Language in the dumps

At my local recycling center, I always pause in wonderment at the bin marked “commingled containers”. Whoever thought up that term could have taken the easy way out and just written “cans and bottles”. But the goal apparently was to create a term that nobody would ever use in conversation, then slap it on every can-and-bottle bin in America to confuse as many people as possible. (The “со” is a nice raised-pinky flourish. Since “mingled” means mixed up, “commingled” means “со-mixed up”.)

The gold standard in governmentspeak is still “ground-mounted confirmatory route markers” (road signs), a traffic-control term used from coast to coast. In Oxford, England, city officials decided to “examine the feasibility of creating a structure in Hinksey Park from indigenous vegetation,” They were talking about planting a tree to get some shade. As Joyce Kilmer might have put it, “Versified and rhythmic nonprose verbal structures are made by fools like me, but only God can create a solar- shielding park structure from low-rise indigenous vegetative material”.

In Britain, the Plain English Campaign came up with these colorful examples of awful writing: “interoperable intermodal transport systems” (bus and train timetables) and a supermarket help-wanted ad for “an ambient replenishment assistant” (someone to stock shelves).

When it comes to со-mangled prose, America need not take a back seat to Britain.

Bill Lann Lee, rejected by the Senate but still the acting civil rights chief at the Justice Department, used similar gobbledygook in referring to forced busing. “Forced busing is a misnomer;” he wrote. “School districts do not force children to ride a bus but only to arrive on time at their assigned schools”.

Professor William Luts of Rutgers University, author of The New Doublespeak, says that schools are a rich source of verbal nonsense. Students now “achieve a deficiency” (they flunk tests). They take part in '‘developmental studies” (remedial work) or “service learning” (compulsory volunteer work). And they don’t learn to write anymore - they “generate text” out of “writing elements”.

The Dialectic Society gave its 1996 award for buzzword of the year to “urban camper”, a new term for “the homeless” or people who live on the street. Similar euphemisms have crept into the language: “aggressive coalitionaiy behavior” (war games), “hippervigilance” (paranoia), and “wall artist” (tagger, graffiti sprayer).

Gyms are now upscale, known as “wellness activities centers”. In medicine, patients who die “fail to achieve their wellness potential” and have to be chalked up as “negative patient outcomes”.

Business is pumping a lot of gas into the language, too. We have “the social expression industry” (the greeting card business), “meal replacement” (junk food), “a new-car alternative” and “an experienced car” (a used car) and “access controllers” (doormen). The federal government gave us “grain­consuming animal units” (the Agriculture Department’s term for cows) and post-consumer waste materials (garbage). Better yet, let’s make that commingled post-consumer processed units. The kind of stuff you find at a single-purpose nonrecycling center, formerly a dump.