Listening to Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, I was reminded of Shaw’s quote about how different we are in our use of language. Obama’s genuinely inspiring speech, referencing Martin Luther King in his call for supporters “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day” while magical in a US context, sadly wouldn’t work for our politicians.
If, for example, David Cameron became Prime Minister and started quoting Churchill in the tone of a US politician on the podium, he’d be derided as pompous, possibly crazed and certainly a bit ‘up himself’.
The differences continue in business language. A favourite US phrase at the moment is ‘reach out’ as in, ‘company x is reaching out to its customers’. I quite like the feel of this phrase but put that in front of a British journalist and they’re unlikely to read any further.
The best a PR can do is write the release in the language and style of the publications they are targeting and in the UK this means free of any hyperbole or blatant self promotion. If this is done well, the release may appear verbatim in the target publication – the ultimate accolade for the anonymous PR.
Incidentally, one other thing that doesn’t always translate is abbreviation. Hearing one supporter referring to Obama as BO was a bit of an eyebrow raiser.
Maybe that's exactly the problem with this country's politicians: the great statesmen and orators are no more. I don't suppose any of the great leaders of the past ever gave a thought to whether they'd be derided for being "up themselves"!
There are hundreds of examples of this corporatespeak nonsense. Martin Lukes would be proud. Here's another example that I like, more English dialect than anything else. In Liverpool, if you're 'made up', you're very happy. In Sheffield, if you're 'made up', you've feeling miserable. (Try it speaking the accents aloud.) You couldn't make it up, could you.
It's less to do with our use of language and more to do with the lack of engaging, charismatic leaders in this country. I can't think of a British politician who could convincingly use such oratory because there is no-one who inspires this level of passion or belief. Yes, we're a cynical nation, but that's not to say we can't be moved by a stirring speech and a sense of history. There's just no-one to believe in enough at the moment.
ROSS FURLONG
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