Fighting the death sentence - www.theage.com.au
Don Watson has written a book, Death Sentence, The Decay of Public Language that “charts how ‘managerial language’ has infiltrated the English of politics, business, bureaucracy, education and the arts.” This article, from the Australian The Age (November 1, 2003), relates more of his ideas and describes a dinner where the audience roared with laughter as he read from a university mission statement, that included ugly prose such as, “To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues.” Everyone, it seems wants to write like a middle manager with bad, meaningless, inflated, jargon-riddled, management-English.
“Friends, Romans, customers” - Watson writes, putting the modern benchmark on the world-best implementer of language. Which organisation, he asks, now claims in its mission statement to have “a deep commitment to the customer”? Safeway? McDonald’s? No, the CIA….
One influence is “the pursuit of business models in places that were never businesses”.
“Universities that once valued and defended culture have swallowed the creed whole. Libraries, galleries and museums, banks and welfare agencies now parrot it. The public sector spouts it as loudly as the private does.”
Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily
