

Weasel words and the absurdity of corporate speak - mrduncan
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2102-weasel-words-and-the-absurdity-of-corporate-speak

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RyanMcGreal
> Would you ever talk to your mother or your friend that way? If not, why is
> it ok to talk to a customer that way?

I would assume - hope! - that the relationships of company representatives to
their customers is not the same as their relationships to their mothers and
friends. I don't _want_ companies with which I do business to pretend to some
kind of familial or fraternal bond that doesn't really exist.

The language of phony familiarity ("Hey, Ryan!") seems to me to be even more
weaselly than the language of business relationships (i.e. "Dear Valued
Customer"), which is at least honest in its mercenary intent.

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philwelch
How about "Dear Mr. McGreal:"?

I think most companies can handle a mail merge.

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RyanMcGreal
"Dear Mr. McGreal" would be great - but I'd be worried if my mother or friends
started addressing me that way. :)

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jamesbritt
My Mom would only resort to formal salutations when she noticed that some
household device was now behaving somewhat, um, different.

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willchang
For a thoughtful critique of language used badly, I've always liked Politics
and the English Language
([http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.htm...](http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html))

Most of the points mentioned in the article misidentify the problem or give
bad advice.

> Powerpoint is the ultimate in the depletion of English. It just doesn’t
> approve of sentences. It makes them into dot points.

When a few words do the work of a sentence, I would not call that 'depletion'.

> The invention of a mission statement is too late. The worst companies in the
> world are using mission statements.

Let's not do X. The worst companies in the world do X. X could be just about
anything.

> The language I think is poisoned, generally. And it’s poisoned in the name
> of efficiency for some strange reason. It’s as if the whole culture has been
> corporatised in one way or another.

Since the function of language is to convey meaning, language that is
efficient is language that deftly conveys meaning, by definition. Assuming
that all his complaints amount to wishing for language to be meaningful, it is
a contradiction to say that efficiency is poisonous.

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grellas
Excellent points.

To my mind, the biggest problem with corporate-speak (or legal-speak or
academic-speak or political-speak for that matter) stems from the desire to
sound self-important, which impulse tends to bloat the form of the expression
and remove it from the sort of day-to-day tone in speech with which we are
comfortable.

For good corporate communication, one can't normally go wrong using a
professional tone coupled with language that is straight-forward, i.e.,
neither folksy nor pretentious. I don't know why so many people in this field
get this wrong except that they are imbued with some sense that they have to
come off as sounding self-important.

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billybob
Really, weasel words can be kind of a gift. The company is unintentionally
telling me what kind of people they are. If they can't be bothered to clearly
state what they do and why they're great at it, they're telling me that I
don't want to work with them.

~~~
prawn
I think that's a bit rough to be honest. I'm no fan of the corporate speak
that has one browsing a site trying to work out exactly what it is the company
really does (How do I install it? Do they host it? Does it go on my laptop or
my phone? Can I afford it? _) but that copy is probably written by a small
company trying to look bigger than they are (most entrepreneurs or freelancers
can identify with that) or a mid-range marketing staffer not wanting to gamble
on casual copy that might seem alien to the boss or customers.

I don't like it, but I can see how it comes to be.

_ A friend sent me a link yesterday to a site, some product or service that
McDonalds were using. I browsed a few pages, skimmed the text, and had no idea
what was even being sold - security software, social network, messaging
system, it wasn't immediately obvious.

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gills
Well I was going to write something reminiscent to 'bird words' but while
refreshing my memory of _The First Circle_ , Google was completely washed out
with links to "the bird is the word". wtf.

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sacrilicious
My favorite part of the linked video is, if I'm understanding him correctly,
he uses the word "plague-ettes": as in, spreaders of the plague.

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machrider
Sorry, I'm pretty sure he called them "plague rats".

