(00:00): Hello and welcome to the Merlin English Afterthoughts. Throughout this series, we'll be looking back at previous AudioBlogs and discussing them in a bit more detail.

(00:11): Today, we'll be looking at episode number three, titled words matter, the importance of direct language in media and politics. Now this the, was our first native level post and the things we covered in here were slightly challenging.

(00:28): We're going to be expanding on that further today. So if at any point during this, you feel a bit lost, you feel a bit confused.

(00:38): Do not worry. Pause the video. Rewind the video. Read along with the transcript. Do not worry yourself. Take your time. It's okay.

(00:48): Here then of course I am at www.merlinenglish.co.uk/members where we have this episode's full webpage along with the transcription and additional resources.

(01:02): And today we're going to be focusing on focusing on two linguistic devices. And these are vague language. And avoidance language.

(01:14): So vague language. What is vague language? Well, I have a description here from Peter McGee from the University of London.

(01:25): Vague language describes the use of linguistic items, including grammar and particularly lexis, to modify and make the meaning of a communication less precise and less clear.

(01:40): The language prides itself on rigour, precision and clarity, vague language, or VL as it's known, is a linguistic device used in politics, reporting an everyday conversation to avoid over-declatory statements and assertions and to build or protect relationships.

(02:02): Now I think that is a fantastic description, however that might be a little bit complex for some. So vague language here then is described as language clear, which is not very precise, and essentially vague language is ambiguous.

(02:21): It's language which is open to more than one interpretation. It's language which can be perceived in many different ways. I'm going to share some examples with you on the next slide, and these are examples of political slogans that you'll probably be familiar with.

(02:39): You probably recognise at least one of, of these three. So the first time we have Brexit. Brexit means Brexit. Theresa May's Brexit slogan.

(03:52): So upon first inspection, upon first looking at this, we might think that this sounds quite direct. Well Brexit means Brexit.

(03:02): She's still stating what she's going to do. Howver, this isn’t really the case. So, to provide a bit of background, Brexit, of course, there was a group of people who voted to remain in the European Union.

(03:17): There was a group of people who voted to leave the European Union, and this was the majority, so, in the end, we did end up leaving the European Union.

(03:26): However, within this group of people who voted to leave, there were people who wanted a hard Brexit and people who wanted a soft Brexit.

(03:37): So, a hard Brexit, a hard Brexit supported the idea of moving away from the European Union, of improving trade with places like North America, Oceania, Asia.

(03:52): While a softer Brexit supported staying closer to the European Union, maintaining relationships, perhaps improving trade with north. Northern Europe places like Norway, for example.

(04:09): So Brexit means Brexit. We understand. We have voted. We understand that we are going through with Brexit. It's what the people decided.

(04:18): So that is what is happening. Theresa May here doesn't really explain how we're going to Brexit. She doesn't say whether we're going to Brexit in a hard fashion or if we're going to Brexit in a soft fashion.

(04:35): Instead, she just says, Yes. We're Brexit-ing. Well, I could have told you we were Brexit-ing. We all knew we were Brexit-ing.

(04:42): The idea here is that she's not being transparent in how this Brexit is going to be undertaken. And yeah, we understand that politics is a numbers game.

(04:55): Politics is about pleasing as many people as possible attracting as many voters as possible. So this is why you see in all of these slogans, there's no real hard line.

(05:07): There's no real stance. They're just sort of expressions or slogans which they throw up which anybody can attach their feeling towards.

(05:21): Next we have hope and change which was of course Barack Obama’s slogan. We have the poster that went along with that.

(05:31): Hope and change. What does hope and change mean? I don't know. I guess whatever I hope for. Whatever I want to change.

(05:40): We are all the centre of our own universes. We all believe that when we hear this hope and change that Barack Obama is talking about the same hopes and the same changes that I'm talking about.

(05:54): And this is the purpose of these slogans. It's the idea that we can put ourselves in that and we are projecting that, projecting our own desires upon these ambiguous slogans.

(06:09): Of course, we have Donald Trump's Make America Great Again. Another example of a very vague slogan, what does it mean to make America great again?

(06:23): My idea of what a great America looks like is probably very different to what my neighbours idea of what America, of what a great America would look like to.

(06:35): So it's something which we can all sit there, we can all think, yeah, make America great again. I have my ideas of what it means, therefore Trump must understand me.

(06:45): He must get my feelings. And it's slogans which they're really not taking a side, they're really not making any hard stances, it's just something which you can get emotionally invested in and project your own desires.

