Archive for December, 2004

At least in terms of honesty according to Gallup (sign-up for the 30 day free trial to read more). TV reporters (#15) faired slightly better than Newspaper reporters (#16). Advertising practitioners ranked one above car salesman… ouch. According to Reuters…

Car salesmen brought up the rear with only 9 percent rating their honesty and ethics as high. That was one point lower than for people in advertising.

Journalists did not fare much better in public approval. TV reporters (23 percent) and newspaper reporters (21) ranked below auto mechanics (26) and nursing home operators (24) on the list.

James over at Redmonk points to an interesting response from one British entrepreneur to the BBC story on the effectiveness of email as a communications vehicle. Simply ban it.

Not sure that would work at Sun but would definitely free up a couple of hours each day! Actually, about a quarter of my day according to a study by the American Management Association. Hmmmm… that’s like two movies, at least one sail around the Bay or even a big lunch in the city.

For my unending promotion of Lakoff’s book “Don’t Think Of An Elephant“. Holly Yeager at the FT (the site with the annoying log-on and pop-ups) penned a short piece on it today.

And here’s another from The Chronicle on how the Democrats are looking at Lakoff’s advise.

“It’s all about words and craftsmanship,” said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, of Lakoff’s advice. “He shows us that we ought to take the Republicans’ words and show why they don’t work, why they just aren’t so.”

Taranto at the Wall Street Journal writes some of the first criticism of Lakoff’s thinking – or at least the implementation of it.

You see the problem: It’s not as if the Dems don’t already do what Lakoff is recommending. Indeed, the supposedly groundbreaking insight this professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences is offering is nothing more than a commonplace of political rhetoric: Generally, it is good to describe things you’re for in favorable-sounding terms and things you’re against in unfavorable-sounding ones.

The Dems seem to think Lakoff invented euphemism and dysphemism. Judging by the examples in the Chronicle piece, we’d say he isn’t even very good at employing them. “Public protection attorneys” as a euphemism for trial lawyers is simply laughable. (Actually, “trial lawyers” is a neutral term; it has negative connotations because trial lawyers have a bad reputation.) Calling same-sex marriage “the right to marry” seems unlikely to persuade anyone that the definition of marriage should change.

Fair point. Bottom-line is that while Lakoff’s recommended words might not be ideal, the process and thinking he has developed remains as powerful as ever. And as an observer of the latest election, did the Democrats need a message that more clearly resonated or what?

Reuters reports that master/slave, as used in the computer industry, was the most politically incorrect term of the past year.

We found ‘master/slave’ to be the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004,” said Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor.

“This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology.”

In computer terminology, “master/slave” refers to primary and secondary hard disk drives. But a Los Angeles county purchasing department told vendors in late 2003 that the term was offensive and violated the region’s cultural diversity. The county’s department of affirmative action undertook a hunt to replace it on packages.

Well, that changes everything.. In our terms it looks like this…

The V6M6HS baseboard consists of a VME master/slave interface, global DRAM, a local 100 Mbyte/sec PCI bus and four TDM (Time-Division Multiplexed) serial buses for inter-module, inter-board communications.

Now I can’t remember ever using the term in a press release but it’s definitely well used (pops up all over our site). So email me your alternatives.

Thankfully it wasn’t the only offender:-

The phrase “non-same sex marriage,” was used by a former congressman who did not want to offend gay people by using the term traditional marriage, Payack said.

Also on the list this year were “Red Sox lover,” to use in place of “Yankee hater,” “progressive” for classical liberal, “incurious” rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush, “insurgents” instead of terrorists in Iraq, “baristas” for waiters, and “first year student” rather than freshman.