Don Watson: Death Sentence & Weasel Words

Heigh-ho: yet another book on how English is in terminal decline. yet another chance to shake your head smugly at the semi-literacy, trendiness, deviousness of writers and speakers today, while knowing that you would never commit such crimes. So have these two anything different to offer?

Well, they're by an Australian language expert, which may sound like an oxymoron, but which gives them a certain geographical relevance, and also means that New Zealand gets mentioned a fair bit. Plus they're trenchant, unpretentious, comprehensive and devastatingly accurate. So yes, there's plenty here that repays reading. The paperback edition of Watson's award-winning Death Sentence is subtitled The Decay of Public Language. "That's the language of power and influence ... the leaders more than the led, the managers more than the managed."

Specifically, it's the languages of marketing and politics that preoccupy Watson. He finds numerous similarities; the CIA, he points out, can write just like McDonald's PR people: "Do not be surprised if one day you hear an American general talk of enemy customers."

Such Management Language irritates him because of its slovenliness and errors, but it's the overt or covert smudging and smearing that anger him most.

Watson believes that while English continues to spread across the world, the vocabularies of our leaders — and our children — are getting smaller and meaner. He's not short of examples or comparisons: Bob Hawke's impromptu remarks were "like a madman with a club in a dark room"; John Howard's utterances remind him of Third Reich oratory; when George W. Bush speaks, all one hears are "the voices of ventriloquists".

It's all linked to what Watson sees as the corporate obsession within business and government — "the grey death of the globalised world".

It's cause for concern as well as contempt. The principles of marketing frequently clash with those of democracies, yet it's market language that we increasingly hear from our political leaders.

There are aesthetic worries as well. Against the lovely, lyrical lines of Pitt, Churchill, Pericles, Keats, Watson puts the loathsome lollopings of those who "update logicmodels for assigning accountabilities", or "adopt innovative methods for effectively chartering future paths for portal development".

He sees language as a living entity and since it lives, it can be wounded, maimed, even destroyed. This distresses and angers him. He urges vigilance to prevent "this muck ... this clag" from eroding the quality of our lives and the range of our liberties.

Donald Rumsfeld and airport announcers won't like him. Neither will some of his compatriots when they hear him decrying Australian English as insipid and uninspiring compared with its American form: "Here we make do with language, as we make do with ... bits of wire."

The Irish and Elmore Leonard will love him. So may New Zealand readers, when they find him saying that our national anthem leaves Australia's for dead. "New Zealand's is thick with ideas and ideals ... Advance Australia Fair is simply thick."

His companion book, Weasel Words, is less substantial and urgent, more repetitive and whimsical.

You'd be justified in wondering if it's a quick follow-up to Death Sentence's success. W. W. is an alphabetical grab-bag of words from "the powerful, the treacherous and the unfaithful". It starts with About Face and Absolute Certainty ("not necessarily the case"), reaches halfway around Knowledge Management ("a common species of consultant ... a virus"), and ends with Zero Latency ("no time ... we'll have you out of here in zero latency").

Each of the 500-odd terms comes with definitions, examples, mischievous cross-references. Some arebrilliantly disembowelled and deserve it. Try Casual: "part-time, poorly paid, insecure, poorly regulated employment." Or Overwhelming: "just possible, unlikely".

Read through Watson's first and read around in his second. At his frequent best, he offers candour, perspective and coruscating wit. He deserves to be read by everybody and will probably be read mostly by the already converted.

* David Hill is a New Plymouth writer.

* Death Sentence, Vintage, $26.95
* Weasel Words, Knopf, $37.95