Officialese

Not to be confused with official language.

Officialese, bureaucratese,^[1][2] or governmentese is language that sounds official.^[3] It is the "language of officialdom".^[4] Officialese is characterized by a preference for wordy, long sentences; complex words, code words, or buzzwords over simple, traditional ones; vagueness over directness; and passive over active voice^[3][5] (some of those elements may, however, vary between different times and languages^[6]). The history of officialese can be traced to the history of officialdom, as far back as the eldest human civilizations and their surviving official writings.^[7]

Officialese is meant to impress the listener (or reader) and increase the authority (more than the social status) of the user, making them appear more professional.^[3][4] Ernest Gowers noted that officialese also allows the user to remain vague.^[3] It can be used to make oneself understood to insiders while being hard to decipher by those unfamiliar with the jargon and subtexts used.^[8] Its use is known to put off members of the general public and reduce their interest in the material presented.^[9] Officialese has been criticized as making one's speech or prose "stilted, convoluted, and sometimes even indecipherable";^[3] or simply as the "cancer of language".^[2] It is thus more pejoratively classified as one of the types of gobbledygook.^[1][10] Its use can also result in unintended humorous incidents, and has been often satirized.^[3]

Several similar concepts to officialese exist, including genteelism, commercialese, academese, and journalese.^[3] The existence of officialese has been recognized by a number of organizations, which have made attempts to curtail its use in favour of plain language.^[10][7][11]

See also

• Bureaucracy
• Business speak
• Fedspeak
• Legalese
• Manual of style
• Humphrey Appleby – a fictional character noted for his extremes in officialese
• Wooden language

References

1. Olivia Stockard (8 June 2011). The Write Approach: Techniques for Effective Business Writing. Emerald Group Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-85724-831-2. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
2. V.S. Gupta (1 January 2003). Handbook Of Reporting And Communication Skills. Concept Publishing Company. p. 8. ISBN 978-81-8069-043-3. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
3. Bryan A. Garner; Ruth Bader Ginsburg (31 March 2009). "Genteelisms, Officialese, and Commercialese". Garner on Language and Writing. American Bar Association. pp. 88–94. ISBN 978-1-60442-445-4. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
4. Bryan A. Garner (17 May 2001). A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford University Press. p. 615. ISBN 978-0-19-514236-5. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
5. Bryan A. Garner (28 July 2009). "Formal Words". Garner's Modern American Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 370–71. ISBN 978-0-19-987462-0. Retrieved 21 March 2013.
6. J. Renkema (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-58811-530-0. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
7. Steven Roger Fischer (3 October 2004). History of Language. Reaktion Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-86189-080-1. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
8. Barbara Czarniawska (15 April 1997). Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity. University of Chicago Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-226-13229-7. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
9. Talke Klara Hoppmann (18 March 2010). Citizen Perceptions of the European Union: The Impact of the Eu Web Site. Cambria Press. p. 411. ISBN 978-1-60497-675-5. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
10. Martin Manser (28 August 2011). Good Word Guide: The fast way to correct English - spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage. A&C Black. p. 451. ISBN 978-1-4081-2332-4. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
11. Christopher Williams (30 June 2007). Tradition and Change in Legal English: Verbal Constructions in Prescriptive Texts. Peter Lang. p. 177. ISBN 978-3-03911-444-3. Retrieved 29 August 2012.

External links

• J Renkema, On functional and computational LSP analysis: the example of officialese Archived 2013-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
• More about Gobbledygook, Rudolf FleschPublic Administration Review Vol. 5, No. 3 (Summer, 1945), pp. 240–244, https://www.jstor.org/stable/973061