Activists adopt stiff bureaucratic speech believing officials require it

Evidence

What made most of Martin’s speech ”Expert” was a starchy vocabulary, arranged in starchy constructions, with quibbling qualifications. Nobody says, at a picnic, ”What I am seeking to do is to locate a spoon,” for example. Martin was not unusual in that regard. But in front of the press, he was full of words like ”currently” and ”summarily,” and painfully precise legalisms and malapropisms. He thought that the reporters wanted that kind of speech because it showed that he really knew what he was doing. I heard four people in the group say that that kind of precise, technical speech is the only kind that counts in official hearings. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1431

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Activists switch to depoliticized language when speaking in public. — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 118; Bureaucratic centralism signals a ruling group hardening into a narrow clique — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 777; Activists privately voice broad political concerns but publicly frame motives narrowly — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 80

Broader Connections

• Bureaucratic centralism signals a ruling group hardening into a narrow clique #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 777