Worst Words

Don Watson - with his trademark wit and wisdom - says enough already! The English language is complex and evolving, and can win minds, hearts and nations. Why don't we try using it?

What is ‘cluster deployment’, and how can you be sure to ‘engage multiple stakeholders through your strategic delivery channel’? What’s the difference between ‘backcasting’ and ‘backfilling’ and could it ever matter?

The language of business and work grows ever more depleted, barren and senseless. Politicians hide in thickets of endless repeated messages, platitudes and clichés, or behind such shameless Newspeak as ‘operational matters’. The thing is viral: leaping from corporate windows of opportunity, it has taken hold in universities and schools, the public service, hospitals, local councils, fire brigades, the weather bureau. (What is the difference between rain and a rain event?)

Don Watson returns to the follies he described in Death Sentence and Weasel Words. With his trademark management-jargon mockery, he will make you cringe and laugh and possibly die of shame. But above all he will ask you to resist: to fight in the fields and in the streets – and in the offices and on the internet - and never surrender.