Nuance in dis­course is as imper­illed as chalk cliffs and sandy beach­es beset by cli­mate change storm surges. Such is the state of spo­ken Eng­lish that all you need to know are the  buzz­words. As long as you can use them in a way that sounds like it fits the “zeit­geist”, you can safe­ly avoid incon­ve­niences like informed debate.

Buzz­words don’t require the user to be able to pro­vide syn­onyms, nev­er mind parse their mean­ing. They work equal­ly well for those on the left, the right and we who’d be in the sane cen­ter, if only we could fig­ure out where it is.
What­ev­er your polit­i­cal per­sua­sion, some­one wants you to “own” your eth­nic her­itage. Since it is grant­ed at birth and can’t be sold, a lit­tle more clar­i­ty on how to go about that would be wel­come. But that might require con­sid­er­ing what “own” means, so we’ll stop there.
“Woke” is now so mul­ti-faceted, what was sup­posed to be a dia­mond now looks more like a zir­con, which is okay because the object of said pseu­do gem­stone is to deceive the non-afi­ciona­do of bling into think­ing you’re rich­er than you real­ly are.
The grand cham­pi­on of the buzz genre has to be “empow­er”. It can be applied in var­i­ous gram­mat­i­cal guis­es to any and all minor­i­ty, mar­gin­alised or per­pet­u­al­ly affront­ed sec­tors of soci­ety and as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for behav­iour that might oth­er­wise be con­sid­ered self­ish or anti-social.
It sup­plants enlight­en, enliv­en, ener­gise, encour­age, invig­o­rate, reju­ve­nate and spur, nev­er mind “tak­ing the bull by the horns” and plain old “get­ting on with it”.
As for adjec­tives, “amaz­ing” seems to do the job every time.
Appar­ent­ly I’m miss­ing out by being a mere blog­ger ago­nis­ing week­ly over a few hun­dred words. “Influ­encer” is the way to go. All it seems to take is a will­ing­ness to make an unabashed exhi­bi­tion of your­self in sit­u­a­tions no one but a half-wit would want to suf­fer, use gob­blede­gook phras­ing to pro­claim that what­ev­er you alleged­ly think (an oxy­moron in the mak­ing) to be gospel. The media will pref­ace any ref­er­ence to you with the title, ensur­ing your “fol­low­ers” and income will grow.

                                 A HIDDEN VIRTUE

In their defence, buzz­words are bet­ter than their rival in the race to dimin­ish and even­tu­al­ly do away with such “old-fash­ioned” con­cepts as rhetoric, ora­to­ry and their cousins gram­mat­i­cal and suc­cinct sentences.
That may be in part due to the growth of point­less words. Leav­ing the now prob­a­bly impos­si­ble-to-elim­i­nate “like” as some sort of point­less punc­tu­a­tion, how did “you/ya know” become an essential?
When “kin­da” is slipped into a state­ment, does it sig­ni­fy verac­i­ty, false­hood or mere­ly that the speak­er has no real idea or preference?
 “I mean “seems a par­tic­u­lar­ly point­less gram­mat­i­cal addi­tive. If you don’t mean it, one ought to be able to rea­son­ably assume you wouldn’t be say­ing it.
End­ing a state­ment with “Right?” appar­ent­ly adds grav­i­tas. Or something.

                BLAME IT ON THE MEDIA. REALLY.

Inchoate expos­tu­la­tions of point­less words have invad­ed the most unlike­ly spheres.
On Canada’s CBC radio, a sci­en­tist described get­ting a chance to exam­ine the mate­r­i­al brought back from an aster­oid as: “Obvi­ous­ly it’s amaz­ing­ly excit­ing…”
The sound bite was re-used through­out the news cycle, which would indi­cate either a dearth of inter­vie­wees, or the pro­gramme edi­tors’ eval­u­a­tion of the intel­li­gence lev­el of their audience.
Adver­tis­ing has embraced buzz­words to the point where there are web­sites explain­ing their pros, cons and when and where to apply them.
Hand-in-mouth with buzz­words are slo­gans that don’t exceed three words. More than that and you risk the chanters los­ing the plot or get­ting bored.
Well-mean­ing though they may be, the chanters always remind me of speech­es by “rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers”. The most effec­tive are those who use cry and response as a way to make their sub­jects feel part of a greater whole. African rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies I cov­ered leaned heav­i­ly towards “Viva”, the reply being some ver­sion of the name of the leader’s move­ment or polit­i­cal party.
The idea is to bind the respon­ders to the ini­tia­tors, the alleged objec­tive being pow­er to the “mass­es”, which actu­al­ly trans­lates as “us”, not the amor­phous mass.
The end result, his­to­ry has shown, in the main ben­e­fits the venal rather than the vic­timised. See Ango­la, Zim­bab­we, Nicaragua and oth­ers whose post rev­o­lu­tion lead­ers  have sev­er­al com­mon qual­i­ties; greed, avarice, cru­el­ty and a total lack of shame.
MAGA chanters, take note.|
But then, the dom­i­nant char­ac­ter­is­tic in mod­ern west­ern pol­i­tics is mouth the buzz words, invent a few more and clear­ly enun­ci­at­ed poli­cies be damned.
One won­ders what the great ora­tors of old would have made of it all. Since they don’t seem to have any mod­ern equiv­a­lents, we will nev­er know, and the loss is ours.

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