Following the success of his best-seller Death Sentence Don Watson has returned to the attack with a new book: Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words.
He names the guilty as corporations and the management consultants. They (he insists angrily) have throttled plain English. They are Verbicides"”with the blood of good words on their hands.
What they have left us with, says Don Watson, are weasel words.
A weasel word a word or phrase used so as to sound important while saying nothing. Just as a weasel sucks the contents out of an egg, so the meaning is sucked out of the word, leaving only an empty shell.
The main part of the book is a dictionary recording such hollow words. From about face to watchdog and beyond, the book quotes words and expressions that seem to do little more than to make sentences longer and more puffed up.
He passionately hates the process facilitation of the corporate executive, while gloomily regarding such language as now inescapable. He offers us a diagnosis without a treatment.
Don Watson's first tirade against corporate-speak, Death Sentence, was published in Britain under the title of Gobbledegook and when Michael Quinion reviewed it (for his Word Wide Words website) he noted: "Perhaps the biggest difficulty with taking the message to heart is that the book is just another in a line"”traceable back to Plato"”that tells us the language is going to the dogs."
Yes, Watson is correct is saying that the mission statements and core activities of the business consultant are pretentious and self-important. But surely public servants and academics have been doing just as much damage to plain words for years. It's public servants who write regulations in which the road is the carriageway, and academics who qualify everything to death ("It is possible that" ", "The evidence might lead one to conclude" ")
Don Watson's mistake is to so loath the corporate culture that he can't see the bigger problem: namely"”teaching the skills of good style (clear, plain English) more widely.
Michael Quinion concludes: "Too few people have the ability or time to work out exactly what they want to say and then say it. They fall back on boilerplate text, shop-worn clichés, or inarticulate paraphrases of their real meaning. That isn't a matter of correct grammar, good punctuation or impressive vocabulary, and curing it will need more than" diatribes."
Nevertheless, Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words is great fun to read.
PS For those who really wish to improve their style there is a small book called Kel Richards’ Pocket Guide to Clear English (ABC Books). The author tells me I should recommend it warmly.
