Why officials being interviewed speak so strangely: the Sun intro effect
On the way to work, I was reflecting on writing intros for The Sun (and related tabloids). People think it’s (a) easy and (b) done by stupid people. Both wrong: it’s extremely difficult to choose what aspect of Gordon Brown’s ascent to PM to highlight in the 15 or so words you’ll get in a typical Sun intro; and the journalists doing it (and subeditors re-doing it until it’s right) are not at all stupid.
Venal, perhaps, willing to ignore salient details that might affect the story, who can say? But that can apply to us all.
There’s a perception though that said journalists must be stupid (and that writing Sun intros is simple) because they use simple language. People make the association directly. You’re talking to less intelligent people (which is sort of what red-top readers are assumed to be); so you use simple language.
But what happens in the reverse, I wondered? What if you have someone who’s really not that intelligent - say, a Sun reader - who’s trying to speak to someone who they know or suspect is rather sharper than them, but don’t want to cede any ground to them, possibly because they’re standing up for what they do?
That’s the situation, I thought, when people suddenly start saying things which really don’t mean anything; but which they desperately hope will. It’s the language used by people who are slightly aware that what they say may be used against them in a court of law even though they were just doing their job. That’s when fire crew chiefs start talking about “we secured the area and then attempted to make safe the structure with the minimum risk to life.” I mean, what? You mean you got everyone out and tried to save lives? That sounds much more interesting and laudable than the chunk of bureaucratese you just upchucked, which makes it sound like the biggest danger is a paper cut.
Look around and you’ll hear or watch (less often read, except when being lampooned) examples of official-ese like this all over the place; and now we can recognise it for what it is - people desperately clinging to the raft of official, big words in the hope that it’ll get them through the seas of inquiry, because they suspect that using short, lively words will show them up as stupid, which is the never how they want to be thought of.
Of course in places like New Labour, long words and strangled sentences are used purposely to obscure and evade; it’s done in the full knowledge that it’s clear to all but the originator, if it ever meant anything to them. But then people down the ranks parrot them, until at the lowest level parish councils too have to cling to “empowering stakeholders”, even though there’s nobody holding a stake, just people who want stuff done.
Cures? I dunno, better English teaching? A Hemingway filter for official memos?
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June 29th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Mr Arthur
“trying to speak to someone who they know or suspect is rather sharper than them, but dont want to cede any ground to them, possibly because theyre standing up for what they do?”
Best example from both ends of the argument: Glenn Hoddle
Regards
Anthony
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:05 am
Couldn’t agree more. I work in PR, and always have to spend time re-writing things from my clients back into normal English. And you can read this official-ese all over the web — just look at the press release page of any technology company.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 am
You’re on the money, Mr. A. However, this English trait is the stuff of primordial soup. The ultimately evolved linguistic super-being is American corporatese. One tiny example from a very rich lexicon indeed is the substitution of the word (and, in fact, the concept) ‘problem’ with ‘issue’ or ‘challenge’.
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:36 am
“Cures? I dunno, better English teaching? A Hemingway filter for official memos?”
Your hesitancy over possible cures may be because you don’t follow the logic of your analysis. I think you are right that people learn to speak in anodyne, abstract and ultimately meaningless jargon because it is safer for them. It gives them wriggle room. If they don’t say anything concrete, they cannot be contradicted or accused of supplying misinformation.
Given that the media are very ready to expose mercilessly any official, or elected politician come to that, who makes a concrete statement that later is shown to be at odds with the facts, the trend makes perfect sense. Why would education help?
A remedy to fit the problem might be to switch to a more generous form of reporting. If the media acknowledge that people make mistakes, that an adjustment to a previous statement is not a hanging offence, that events are often nuanced and capable of bearing a variety of descriptions…then perhaps officials will speak in a precise, accurate, concrete, vivid way that makes good copy.
Until then, I would think that issuing statements to cover their backs rather than to communicate will remain the default setting - one that no amount of training will shift.
PJ
July 4th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
@PJ - my comment isn’t really about politicians, because in general they’re pretty smart. This is about people who are not necessarily intelligent, but are thrust - possibly against their will, possibly by chance - into the spotlight. The fire chief didn’t have media training on the list of things to do, but here’s a microphone being thrust in his/her face. The local government official knows about planning, or health and safety, but never thought John Humphrys or the Daily Mail would be asking questions.
