Managerial Language
Don Watson, Australian political speechwriter and historian, has written a new book, Death Sentence, The Decay of Public Language, that attacks the "managerial language" that has infiltrated not only the world of business, but the worlds of politics and academia as well. Fighting the Death Sentence describes a recent speech he gave:
People were rocking with laughter; some were in tears. Deadpan, Don Watson waited. One audience member said later it was the funniest dinner of academic deans he had ever attended. But Watson was not joking. He was reading from a university mission statement and other material on its website. "To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues" — shrieks of laughter. The university's "approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework" — uproar in the room.
The university in question was RMIT but it could have been any of them. Go to your website and read the language, Watson urged guests at a recent Deans of Education dinner. That made people laugh even more. They worked at universities; they knew what he was talking about. Some of them probably even wrote this stuff. It was a surreal moment. But to Watson the joke has a sting. It is funny and it is awful. A terrible thing is happening to the language, he believes, and at the end of the day, in a globalised world, it is not a positive communications outcome. In other words, there is a pox upon our public speech.I particularly enjoyed this example:
Which organisation, he asks, now claims in its mission statement to have "a deep commitment to the customer"? Safeway? McDonald's? No, the CIA.Of course, it's easy enough to laugh at those people using tortured language to convey little, because nobody admits to writing such business-speak. Why would anyone write (or speak) that way?
He thinks that because modern business and politics force people to make difficult decisions quickly they prefer not to be too precise — they may have to retract them later. When journalists want instant answers to complex matters, important-sounding waffle might feel like the safest way to go.We call that strategic ambiguity — when it's done well.