Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language Hardcover - 2005

by Don Watson

A brilliant and scathing polemic about the sorry state of the English Language and what we can and must do about it.

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 addressing you as a valued customer? Does your mind shut down when your employer starts talking about making a commitment going forward or enhancing your key competencies? Are you enervated by in terms of, irritated by impactful, infuriated by downsizing, rightsizing, decruiting, and dejobbing? Does business process re-engineering and attriting fail to give you ramp-up in terms of your personal lifestyle?

Today's corporations, news media, education departments and, perhaps most troubling, politicians speak to us and to each other in clichéd, impenetrable, lifeless babble. Toni Morrison has called it the 'disabled and disabling' language of the powerful, 'evacuated language,' and 'dead language.' Orwell called it 'anesthetic' language. In Death Sentences, Don Watson takes up the fight against it: the pestilence of bullet points, the dearth of verbs, the buzzwords, the weasel words and cant, the Newspeak of a kind Orwell could not have imagined.

Published in Australia in November 2003, Death Sentences gained a massive following among the legions of bright, sensitive people who Could Not Take It Anymore. More than a year later, it remains a national bestseller.

Praise:

'An important read for anyone who holds language dear.'
–Lucy Clark, Daily Telegraph

'The Book of the Year witty, erudite, and funny. Awfully funny.'
–The Australian Financial Review

'Nobody writes more lyrically or cares more about words and those who murder them.'
–Sydney Morning Herald

'Witty, excoriating, and horrifying, [DEATH SENTENCE] should be every politician's, academic's, businessman's, journalist's, and bureaucrat's choice for book of the year and, alas, the era.'
–Robert Drewe, 'Books of the Year,' The Age

'should leave us afraid, very afraid Anyone involved in writing for public consumption should read it and sooner rather than later.'
–Frances Wilkins, Lawyers Weekly

'obliterates the vernacular vandals among journalists, academics, politicians, and business people with deadly aim.'
–Murray Waldren, Australian

'Brilliant tempered by sorrow.'
–Peter Price, Bulletin

'an amusing and stimulating book. Watson's writing is the antithesis of all he deplores: it is humane and welcoming.'
–James Ley, Age

'Watson writes well passionately, fiercely, with generous sprinkles of wit and vitriol Expect an entertaining ride.'
–Ruth Wajnryb,
Sydney Morning Herald


'scathingly funny and deadly serious.'
–Jose Borghino, Marie Claire

'A book of unusual significance, a meditation on our times as much as a work on language [it] will still be read and enjoyed in 50 years' time.'
–Jim Davidson, Eureka Street

'Always lucid and witty a resource of painful delight.'
–John McLaren, Overla