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Originally Posted by Fordim
Hate to be the one to tell you lmp but English is a dead language: in England it's ossified,
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Maybe ye olde British Daily Mail reader would argue with that. The new developments in our language as demonstrated in the
OED Language Report are usually held up as some kind of example of the decline of the UK, just one more step to having us all happyslapped in our beds by chavs and pikeys.
I'd agree with this:
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Originally Posted by Fordim
1) The tendency to talk about people and human relations in corporate terms -- people "self-actualising" or groups "negotiating their position" relative to each other; "prioritizing" your life and taking your children out to their "play-group" for some "directed quality time", etc...
2) The insistence by government on making up simple terms with which to encapsulate complex ideas and issues: "weapons of mass destruction" (the bad things other people have, unlike the biological/chemical/nuclear arsenal we have); "insurgents" (not rebels); "homeland security"; "the war on terror"; "the war on drugs"; and on and on and on....
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But this kind of 'language' is dreamed up by committees of middle class, frustrated graduates who found that their dreams of being the next editor of the Observer were all to end in civil servitude. It is then perpetuated by their underlings who are too afraid to challenge the notion that they are no longer a person, nor even personnel, but simply, and sadly, a 'resource', like a ream of paper or perhaps a box of buff envelopes.
