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A brilliant and scathing polemic
about the sorry state of the English Language and what we
can—and must—do about it.
When was the last time you heard a politician
use words that rang with truth and meaning? Do your eyes glaze
over when you read a letter from your bank or insurance company
addressing you as a valued customer? Does your mind shut down
when your employer starts talking about making a commitment
going forward or enhancing your key competencies? Are you
enervated by in terms of, irritated by impactful, infuriated
by downsizing, rightsizing, decruiting, and dejobbing? Does
business process re-engineering and attriting fail to give
you ramp-up—in terms of your personal lifestyle?
Today's corporations, news media, education
departments—and, perhaps most troubling, politicians—speak
to us and to each other in clichéd, impenetrable, lifeless
babble. Toni Morrison has called it the “disabled and
disabling” language of the powerful, “evacuated
language,” and “dead language.” Orwell called
it “anesthetic” language. In Death Sentences,
Don Watson takes up the fight against it: the pestilence of
bullet points, the dearth of verbs, the buzzwords, the weasel
words and cant, the Newspeak of a kind Orwell could not have
imagined.
Published in Australia in November 2003,
Death Sentences gained a massive following among
the legions of bright, sensitive people who Could Not Take
It Anymore. More than a year later, it remains a national
bestseller.
Don Watson is one of Australia’s
best-known writers and public intellectuals. For more than
twenty-five years he has written books, essays, and reviews
for the stage and television. For part of his life he was
a political satirist and for another part a political speechwriter,
including four years with Paul Keating, the former Labor Prime
Minister. His 2001 Recollections of a Bleeding Heart:
A Portrait of Paul Keating PM was a #1 national bestseller
and a multiple award winner. He lectures widely on writing
and language.
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