coach and corporate trainer, I fly all over the U.S. teaching my clients how to communicate clearly and concisely. I often pull out Watson's book and read a few excerpts to them so they can see the folly of their ways. (The book is quite funny, too.)

Thanks, Don, for making my job easier!

MAKE YOUR POINT!: SPEAK CLEARLY AND CONCISELY ANYPLACE, ANYTIME

The English language is in a sorry state, with clichés, bad wording, and doublespeak phrases abounding. From businesses to politicians and the news media, there are numerous popular sources of such clichés, and consumers are daily bombarded with buzzwords and newspeak. Death Sentences received rave reviews in Australia where it first appeared in 2003: American readers will find it a lively, intriguing collection of ads, ironic language, and assessments of modern language misuse and corruption.