Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now [Paperback]

John Humphrys has done the world a great deed when he wrote this book. He shared his personal observations and opinions on how the use of language has become vague with the advance of marketing where every aspects of our life are branded or repackaged.
You have to admire John for his insightful views and give him kudos for his ability to use plain simple English and humour to address such a difficult and dreary topic.

We now live in a society where words are used in context where they no longer meant what they were. John questioned the concept of branding; "Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. Its the manipulation of the virtual reality." whereby historically branding meant "authenticating that something was really what it seemed to be." John questioned the basic economic word "demand". "Why should we talk of consumer demand rather than consumer desire or consumer requirement or consumer request?" and concluded that "demand" translated into "gotta have it", the "must-have". John questioned our education system where what the parents are more interested might be how our children contribute in class and if they were interested in the lesson rather than charts and graphs of progress professionally presented in spreadsheet.

Here are some excerpts:

"At BT, we are committed to providing great value for all our customers....it's occasionally necessary to raise some of our prices a little." translates to "great value" means higher prices.

From Inland Revenue "working with the largest customer base of any UK organisation." is meaningless because the "customers" simply have no choice.

"Your M&S". M&S dos not belong to the customers: it belongs to the shareholders. The slogan implies that the product or service has been specially designed just for you personally. It hasn't. The stuff is mass-produced for a mass market and the business-like almost every other large business around the world-is becoming less and less personal.

"To ensure the ongoing quality of your swimming experience, the Club's swimming pool will be closed .... " The word "ongoing quality is entirely 'vacuous'. Does anyone imagine that the people who run the pool would be happy for it to be nice and clean this week and filled with disgusting germs next week?"

"Our thoughts go out to the loved ones...". It may meant well, but it has the smack of insincerity . "All" our thoughts do not "go out to anyone."

"Thank you for driving safely through...." How do they know we are driving safely through? If we were, it would either because we had nine points on our licence and were terrified of speed camera lurking ....

There are much more that you could gain from reading the book and discover how "Awareness", "Respect", "Word-life balance","Trust", "Authority", and so forth has become vogue.