1 - February 21, 2010 5:54 pm

Name:

Peter Byrne

Location:

Perth WA

Comments:

I have just stumbled across a mid-sixties novel that took to large bureaucracies and corporation-speak. Shirley Hazzard's 'People in Glass Houses' (ISNB0-312-42422-1, my copy Picador 2004)is a set of vignettes imagined in a thinly disguised UN. Irony abounds, weasel words and incompehensible phrases too. The voice is authentic and fresh. The theme of aid to developing countries could have been lifted from today's discussions. There are many barbed phrases worth memorising.
If this work is not referred-to in Don's books (I have not checked and cannot remember any reference), it should be included in any resource list. Apart from all that, this book is an entertaining one-sitting-read.

2 - February 19, 2010 10:31 pm

Name:

Elizabeth

Location:

Comments:

Recently I read Castlecrag Private Hospital's brochure. The section on Palliative care begins with the sentence "Using a positive and open attitude to death and dying we provide care and assessment for people suffering from a life limiting illness."

3 - December 24, 2009 11:00 am

Name:

David Roser

Location:

Sydney

Comments:

Dear Don and Helen - Many thanks for your books and merry Xmas. Can I share a brief revelation as to a possible 'why' of Weasel Words or at least their modern incarnation as a tool of managerialism. I've just started reading 'Traders Guns and Money' by Philip Adam's favorite financier/economist S. Das. While the finance sector is not the only source of WWs it is plain that they make huge amounts of money through the arts of seduction, fear mongering and obfuscation. WWs are central to this mission and their evident success. The only saving grace seems to be that it sows the seeds of it may be sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

The tools are of course identical to those used by religions and ideologies - at least the controllers. So maybe this year you could add a new section on the use of WWs for purposes of 'Evil' because that's what this stuff appears to be doing.

Regards David

4 - December 21, 2009 9:31 pm

Name:

Andrew Marosy

Location:

Blackburn, Vic

Comments:

I've just read 'Death Sentence...' and it has rekindled a part of my mind that has been smothered by twenty years of managerial speak. The assault became overwhelming while undertaking a Masters degree in “Enterprise Architecture”, a discipline that combines the best of business jargon with the best of IT jargon. However ‘Death sentence has nourished that forlorn part of my brain that refused to die and it which will never again question its sanity. Thank you.

5 - November 14, 2009 12:42 pm

Name:

Wayne David Knoll

Location:

Australia

Comments:

Thanks for the site. This is a harbour of sanity in world gone to Babel. I used this site in a student seminar on Cant and Cliche at my English Curriculum and Teaching class as part of the Dip.Ed at ACU Melbourne. Some fellow students said they preferred the VELS/ or VCE guff written in managerial speak to the plain words. So they now go out as English teachers, sad, bur so far are we gone.