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speakup

I believe there's a weasel somewhere in the basement of the Legislative Assembly building in Fredericton. He's kept there to give language lessons to new MLAs. In his spare time, he does the same for senior civil servants.

Let me explain. There is a term used by at least some writing instructors, journalism profs and so on. When they speak of weasel words, they're describing ones that hide as much as they reveal. These are words that allow a writer or speaker to avoid commitment, to shirk specificity, to weasel out of making a firm statement.

We all use them at times. If we say that someone is rather tall, we've used a weasel tall. The listener wants to know if this means the person is just above average height of a candidate for the NBA.

I remember a reporter who couldn't quite bring himself to tell anyone just how many people were at any event. Whether it was a riot or a meeting, there were always "several dozen" involved. On rare occasions, if the crowd was particularly large, it might become "several hundred."

Of course, when you're talking about numbers of people, it's hard to be accurate. Still, when it comes to a demonstration, I'd like to know how many dozen there were. Was it 36 or more like a gross. (For those who went to school after Metrication, a gross is 144. That's more or less a dozen dozen, isn't it?)

Every time a person says (or worse, writes) "sort of," "kind of," "more or less," that person is using weasel words. Recently, I read something which said that the writer "was sort of excited." "Sort of excited" doesn't provide a lot of information. Did his pulse rate go up by three beats a minute? Or was he jumping up and down, clapping wildly and generally making a fool of himself. Enquiring minds want to know.

Of course, there are times when these words and phrases create just the impression the writer wants. Even great writers use them. Stephen Leacock was a master. He knew how to string them together in such a way that the reader was forced to make assumptions, to guess at things that were purposely being hidden from him.

But there's another type of weasel word that's more insidious. It's the type taught by that mammal in the legislative basement. Politicians couldn't become such experts without direct contact with small low-slung carnivores.

Did you ever notice that ministers of the Crown never actually do anything? Instead, they implement courses of action. When they're not doing that, they embark on agendas. Those who know a bit of Latin embark on agendae. The electorate may hear of an agenda for change or learn that the government is changing the agenda. If they're changing the agenda for change, then they can be certain that nothing is going to change.

Sometimes they launch their agendas or agendae or whatever. I tried this once. I crumpled up the agenda, squeezed it into a ball and launched it in the general direction of the chairman. I was asked to leave. Later, I found out that I hadn't really missed a thing. Other than the chairman. I missed him, but not for long.

The great politicians didn't do this. Take Churchill's "blood, tears, toil and sweat" as an example. People knew just what was ahead. That we so seldom hear this sort of thing tells us how few the truly great ones are.

For years, I've wanted to write about weasel words, but always weaseled out of it. Finally, I sort of did. More or less.