I’ve commented on this before – Orwell’s commentary on English language from his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”. In that essay he states:

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I recently came across an excellent new tool that can be employed by anyone in large organizations (or small). It was originally written up by Lew Gloin in a 1989 issue of Saturday Magazine produced by the Toronto Star.  It’s called the “Systematic Buzz Word Generator”.

Take 30 carefully chosen bumpf-words, which may be employed at any moment to fluff up a report, memo, policy, or otherwise. Put the 30 words into three separate lists of ten words numbered 0 to 9. Then randomly choose any three digit number and select the corresponding bumpf-words to form a phrase.

For example:

Thus, say the number 414 and you get “functional organizational programming” – who hasn’t heard that before?

Or, even 555 “responsive logistical concept” – probably pulled right from some government department strategic plan…

This is great stuff – and closely connected to the Bullshit Bumpf-word Bingo cards I produced on this site a few years ago.