Bush and Blair accused of mangling English

[Champ]

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - The English language is being destroyed by a "deadly virus of management speak" which has infected the mouths and minds of politicians like Tony Blair (news - web sites) and George W. Bush, a leading journalist says.



The Prime Minister and his ally the U.S. President are mangling the language, destroying its meaning by avoiding the use of verbs, twisting nouns into verbs, and endlessly repeating phrases until they become "zombified".


"It's deeply depressing," says John Humphrys, one of Britain's leading political journalists and the author of a new book, "Lost for Words", about the demise of the language.


Humphrys' book laments the growth of "cliched, dumbed-down, inflated and bogus management-speak" which he says now passes for English.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=856&ncid=856&e=1&u=/nm/20041115/od_uk_nm/oukoe_life_english_language

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Bush and Blair accused of mangling humanity . . .

[frankly_fedup2]

2. I always thought Blair was a much better speaker; however . . .

I really do not care what comes out of his or Bush's mouth because it is always bad news for the people.

[clydefrand]

3. Just think...Blair speaks the King's English and even he gets

criticized! I will defend Blair for only having complete sentences most of the time which is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than the village idiot can do. Other than that...he should be out of there also.

[LynzM]

4. And we are surprised?

Wow, is he an optimist. He really believes that if the media just points this out, then obviously the public will become outraged, and it will have to change? Fat chance, IMO!

[htuttle]

5. Well, Neuro Linguistic Programming isn't actually 'communication', per se

It's more like 'mental assault'.

It's not meant to inform, however. It's meant to confuse and imprint.

[Tracer]

6. It was eerie to watch Frank Luntz ...

... on the PBS show "The Persuaders", testing out word lists on a survey group to determine which words had the most "emotional" impact.

The group had those hand-held dial-o-meters they could crank to indicate a positive or negative response to the words being read.

The results were graphed out on a large screen TV and the loathsome Luntz would leap with joy when certain words indicated a postive response to *.

I'm quite sure that the language used in the * campaign was thorougly vetted by studies like this one.

[Just Me]

7. Mass psyops,...

,...pretty disgusting that it has been so blatantly used as a tool against their own people.

[yellowcanine]

8. Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

[Ima]

15. you got that right

It would be interesting to know how many commonly used word have been eliminated or replaced in the last 20 years.

[daleo]

9. It is easier to lie if you mangle the language while you do it.

Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" is essential reading on the subject.

[progdonkey]

10. that's "unfortunate"

Everything now is "unfortunate." Whenever a politician or corporate whore--who are both unwilling or incapable of expressing emotion--wants to express sadness, the one word they universally use is "unfortunate." Coburn calls Schindler's List pornographic, that's an "unfortunate use of words." Tom Delay is censured numerous times, that's "unfortunate."

By using the word to mean everything, it means nothing, which is exactly how these people like their statements to be.

[VegasWolf]

11. Blair is only mangling it because he is simply repeating verbatum

what bush has told him to say.

[MotownLew]

12. You mean "misunderestimated" ain't no word? n/t

[JohnOneillsMemory]

13. Analysis: Language as genuine mind weapon, not just a joke. Read.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/130534_focusecond13.html
(The Power of the Presidency Resides in Language as Well as Law)

>snip<

While we tend to think of the dominator as using physical force, in fact most dominators use verbal abuse to control others. Abusive language has been a major theme of psychological researchers on marital problems, such as John Gottman, and of philosophers and theologians, such as Josef Pieper.

But little has been said about the key role it has come to play in political discourse and in such "hot media" as talk radio and television.

Bush uses several dominating linguistic techniques to induce surrender to his will. The first is empty language. This term refers to broad statements that are so abstract and mean so little that they are virtually impossible to oppose. Empty language is the emotional equivalent of empty calories.

Just as we seldom question the content of potato chips while enjoying their pleasurable taste, recipients of empty language are usually distracted from examining the content of what they are hearing. Dominators use empty language to conceal faulty generalizations; to ridicule viable alternatives; to attribute negative motivations to others, thus making them appear contemptible; and to rename and "reframe" opposing viewpoints.

Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech contained 39 examples of empty language. He used it to reduce complex problems to images that left the listener relieved that George W. Bush was in charge.
>snip<

see also...
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=brooks
(Bush Language Patterns)

[Krs216]

14. Bush speaks English?

When did this happen?

[PartyPooper]

16. Junior can't speak proper English when he's working hard

on his fake Texas accent! He can't walk and chew gum at the same time, either.

:dunce:

[Lizzie Borden]

17. The people or the language?

n/t