Grassroots Jargon

Jow Lindsay on words banned by the Local Government Association:

Semantics is conflated with synonymy. Useage is viewed as self-evident, vaguely Heavenly, and a dependable indicator of synonymy. That is, if the Citizen (formally envisioned as the thesaurus's executor, "Couldn't you have just said" and scone crumbs always smudged on his curmudgeonly lips) does not know a lexical item, or cannot remember it just this minute, its meaning must be that of a lexical item he does know and can recall. I guess a word like localities, with its pompous differentiation, to which no nuance seems ever to want to stick, is an example of the kind of thing the article invites us to think all the words are.

Read the rest.

Comments

[Michael Weller]

The Local Government Association are constituted to implement the 2007 Sustainable Communities Act .

With both "Sustainable" and "Sustainable communities" on their banned word list how will the LGA carry out its statutory powers on behalf of local councils?

[Jow]

AT LAST THE PURE ACT