Few turns of phrase annoy me more than “amplify voices.” Every time I hear it, I imagine a pinch-lipped, desiccated spinster lecturing people monotonously and obnoxiously.
10 responses to “Newspeak”
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Oh, are we up for a game of Business Buzzword Bullshit Bingo?
My entry: “create synergies”
Whenever someone suggests this activity, I imagine Walt Disney’s “Imagineer” wizard version of Mickey Mouse, but with Emperor Palpatine’s lightning coming out of his hands.
You don’t know the power of the Dark Side.
But I’ve seen this shirt lately …
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Oh, are we up for a game of Business Buzzword Bullshit Bingo?
My entry: “creating synergies”
Whenever someone suggests this activity, I imagine Walt Disney’s “Imagineer” wizard version of Mickey Mouse, but with Emperor Palpatine’s lightning coming out of his hands.
Anyone “enhancing synergies” is about to stick Han Solo into the carbonite chamber, of course. 🙂
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I never heard it and I’m glad I didn’t. One can only bear so much in life.
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“amplify voices”
I don’t know if she ever used it, but it really reminds me of the kind of catchphrase that the Snakesville woman would have liked.
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I especially abhor it in the phrase “we need to amplify Ukrainian voices.” Haven’t Ukrainians suffered enough?
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I recall when I was still in the workforce, as my company was gradually transforming from a super-fun little startup into a corporate entity… the creeping corporate vocabulary was incredibly irritating. I can’t count the number of times I heard the phrase “low-hanging fruit”. I began to imagine it as a sidewise way for corporate drones to talk about their testicles.
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Oh, yeah. I left at exactly the right time– when they introduced quarterly self-reviews. This at a company where I was the eleventh employee hired, and where I had basically made up my own job and then trained other people to do it. Super fun at the beginning 🙂
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OT: I’ve been watching bits and pieces of the Waukesha trial…. and, setting aside the horrific nature of the crime and legal questions it’s absolutely fascinating.
Darrell Brooks is a world class narcissist and I can’t think of any other record of such a specimen interacting with the world and it will be a valuable reference for the future. Truly no self-awareness or ability to understand any viewpoint but his own…
You probably don’t need or want such evidence but some other readers might find it illuminating.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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