The Times Op-Ed: A guide to electionspeak
By David Rowan
YOU THINK you've had to endure a mind-numbing campaign? Imagine having to sit through every tedious news conference and artlessly contrived photo-op. For the technicians at the BBC's Parliament channel, it must have been particularly gruelling, the schedule starting with the 6am Election 2005 Campaign show, switching at 7.30am to Live Party Campaign News Conferences, and then back to more of those exciting campaign hot-spots until early the next morning.
So it's understandable that the channel's inmates have maintained their sanity by devising a game they call Election Cliché Bingo. To play, the techies have been passing round bingo cards packed with the most overused buzzwords. The winner is the player who can tick off the most uttered by candidates during a single shift. The cards may be just a bit of fun - but they do provide a rather effective précis of the campaign's linguistic low points.
These are some of the phrases to listen out for. Start with the hard-working families or the forgotten majority, who you will find up and down the country, but preferably in Middle England, far from the metropolitan elite. They will be promised services at the point of need, based on sound economic policies rather than a postcode lottery. To prove the point, candidates will promise to engage with real people, particularly the ordinary man in the street, who, let's make it perfectly clear, will be empowered by promises of delivery and unprecedented levels of investment. As for the other parties, their sums don't add up.
You think we're exaggerating? During Thursday's round of morning news conferences, the techies kept score of the most frequently occurring buzzwords. Stability came top, blurted out by candidates 17 times, followed by trust (nine times), I believe (seven) and the inevitable WMD (six times, twice as many as illegal war). And that's before you add all the synonyms for the word liar.
If you want to play this at home, we recommend that you include all those euphemisms for foreigners: all that talk of newcomers or simply illegals, who remain a threat to Britain's forgotten majority until controlled immigration renders our borders secure. You will also want to include the fearsome yobs who dominate Michael Howard's speeches.
As for Labour's buzzwords, here is a new one that you may wish to add to your game card. Boom, party spin-doctors explained last week, is a street-slang term signifying delight and approval. Funnily enough, when journalists heard the term chanted by pupils at the Lilian Baylis School, South London, last Tuesday - just as Tony Blair was arriving for a visit - they were convinced that the jeering kids were actually shouting "Boo!". Now, what was it Orwell said about politics and the English language?
(The Times Comment page, April 30 2005)
YOU THINK you've had to endure a mind-numbing campaign? Imagine having to sit through every tedious news conference and artlessly contrived photo-op. For the technicians at the BBC's Parliament channel, it must have been particularly gruelling, the schedule starting with the 6am Election 2005 Campaign show, switching at 7.30am to Live Party Campaign News Conferences, and then back to more of those exciting campaign hot-spots until early the next morning.
So it's understandable that the channel's inmates have maintained their sanity by devising a game they call Election Cliché Bingo. To play, the techies have been passing round bingo cards packed with the most overused buzzwords. The winner is the player who can tick off the most uttered by candidates during a single shift. The cards may be just a bit of fun - but they do provide a rather effective précis of the campaign's linguistic low points.
These are some of the phrases to listen out for. Start with the hard-working families or the forgotten majority, who you will find up and down the country, but preferably in Middle England, far from the metropolitan elite. They will be promised services at the point of need, based on sound economic policies rather than a postcode lottery. To prove the point, candidates will promise to engage with real people, particularly the ordinary man in the street, who, let's make it perfectly clear, will be empowered by promises of delivery and unprecedented levels of investment. As for the other parties, their sums don't add up.
You think we're exaggerating? During Thursday's round of morning news conferences, the techies kept score of the most frequently occurring buzzwords. Stability came top, blurted out by candidates 17 times, followed by trust (nine times), I believe (seven) and the inevitable WMD (six times, twice as many as illegal war). And that's before you add all the synonyms for the word liar.
If you want to play this at home, we recommend that you include all those euphemisms for foreigners: all that talk of newcomers or simply illegals, who remain a threat to Britain's forgotten majority until controlled immigration renders our borders secure. You will also want to include the fearsome yobs who dominate Michael Howard's speeches.
As for Labour's buzzwords, here is a new one that you may wish to add to your game card. Boom, party spin-doctors explained last week, is a street-slang term signifying delight and approval. Funnily enough, when journalists heard the term chanted by pupils at the Lilian Baylis School, South London, last Tuesday - just as Tony Blair was arriving for a visit - they were convinced that the jeering kids were actually shouting "Boo!". Now, what was it Orwell said about politics and the English language?
(The Times Comment page, April 30 2005)
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