From Death Sentence: the decay of public language (Don Watson, 2003) pp58-60
Business idioms are one kind of flypaper for politicians: the media also lures them to its peculiar way with words. It has been said of the present leader of the Labor Party that he sounds like he’s reading the news. That may depend on the ears of those who hear him, or the news they listen to; but it is certainly true that some politicians imitate their questioners so faithfully they sound like trainee TV news- hounds. The first Australian political leader to speak like this was ‘Two Minute’ Tim Fischer, the former Deputy Prime Minister. He was not the last. It would not surprise if one day they signed off their doorstops — ‘Martin Ferguson, Parliament House, Canberra.’
You might say that there are worse things ‘for a politician to sound like than a newsreader (a lame duck, for instance), but those who do the marketing, the gurus at party headquarters, will say it’s a bummer – an unambiguous net negative. The political leader is meant to be in the story, not telling it. The newsreader is meant to tell the story, not be it. Any changes to this arrangement are bound to invite suspicion, and even contempt, especially in the almost certain event that real newsreaders are better at the job and better—looking. But if parrots mimic when threatened with rejection or death, why imagine struggling politicians will be immune? It’s legitimacy they need, authority. Who better to imitate than a newsreader? Instinct drives them, not advice, which makes it hard to prevent and even harder to eradicate once the habit is formed.
Being adapted to its quarry – the profound, uncertain, elusive truth — language is often tentative. Much of the phrasing in truth-seeking language, including poetry, is provisional. Arguments and stories are built on blocks or in layers, like an oil painting. The plots of novels, the truth of poems (like life) turn on minute variations, nuance, an impulse, chance, a shade of meaning. But in politics — and in marketing — the pressure is away from the provisional and towards the absolute, this is to say it’s away from reality. Yes or No are not the only honest answers in a complex, transitional world. But in politics and business they are demanded. The language that evolves is squeezed out of this contradiction: the demand to be categorical, and the necessity (and the instinct) to hedge. True, there are plenty of downright lies and deliberate furphies. But there are, as well, attempts to answer questions which, politically speaking, are unanswerable.
Weasel words are no less the product of their environment than weasels are. In the diabolical environment of politics, unreasoning forces throw up unreasoning things like red herrings and dead cats, and fling them in the path of journalists. Politicians come forth willing to say anything, and without regard to ordinary civility. Their opponents are rank hypocrites, they say: they’ve heinous secret plans that all the outward signs disguise. And often it emerges that these outrageous accusations have some truth about them, because politics does throw up hypocrites and liars. In keeping with the evolution of such political animals, among journalists horrible cynics emerge.
Tgk1946's Blog 