(07:02): That's the goal with these very open and broad vague language slogans. So if we go back then to the webpage and if we go down to avoidance language now.

(07:17): So here then, we're going to look at examples of avoidance language.

(07:21): We mentioned three strategies here, we mentioned double speak, we mentioned similes and metaphors, and we mentioned synonyms. So if we go down to the transcript and see the examples that we gave, so for double speak, so double speak, this is a term which ready was influenced by the great and powerful George Orwell.

(07:46): So in his book 1984, he had news, newspeak and double think. And this is sort of where the term double speak comes from.

(07:56): So double speak, this is a method of linguistic gymnastics almost. We have the example here of collateral damage. Now this would be the same as saying civilian deaths.

(08:11): Innocent people have died. However, if the media were to report back to the public that their government were killing innocent people generally people aren't going to feel too happy about this.

(08:24): People aren't going to feel too proud or people would not really want to support a government that are, are killing innocent people.

(08:33): So by taking out the emotional connection to civilian deaths or murder or killings. We would use a term like collateral damage. Collateral damage is a lot more of a neutral term.

(08:48): “Collateral damage” Hey, it's collateral. You know, these things happen. It's almost the same as you know, saying you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

(08:58): This is the way I interpret the phrase collateral damage. It's very, it's very neutral. It's very soft. And it's almost like, hey, we couldn't help it.

(09:07): It's just part of part of the process, right? Some other examples of doublespeak. We could talk about, say, media regulations.

(09:20): This could be another term for censorship or restriction of the press. For us when we hear the word censorship, this is something which kind of makes us like wince a little bit.

(09:31): We like to have the idea. We have free speech. We like to feel like you know, we're not censored. So by taking out that word, censorship, censorship, restrictions and changing it with regulations, that's something where you think, yeah, I mean, I guess there has to be some type of media regulation.

(09:51): It makes sense. It's a type of linguistic gymnastics. They're just replacing words, but really the same dark undertone is behind that meaning.

(10:04): So that would be examples of doublespeak. We also talk about similes and metaphors. The example we gave here is of course “we must drain the swamp.”

(10:14): This was a famous line. By Donald Trump. Again, this is addressing an issue in a very wishy washy way. We must drain the swamp.

(10:27): It's to get people like, yeah, we need to drain the swamp. But at the end of the day, you're not going to be walking away from that knowing how this is going to happen. They’ve not laid down any solid plans or any solid steps. It’s just something which is used to give us that feeling that we are being heard.

(10:46): That what we want to happen is happening, often times, they say these statements, there’s no commitment there, therefore there’s no accountability.

(10:56): They can go and do whatever, and at the end of the day, they said they were going to “drain the swamp.” They never said they were going to fire this person or investigate this.

(11:05): It's a very broad statement. Finally then we have synonyms synonyms sort of similar to double speak. It's where we are just taking the sting out of our words.

(11:19): We gave the example here of an illegal immigrant being changed to undocumented immigrants. We could have the examples of perhaps a tax hike instead of a tax increase.

(11:34): We could have budget relocation instead of, or budget adjustments instead of budget cuts, for example. And again, it's the same idea.

(11:45): It's the same thing where we're just taking the sting out of these words. We're just making them feel a bit softer.

(11:51): There's less of an emotional feeling or an emotional connection towards these words. In the fourth section then, we mentioned some strategies or some times when avoidance language can be appropriate, and whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, we do use avoidance language in everyday life.

(12:17): This is particularly useful in certain professions. For example, a doctor might say that somebody has passed away, this is softer than saying somebody has died.

(12:30): A vet might have to put down an animal instead of kill an animal. These would be examples of where we are intentionally softening our words and being more cautious with what we're saying and this is usually to protect people's feelings.

(12:49): We could also use the example of using avoidance language when we're avoiding using language which is too technical or language which like specific jargon.

(13:00): For example, if you go to a doctor's office instead of telling you you have hypertension, they'll probably tell you you have high blood pressure.

(13:00): Here they're avoiding the language of this specialist language of hypertension and they're using a more generic and more well-known term high blood pressure.

(13:21): So this then is just a look back on this audio blog on episode number three, the first native audio blog.

(13:30): Hopefully we've clarified the terms vague language and avoidance language and made it a little bit easier for you to understand.

(13:42): Thank you very much. Listening to the end, I hope that you've learned something new and I hope I will see you in the next one.