"You Say Tomato, I Say..."

Maybe I missed the memo but when did corporate speak hijack everyday English? I’m certainly not brilliant with the English language but even I have some questions.

For years now I have had medical insurance and been happy with the cover it has provided. But recently I have discovered that I have medical coverage rather than medical cover.

My telephone bill has switched from providing me details of my telephone use to listing my usage.

In my professional career of emergency management the evolution of emergency warning signs are all now signage.

Catching up with friends for coffee today provided that light bulb moment where this realisation was called out and lead to plenty of discussion. Whilst speaking about our coffee consumption my friend was mentioned that he drinks coffee on a daily basis, which lead me to reply that ‘perhaps you drink coffee daily.’ That started us thinking and a few examples later we realised that we are in the midst of over investing in our everyday speak.

For instance, I recently helped another friend with a resume for a job application and every mention of managing a budget for previous projects alternated between ‘allocated budget’ and ‘budget parameters’. I contested that ‘budget’ would do, simply because a budget is what you’re allocated and it does have parameters that’s why it’s a budget.

Interestingly, terrorism has bought us new language, the most prominent of which is ‘radical-ized’. I had contended that a terrorist is not radicalized but a radical to which my wife’s theory was that perhaps the term inferred that they had been subverted rather than naturally becoming a radical. This made some sense so I let that one slide.

However, the rise of the word burglarized cannot go overlooked. (I know, I know it’s somehow made it into dictionaries but seriously??).

Being burglarized is intended to mean that a burglar has burgled your house or apartment and when the police catch the person they will be charged with burglary.

Taking the ‘radicalized’ argument mentioned previously contends that someone has been burglarized into becoming a burglar.

Lastly, the buzzword in the emergency management game right now is ‘resilience’. Organisations are now seeking resilience as it fortifies the organisation on many fronts rather than just conducting business continuity or emergency management; it’s a holistic approach. But this too has somehow morphed into ‘reciliency’. WTF? If you have resilience you are resilient - that’s it.

I’m thinking there’s an unneccesarryness to the enhancementation of over-specificationized of articulatization in this time poor world.

Just sayin’.