Don Watson defends a language he says is being mangled by the globalising forces of obfuscation.
“Language is what gives me greatest pleasure,” he says. “I can’t laugh without it.” Yet in the depleted new language “you can’t tell a joke”.
“It’s incapable of carrying an emotion. It is the language equivalent of the assembly line. It turns human processes into mechanical ones.”
Is this new? Dictators and lawyers and priests have long used arcane speech to maintain authority. But something else is happening, Watson says – and that is the way everyone is busting to speak like a middle manager.