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Product Description
In Junk English, Ken Smith takes on the misuse, abuse, and downright decay of the English language. His weapons? A sharp wit and an almost frightening grasp of the depths of the decline. Written so that the ordinary writer and speaker of English can readily see how the manipulation of words keeps the culture in a haze of misunderstandings and vagueness, Junk English covers the whole spectrum of the problem. In short sections such as Butt-Covering,” Feeble Beginnings,” God Is on Our Team,” Sports Talk,” and Touchy-Feely Therapy Talk,” Smith shows how everyone from Madison Avenue to middle America has succumbed to euphemisms, mindless jargon, and weasel words. The book’s inclusion of basic advice on how to avoid lazy language shows there’s at least some hope for the future.
Amazon.com Review
"Junk English is the linguistic equivalent of junk food," says Ken Smith. "Ingest it long enough and your brain goes soft." Given the ubiquity of "junk English"--which includes pretentious, meaningless, euphemistic, and bloated language--we all likely suffer already from mushy minds. In Junk English, Smith uses real examples to illustrate 120 types of language abuse, including cheapened words (visionary, revolutionary), distraction modifiers (low, just, only), "fat-ass phrases," "free-for-all verbs," "jargon gridlock," "mirage words," "palsy-walsy pitches," "secret snob words," and "tiny type messages." If linguistic abuses were ticketable offenses, Officer Smith would fill his quota before he reached the second paragraph. While the greatest perpetrators of junk English may be business and advertising folk, we're all guilty. So take this as a reminder to say what you mean, and mean what you say, and leave the battlefield language and spiked clichés behind. --Jane Steinberg
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