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Gobbledygook

Gobbledygook

How Cliches, Sludge, and Management-Speak are Strangling Our Public Language

by Don Watson
Paperback
Publication Date: 15/09/2005

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When was the last time you heard a politician use words that rang with truth and meaning? Do your eyes glaze over when you read a letter from your bank or insurance company? Does your mind shut down when your employer starts talking about 'making a commitment going forwards' or speaks of 'enhancing the bottom line'?

Every day we are confronted with a debased, depleted sludge: in the media, among corporations, in the public services and cultural institutions, at work, and out of the mouths of our leaders. There is a new public language that has been forced on us that makes no sense to outsiders and confounds even those who use it. It is a dead language, devoid of lyricism, emotion, complexity or nuance.

Meanwhile, in step with managerial thinking, opinion polls and an impossibly demanding media, our political leaders employ this new language of cliches, jargon, platitudes and weasel words to hide or twist the truth.

Don Watson can take it no longer.In Gobbledygook, he takes a blowtorch to the words -- and their users - that sterilise the language and kill imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Gobbledygook is a small book that is as timely as it is profound.
ISBN:
9781843543596
9781843543596
Category:
Dialect
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
15-09-2005
Publisher:
Atlantic Books
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
176
Dimensions (mm):
198x130x14mm
Weight:
0.17kg
Don Watson

Don Watson's Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.

His Quarterly Essay, Rabbit Syndrome : Australia and America won the Alfred Deakin Essay Prize. Death Sentence, his best-selling book about the decay of public language won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year 2003.

Watson's Dictionary of Weason Words, another best-seller, was published in 2004. His most recent book American Journeys won the Age Non-Fiction and Book of the Year Awards in 2008. It also won the inaugural Indie Award for Non-Fiction and the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction.

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