Trevor Cook reminds me of a recurring theme on For Immediate Release, the nonsense management phrase.
Trevor points to a Sydney Morning Herald article about Don Watson, a former writer for a very flamboyant former Aussie Prime Minister, Paul Keating.
Says The SMH:
To Watson, management jargon is a prime example of weasel words, which he defines as the tool of “the powerful, the treacherous … assassins and thieves”.
“This is language without possibility,” he writes. “It cannot convey humour, fancy, feelings, nuance or varieties of experience. It is cut off and cuts us off from provenance – it has no past. This dead, depleted, verbless jargon is becoming the language of daily life.”
“Paradigm” and “leverage” are the worst offenders, a survey on a site reveals, and the term “going forward”, unless used by a bus driver, raises people’s blood pressure.
Related link:
Shift my paradigm before my first coffee and you’re toast, bud!
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