Given that, it’s not about “generous” reporting. Journalists report what people say, and people are scared to say “It’s wrong”. Instead they say “Under the circumstances none of the stakeholders felt enabled to countermand the, um, opinions.”
And anyway, when did officials start talking in this new strangled New Labour speak that more usually lurks among consultants? Did they do it in the 1970s? 1980s?
July 5th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I’m not comfortable with the distinction you want to draw between smart and intelligent speakers. Partly because I’m not keen on intellectual snobbery. Partly because I still don’t think it fits the facts.
Your example of the fire chief and evacuation reminded me of a local bomb scare. A shopping centre and neigbouring buildings were evacuated. Except that the police overlooked an over-60s tea-dance that was taking place at the back of one of the buildings. Very funny when they emerged, blinking into the security cordon, surrounded by armed police shouting “where the **** did you come from?”
But - to make the point of that example - the officer who perhaps had meantime told the press something like “we secured the area” is in a marginally better position to say that their words fitted the facts than one who might have used your preferred, “we got everyone out”. I can’t see that creating space for latter wriggling is unintelligent or non-smart.
FWIW, in my experience, local government officials do have media training, and, some, though far from all, do adopt a defensive, abstract, over-fussy way of talking. I think it has a lot to do with their lack of confidence (not intelligence) which is connected to extreme press practices and the fear instilled in them by their media trainers. Abstract & meaningless is duller but safer.
Of course, when I say generous reporting, I don’t mean not reporting what people say. I mean not making a story out of a slip or a misstatement. You can’t have not noticed that a lot of so-called newsgathering seems to involve scrutinising what people said once and comparing it with what they said another time, and hoping to find a story that justifies a headline with “u-turn”, “backtrack” or “hypocrite”. It’s cheap and easy. And it poisons the relationship for everyday hacks like me who have to work harder than we ought to have to in order to get interviewees to relax and trust and drop the officialese.
PK
July 5th, 2007 at 11:35 am
@PJ@6 - well, some people are smarter than others, particularly with words; it’s why not everyone can be a barrister, or successful one. Intellectual snobbery it ain’t to say so.
The local official who says (in your scenario) “we secured the area” is just as wrong as if s/he said “We got everyone out.” What would be accurate would be “we secured the area, as far as we know” or “We think we got everyone out.” But by wrapping it up in longer words, people think they make themselves less assailable - because fewer people will be able to unpick the meaning of what they said. What *does* “secured the area” mean? It might have some particular fire-chief meaning which doesn’t mean “got everyone out” but instead means “kept anyone going in, but heaven help anyone still inside”. They may know that but we don’t. It become jargon, to obfuscate.
As for stories out of slips - I think that’s almost entirely confined to politics, which I think of as language Darwinism in action: those best able to make the largest number of people think they’re hearing what they want to hear get voted for, and thus succeed. It doesn’t mean they’re being truthful - almost the opposite. Barristers are those best able to win arguments about what sets of words mean - a sort of word dissection. Very different skill, which makes it odd that there are so many politicians who are barristers - except you have to be smart to do either. Which is where we came in.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
@charles - 7
I’m currently trying, and failing, to get the cooperation of a county council on a sensitive story. I made a long and thoughtful request - to start discussing the possibilities over what I recognised would be difficult for them. The door was slammed, perfunctorily.
I asked the press officer - who decided that they weren’t going to talk to me? “The decision to which you refer has been confirmed at the highest level.” said the robot who calls himself a news manager (ha!) in the communications unit (ha! ha!).
So I ask, what does highest level mean? Principal officer? Chief exec? A pigeon on the town hall roof? I was told there was “nothing further to add” to their previous statement.
My point is that this isn’t language used carelessly or stupidly. It is deliberate and skilled obfuscation and meaninglessness. It’s anti-democratic, the opposite of communication. But I honestly can’t see it as a result of not being smart or something that education can ameliorate (yeah, I did Latin). It is as effective, in its way, as the language of a skilled politician or barrister. Not as eloquent - but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to do its job of discouraging an annoying hack until through weariness I lose interest & pack up.
I agree with you that this is a problem. But I think the solution has to lie in improving the relationship between media and public officials. Just lamenting the state of their language won’t do it.
PJ