June 30, 2011
Worn-out words
From Guardian:
Last year Ledbury poetry festival asked poets to name their most hated words. For this year's festival – running from 1 to 10 July – they've asked for the expressions that have become such cliches that they have lost all meaning. Here are their responses: please add your own.
Word or phrase: "Thinking outside the box"
Why? This phrase came and bit me whilst I was considering a number of words and phrases. A friend asked if I was unwell. I told them I was thinking about defunct, soiled and spoiled words and phrases and was having trouble settling on the worst one. "Try thinking outside the box!" said my friend with a twinkle in her eye, which I missed because I became so suddenly agitated by her use of this appalling phrase. I believe that I may have wished loudly for everyone who continued to encourage people to "think outside the box" to be sellotaped inside a cardboard box while philosophers ignored their muffled cries and considered whether the prisoners were thinking or not thinking, sealed within their cardboard tombs. "Chill out!" my friend said, laughing, knowing all too well what she was doing and stepping away so she didn't have to listen to the grinding squeak of my teeth.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 06:34 AM | Permalink
Comments
The print media, the printing press, the bad word black hole, yes, the mainstream media is the source of much of the word weirdness.
Posted by: Dredd | Jun 30, 2011 9:37:38 AM
Indeed, Dredd. Indeed.
I frequently think of "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", a book which, in part, demonstrates that media - television in particular - exhausts everything until it seems dull and meaningless. "We" (the masses) seem to lose interest in urgent subjects simply because "we" hear too much about them. The reason may be sinister, but the fact remains that "we" are just plain tired of hearing about something one hundred times per day because the media is simply too lazy and too cheap and too scared to guide us toward solutions. Instead, memes are endlessly recycled as a form of distraction to push out the urgent social issues that could be dealt with but won't be because the media elite don't want us to.
Posted by: Rama Dama | Jun 30, 2011 12:30:12 PM
And...I hate the word "home" as used by the real estate industry. Hate it. My apartment is just as much a home as some damn house. A house is just a house. And the fancier the house, the quicker it goes down in a tornado and thus the fancy language needed to make a cheap piece of crap seem all warm and nice and big enough to hold a lifetime of landfill-bound crap. yes, our value system is f-ed.
Posted by: Sum Dam | Jun 30, 2011 4:52:59 PM
http://jimculleny.wordpress.com/nesting-boxes/
Posted by: JIm | Jul 1, 2011 9:47:46 PM
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