hmm

from the herald

Every time Health Minister Tony Ryall and Education Minister Anne Tolley use the term "nanny state" to justify their new food policies, many public health researchers wince.

They know the two words masterfully tap into the ideology that the state should stay out of matters like food consumption.

So much so that public health workers and researchers have felt virtually powerless to respond.

Until yesterday.

Now they are planning a counterattack against the use of the terms "nanny state", "bureaucracy", "political correctness", "health nazi" and others by politicians and the food, tobacco and alcoholindustries.

Dr George Thomson and colleagues from Otago University at Wellington searched the English language media internationally and their findings included a sharp increase in the use of "nanny state" after 2002.

In relation to obesity, tobacco and alcohol in New Zealand, its use peaked last year at 120 references per 100,000 articles.

Big rises in the use of "nanny state" and "bureaucracy" coincided with the proposal to make bars smoke-free and Parliament's obesity inquiry.

"When industries think their profits are at risk, they negatively frame the efforts of government to protect people from an industry's activities," Dr Thomson said.

"There's a need to reframe public health activity as stewardship that protects people. We need to emphasise the advantages of the strong state, the state that protects," he told the conference. But the public health community, delving into alien territory, acknowledges it needs some help from the country's top advertising brains in coming up with catchy counter-phrases.

Professor Boyd Swinburn, of Deakin University in Melbourne, promotes the term "ninny state", which he picked up from an Australian conference audience.

Dr Thomson said "ninny state" was used to describe some current public health policies that were "stupid, weak and not protecting people".

He also promoted the slogan "end corporate welfare", which he said was a hit at industries that benefited financially from inadequate controls on their products.

the ideology here is the question of who has responsiibity for looking afetr themselves. in the case of restrictions, the question is often pitched as removing choice from consumers in their own best interests. this tends to rub people up the wrong way.

the problem is that consumer choice means that people will often do the wrong or stupid thing, even though they know that its wrong or stupid (i speak as a smoker).
this leads to the problem 9according to pro-large state people) that the people who do these stupid things will then turn to the state for assistance with health problems. the most common exxample given these days is letting junk food into schools leading to greater costs in dealing with obesity and diabetes.

i will be interested to see how they manage this campaign, but i suspect that deleivering a message of "you need to be protected from yourself" will be a hard sell.

still railing against the corporate sector may have some results

join the war

One of the things I do when I’m training new comers to the organization is that I tell them what I did that day, using all the jargon and acronyms I can think of. After I finish my spiel, I ask the recruits if they knew what I said, inevitably, I get met with blank looks and nervous giggles.

The point is that each organization has its own dialect and that once you know what you’re doing, its easy to talk almost exclusively in that jargon. Which is fine if the people you are talking to know that jargon, but less than useless if you’re talking to a customer. It’s all very well for me to say “if you fill in a 490, I’ll be able to distill the Maguffin from the slimy tove” and know what I mean, but the customer will not have a clue what I’m going to do or, more importantly what they are supposed to do. My lesson to the recruits is one of the most fundamental pieces of advice about communication I know

Its not what you say that’s important, its what people hear

And added to this

How you say something sends a message that you may not want received

The worst example of this is management speak. It is a dialect that is particularly annoying-unnessarcarily verbose, filled with empty phrases, buzzwords and phrases, spin and so on.

When our organization was going through its last restructuring, management promised clear communication. When the report of the review came out, it was five pages long. Grabbing a metaphorical machete, I went looking for the key messages. After about quarter of an hour, I found that the five pages were concealing the following messages:

1) because we are short of money, 50 of you will be unemployed by next Tuesday
b) its not our fault. Honestly.

I know why management does this. Firstly to hide bad new (as in that example) but more importantly to send the message “We are smarter than you. Look at all the words we know. Some of them are really long, too. And so because we know these words, we really are smarter than you. That’s why we get the big bucks. So you can be sure that we know what are doing. Did you see that four syllable word in paragraph five? Only someone who knows what they are doing could use that. That’s why we’re here and you’re going to be looking for a new job. Remember to use of lots of big words on your resume”
(Sorry, got carried away there.)

