(Yet another) reason why people are bored with politics
The most perceptive book ever written about politics – in many and varied ways – is ‘1984’. One of the cleverest things about it was Orwell’s recognition that ultimately totalitarian regimes would seek to control thought by controlling language: hence the concept of Newspeak, with its ‘thoughtcrimes’ ‘doubleplusungoods’ and ‘unpersons’. Presumably some US graduate student has written a thesis on whether it is actually possible to control people’s minds in this way – let me know if you find one.
Our present crop of politicians occasionally toy with diluted versions of the same thing. Gordon Brown is a striking example – reflective of his control-freak tendencies. He never says ‘spending’, preferring the warmer-sounding although normally inaccurate ‘investment’. Labour has always to be given its ‘New’ prefix and so on.
But we’re all a bit bored with Gordon, so let’s explore a much more common species of political linguistic vandalism: the terrifying inability of our leaders to leap beyond cliché when commenting on just about anything. And this is not a partisan point – they are all as bad as one another. Just spend a (tiresome) hour on the home page of any of the big three parties and you will see what I mean.
Here is a selective lexicon of political cliché (with helpful translations):
‘The [whatever public body they’re on about] is facing crisis’ = the public body in question has been given slightly less gargantuan sums of our money than it was expecting
‘The system is in meltdown’ = shortage of paper-clips coupled with superabundance of excuses
‘This is an utter shambles’ = nearly as bad as it would be if I were in charge of it
‘Massive financial incompetence’ = I’m trying to sound like I’m surprised at the public sector’s unerring ability to waste money
‘There is compelling evidence’ = my special adviser told me
‘Ordinary working families’ = people I like to patronise, especially every five years or so, then ignore otherwise
‘Shocking indictment’ = slight surprise to people, providing they have been living on Mars for the last ten years
No doubt we can multiply examples – do send in your (un)favourites. But there is a serious point here – and one which Orwell also wrote about.
The use of a cliché is the sign of a lazy mind turning with relief to a familiar phrase because it is too difficult to actually think about what you are saying. It demonstrates that the writer has very little interest in the validity or otherwise of his argument and would frankly prefer readers who simply nod him through without bothering themselves to question what the real truth is behind the shop-soiled words and the dog-eared metaphors. We‘re often told that the public are turned off because politicians spend so much time knocking one another. But that’s only one reason. Another is the stultifying boredom of the language they use to do it.