Word: jargoneers
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...like that palindrome: the optimists can read its messages forward, the pessimists backward. In 1977 American English gave both groups plenty of opportunity. The air was saturated with recent coinages ("reverse discrimination," "mainstreaming," "ten-four, good buddy"). Some phrases enriched the nation's tongue; many impoverished it with jargon and meaningless terms. For words are like prescription lenses; they obscure what they do not make clear. This year the Washington Star had no trouble finding examples that blurred. In a section labeled "Gobbledygook," the newspaper offered a daily $10 prize for the worst phrase of the day. Sample from...
Schumann: Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 (Pianist Lazar Berman, Columbia/Melodiya). Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 (Pianist Lazar Berman, London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado conductor, Columbia). Liszt: Annees de Pelerinage (Pianist Lazar Berman, Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). More product, to borrow the record-company jargon, from the pianist who burst out of Russia two years ago and has been a one-man industry ever since. The less said about Berman's Schumann the better: he simply does not feel the music. No problems with the Rachmaninoff. Here is the fabled Berman technique operating with all its power, speed and subtlety...
Sagan comes the closest to offering a general analysis of Velikovsky's work, but such an approach is difficult. Velikovsky's writings cover so many disciplines and so loosely employ scientific jargon that most specialists find his work inaccessible or unintelligible. As Isaac Asimov points out in his forward to the book, it is this very writing style which enables Velikovsky to convince laymen that he actually knows enough astronomy to speak with authority...
Sunshine's basic message-it's O.K. to feel good about yourself and get rich-is expressed in muzzy cosmic jargon. "Money is spiritual," says one of his printed lessons. "It represents universal energy and exists only in your consciousness." Some of it also exists in the Prosperity Training bank account: $250 a customer, which brings in about $12,000 a course, two or three times a month. In addition, a few well-heeled clients pay Sunshine $5,000 each for private training. There are always a few spoilsports who complain. One real estate agent who took...
...than descriptions of troop movements. He could relate what the war was like from the troops' point of view, rather than the generals'; he could use the kind of language necessary to describe a horrifying war. The real story of Vietnam, Herr says, was lost amid the statistics, the jargon, the officials' optimistic statements. Herr writes: "The press got all the facts (more or less), it got too many of them. But it never found a way to report meaningfully about death, which of course was what it was really all about...