The real fun part is when they make words do things that they are not supposed to. For example for the last few years I have been fighting managers who insist on using “learnings” as a noun. I guess that they think it sounds “cool” from a managerial perspective. I just think it sounds illiterate, a point I’ve made repeatedly, along with the notion that there is already a perfectly acceptable noun available for use. I have had limited success, because while “lessons” is a word that anyone can use, “learnings” is clearly a word used by people who really now what is going on.

About a year ago, radio live’s weekend host (and former able tasman) Graeme Hill declared war on the phrase “going forward” claiming that it is a completely redundant phrase. Yes, it’s designed to make the speaker sound dynamic, but its been used so often that its passed through being a cliché, to being really annoying, especially when its over used. In her last presentation to us, our manager used it fifteen times in thirty minutes (yes, I counted)

I’m with Graeme on this. Do not allow management speak to continue. If a speaker continues to use it, all them out on it. The strategic use of mockery can be effective. Don’t forget the value of irony.

Make a stand for clear communication. Lets stamp out Management speak in our life time.
Going Forward

words to make you wince

another one for your lexicon

verse (verb)

to play against in a sporting contest

"the auckland blues versed the waikato chiefs on staurday and lost 63-34"

it just doesn't sound right. (the score is true incidentially. if dad was still alive, he would have taunted me for ages about this)

my word

this is by way of being a reply to taniwha's comment on "the new political correctness"

I actually didn't think of the sapir-whorf paradigm when i read this, but did note its most famous application-george orwell's NEWSPEAK. i was tickled by the idea that you could change the world (or at least your little bit of it) by changing the language.

it was only after thinking about it further that this is nothing new. it is, in fact the basis behind the original political correctness. someone has been using 1984 as a training manual.

i remeber in the late eighties, going to a course orgainsed by the equal employment opportunities board. the gist was the damage that phrases can do in diminshing certain groups effectiveness. phrases like "the little woman" were right out. one of their focuses was on the disabled; how it was unacceptable to say anything that may present them as victims. one of the exercises we were given was to take a phrase and reword it to be more positive. i was given the phrase:

poor jenny is in a wheelchair

and translated it into

jenny has a wheelchair but no money

and was accused (not without justification) that i was not taking the session entirely seriously. i maintain, though, that as a literal translation, it was accurate.

at the time, much of this sort of thing was mocked but looking back, its amazing how much our language (and our tolerance) has changed over the last twenty off years.

the basic principle behind that course, and indeed poilitical correctness itself was that, while changing the messaging wouldn't change society on its own, it would have an effect.

the "out" words in the article indicate not where society was but where the legislators of the time hoped it would be. nooow that there is a new government, with a new point of view. they have changed the messages in the hope that the staff will alter their focus. what is most interesting is that neither the in or out words mention anything about healing the sick, which you might thing would be at least one of the messages the department of health would want to send.

still, the modern vocabulary is an interesting thing. the media severs up "horror smashes" and "killer storms". just this evening they have referred to the relationship between the ceo of the department of corrections and its minister as "toxic", just as they did last week with minister of health and the head of a district health board and other minister and public servants for months.

in my last post, i mentioned my wish to exclude "moving forward" from the modern lexicon. its seldom needed in a speech and seems to be the corporate equivilant of the teenagers "like" or "whatever". a place holder for an appraoaching thought.

i have also been having a battle for the last few years to stop managers using "learnings" as a noun. especially when there is already a perfectly good noun already in place.

the one that is really grating on me at the moment is "inappropriate". it seems to be a weasel word, trying to avoid making a judgement. instead it sounds vague; saying that

mr x acted inappropriatly

almost implies that, in certain circumstances, embezzling $50,000,000 might be appropriate. when was the last time someone said that what someone else did was just plain wrong?

i'm not a pedant, or a grammer nazi, really i'm not. i just prize clear communication rather highly.