Weasel word

A weasel word is a word that is intended to, or has the effect of, softening the force of a potentially loaded or otherwise controversial statement. This phrase appears in Stewart Chaplin's short story Stained Glass Political Platform published in 1900 in The Century Magazine according to The Macmillan Dictionary of Contemporary Phrase and Fable : "Why, weasel words are words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks the egg and leaves the shell." Thus, weasel words suck the meaning out of a statement while seeming to keep the idea intact, and are particularly associated with political pronouncements. Weasel words are used euphemistically. The term invokes the image of a weasel being sneaky and well able to wiggle out of a tight spot. Weasel words work, ad nauseam, as in commercial lingo to glide over an uncomfortable fact (therefore "headcount reduction" replaces "firing staff") , or to create a sense of grandeur and inflated importance (and so "transitory staffing solution provider" substitutes for "temp agency"). There are many examples of corporate jargon that are fitting of this term. Generally, weasel terms are statements that are misleading because they lack the normal substantiations of their truthfulness, as well as the background information against which these statements are made. Weasel terms are the equivalent of spin in the political sphere in British English.

Carl Wrighter identified weasel words in his book I Can Sell You Anything (1972). Earlier in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956), U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt described astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek's report on the death of Air Force Pilot Thomas Mantell in pursuit of a UFO as "a masterpiece in the art of 'weasel wording'."

Weasel words are almost always intended to deceive or draw attention from something the speaker doesn't want emphasized, rather than being the inadvertent result of the speaker's or writer's poor but honest attempt at description.

Australian author Don Watson has collected two volumes (Death Sentence and Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words) documenting the increasing use of weasel words in government and corporate language. He maintains a website encouraging people to identify and nominate examples of weasely language, which gives many examples of dissimulation through verbosity. Watson was previously a speech writer for Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating.

I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.

— Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat (1994) page 62

Purposes

• Weasel words can be used to draw attention away from adverse evidence.
• They are used intentionally to manipulate an audience by heightening audience expectations about the speaker's subject.
• Claims about the truth of a subject at an earlier time when the truth could not have been ascertained because of a lack of hard facts, will become much harder to verify when weasel words have been used in the meantime. This may be seen when a politician, for example, later tries to alter the perception of an original speech.
• A weasel phrase can be used to avoid criticism sounding negative, such as beginning an insult with the phrase, "With all due respect..."

Syntax, part of which is missing

In certain kinds of advertisements, for example, the part of the syntax that would normally establish the validity of a statement is missing or is being withheld deliberately in the expectation that the listener or reader will complete the message subliminally and so will be influenced by it:

• "... is now 20% cheaper" (It is now 20% cheaper than what?)
• "There is more goodness in ..." (How is this goodness measured and of what does it consist?)
• "More people than ever are using ..." (What does that mean in numbers?)
• "New and improved ..." (Improved in which qualities? If it is "new", how can it also be "improved"?)
• "Our ... will never be less expensive." (Is this accounting for inflation? Is your gross margin thin enough that you could not have a less expensive sale next year?)
• "Clinically tested..." (but not proven? What did the test results reveal? Does the product work as claimed?)
• "Four of every five people would agree." (Is this a good sample population? Were only five people interviewed?)
• "... is among the" or "... one of the (top, leading, best, few, worst, etc.)" (How many else among? What percentage are not among? Where does the one rank among?)

Generalization using weasel words

Generalization by means of grammatical quantifiers (few, many, people, etc.), as well as the passive voice ("it has been decided") are also part of weasel wording. Generalization in this way helps speakers or writers disappear in the crowd and thus disown responsibility for what they have said.

• "People say…" (Who are the people who say it?)
• "I heard that..." (Whom did you hear it from? How, where and when did they learn of it?)
• "Experience shows that..." (Whose experience? What was the experience? How does it demonstrate this?)
• "Few of those who knew the truth have spoken up for …" (Which people knew the truth and should have spoken up?)
• "It has been decided that..." (Who decided?)
• "It turns out that..." (How, and why, did it "turn out" that way?)
• "Popular wisdom is/has it, that..." (Who made it popular, and is it really?).
• "It is known that..." (By whom is it known? How does this relate to the reality?) - a phrase ("как известно" [1]) frequently used by Stalin.

In the following phrases, an indication of where or how the stories started would have removed the weaseling effect:

• "It has been mentioned that..." (Who mentioned it?)
• "Rumour has it that..." (Where was this rumour published or spread? Who is included in the group that is just about anybody?)
• "There is evidence that..." (What evidence? Where is it? What are the details?)
• "A source states that..." or "There is an accusation that..." (What is the source? Is it reliable?)

There are some forms of generalization which are considered unacceptable in standard writing. This category embraces what is termed a semantic cop-out, represented by the term allegedly. This phrase, which became something of a catch-phrase on the weekly satirical BBC television show, Have I Got News For You, implies an absence of ownership of opinion which casts a limited doubt on the opinion being articulated.

Use of generalizations

Generalization through grammatical devices such as qualifiers and the subjunctive voice can be used to introduce facts that are beyond the proof of direct citation. This is a legitimate function of language, which may resemble weaselling, but would not in fact be weaselling if the intention of the original speaker was not to misinform.

When it is impractical, if not impossible, to enumerate and cite too many individual voices, or the voices are too remote in time, then the use of these grammatical devices conforms to the standards established by tradition.

Examples here are:

• "It is often disputed that…"
• "Hard as it may be for modern readers to accept…"
• "As the wits put it…"
• "For scientists as for so many others, evolution served as an example of a fundamental challenge to long-held convictions".
• "Everyone now accepts that Creationism is a widely-held belief, however mistaken it may be."

Also rhetorically valid is the use of the neuter pronoun it and the adverb there as impersonal dummy subjects when authors intend to distance themselves from what they have written, or to separate one part of the text from another:

• "At the beginning, it was the train that was late."
• "It was a matter of total indifference that…"
• "Where was it again that we first met?"
• "After the end of the Californian gold rush, there were many ghost towns."
• "There are people who wash very infrequently"

The personal pronoun one, as a subject or an object in formal English, that refers either to oneself or as a generalisation to anyone in a similar situation, may also be used quite justifiably to distance speakers from what they say. Even in informal speech, it renders less personal what is being said.

• "One wonders what else was being discussed that evening".
• "What can one do in circumstances such as these".

Conversely the excessive, and therefore redundant use of emphatic adverbs does not result in a well-crafted style which might have had maximum effect:

• The building was absolutely destroyed (destroyed already implies gone).
• After the spa treatment she felt completely healed. (healed implies 100% health).
• It was utterly chaotic on the streets (chaotic already implies no order).

See also

• Essentially contested concept
• Spin (public relations)
• Political correctness
• Glittering generality
• Newspeak
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

External links

• Weasel Words and Other Perversions of the Language