First Draft #11: a newsletter on public language
Football jargon, Brewdog and what Britons want from business
The changing language of football
Thunderbolts. Pile-drivers. Pirouettes. Football jargon is much more vivid and interesting than the kind mocked each month in this newsletter. Deadlocks and stalemates. Flicks and hoofs. Howlers and sitters. Only in football do we “lump it up field”, “shimmy past the last man” and “rifle it home”. But the language of football is changing. The modern game, in thrall to data, thrums with “assists”, “expected goals” and “pass completion”. A sing-song language has made way for the bloodless bleep of machines.
This need not be resisted. Technical analysis adds to our understanding and played an important role in England’s brilliant Euros run. But I wonder if what we gain in understanding we lose in enjoyment. Take the phrase du jour, “game management”. On the one hand it is useful shorthand for teams responding smartly to the rhythm of a match. On the other, it makes the beautiful game sound like consultancy. The language of football, like all languages, is always evolving. That’s fine. I just hope that in this giddy new era of England success, some of the old poetry remains. @AlexDymoke
Jargon busters Euros edition: “Stonewall penalty” and “Pockets”
What, you might be asking, does Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson of the First Battle of the Bull Run in 1861, have to do with the awarding of a penalty? General Jackson was said to have stood immovable as chaos and slaughter erupted around him. Does that sound like a useful metaphor for the awarding of a spot kick? Not really. The common comment that a foul was “a stonewall penalty”, meaning there is no doubt, is a misuse. It is likely that the first person to use “stonewall” in this sense really meant a variant on “stone-cold certainty”. But the ubiquity of “stonewall”, whose only alternative is the easier-to-understand “nailed on”, shows how language spreads in enclosed communities.
The same process is now happening with pockets. Once the term was pockets of space, to describe a small gap that appears between defensive lines. You would have thought that the better contraction of this phrase might have been “space” but instead we have Jermaine Jenas telling us repeatedly about the “pockets”, as if a football pitch were with a snooker table or a massive pair of trousers. @PhilipJCollins1
What businesses should hear when Britain speaks
Frank Luntz, the former Republican strategist and self-proclaimed "word guy", is a master of rhetorical sleight of hand. Under his guidance, the Bush White House described inheritance tax as a "death tax", offshore drilling as "energy exploration", and global warming as "climate change." But he has since had a Damascene moment, and has arrived in the UK to save us from the division that has riven the US. See the result in his new paper: Britain Speaks: The New Language of Politics & Business.
Luntz finds little on politics to shock us. Britain is divided on cultural issues and he thinks things will get worse. More interesting are the findings on business - as they offer something of a corrective. The modern corporation takes positions on political debates that range far beyond the natural boundaries of phone manufacturing or fizzy drink formulation. If their goal is reputation enhancement, Luntz argues, they are on the wrong track. Just 9% of the British public want to know what businesses think about the issues of the day. Instead, they weigh a company’s reputation on more prosaic questions: How well does it pay its workers? Is it paying disproportionate executive bonuses? Does it pay its taxes?
This chimes with an excellent recent piece (£) by Janan Ganesh in the FT. Ganesh argues that companies use ESG (environmental, social, and governance) initiatives as a smokescreen while they “stiff the taxman”. Far better, he argues, to be honest about the pursuit of profit and pay your fair share. Luntz suggests Britons agree: we don’t want activist businesses, we just want businesses to act fairly and responsibly. Any company seeking a reputational dividend need look no further. @joshuahwilliams
Jargon Busters Euros edition: “Classy”
The consoling arm round the shoulder following a defeat. A gentlemanly tweet to an arch rival. In life such acts are “decent” or “kind”. In football they are “classy”. “Classy from Pep,” said the commentator after he embraced Man Utd’s Fred last year. Before Wednesday’s game England presented Denmark with an Eriksen shirt. Twitter’s verdict? “Classy gesture from the Three Lions”. The conflation of decency with classiness reveals something about the modern game. In a sport awash with cash, it is a rare luxury that money can’t buy. @AlexDymoke
When to stop being yourself
“We are not Rockefeller, we are Guy Fawkes” said Brewdog co-founder James Watt in 2015. “We are burning the established system… We are putting the fat cats out to pasture”. At first it lived up to the rhetoric. It picked fights with big brewers, regulators, and CAMRA. It shunned the City and raised £25 million from customers it called “equity punks”.
But then, like many an ageing punk, Brewdog had an identity crisis. In 2017 it sold a 22% stake to a US private equity giant. Small bars bearing the word “punk” were threatened with lawsuits. Rumours of unpleasantness swirled. Last month, a group of ex-employees - “Punks with Purpose” - accused the founders of creating a “culture of fear”. Misogyny and bullying, they alleged, were rife.
“Wow,” began the toe-curling response. “…reading your letter reminded us how ballsy, determined and articulate you are.” Twisting from cloying flattery to defensiveness, it continued: “It’s a universal truth that there are two sides to every story...” Now that’s ballsy.
Brands love to talk of “staying true” to their “values” but Brewdog’s woes show the importance of evolution. Antics that worked for a plucky start up won’t wash from a $2 billion brewing behemoth. It’s an insight as old as Aristotle: communications’ success depends on the character of the person, or organisation, uttering them. Ahead of a planned IPO this year BrewDog needs to grow up. If it doesn’t, it might go the way of Guy Fawkes after all. @zachdhardman
Language and beyond
“A red light, blinking, blinking, blinking, destroying my ability for private thought, sucking up all my talent and wit”. The brilliant Caitlin Flannegan on succumbing in late middle age to Twitter addiction.
A good LRB piece from Ian Penman on the recent splurge of Beatles books.
Adrian Chiles gives Phil’s book a nod in his latest Guardian column on office babble.
When trauma is coming, political leaders are charged with psychologically preparing citizens for it. That is what Johnson should be doing ahead of the third wave, argues Fraser Nelson.
A hilarious and fascinating article from Barcelona and Man City legend Yaya Toure on the importance of “bums” in football (£).
The New Yorker’s fiction issue this week had a tantalising extract from Sally Rooney’s new novel, and an interesting Q&A on how she wrote it.
“The country has fallen in love with kale again”- An interesting look at how Brexit is already changing British food.
The New Statesman’s Leo Robson on Janet Malcolm, one of the best non-fiction writers of the twentieth century, who died last month. Malcolm was a great journalist and one of the great thinkers about journalism’s limits and distortions. Or, as Robson puts it, “The competing claims of truth and narrative”.
New from us
Josh’s City AM column on Facebook and the limits of the law.
Phil in the New Statesman on what the NHS really needs (it’s not a medal).
Phil joined Rory Sutherland on The Bottom Line with Evan Davis this week for an interesting discussion on the state of business language.
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Perhaps the enduring nature of a stone wall explains why "a stonewall penalty" is also "a penalty all day long" and "a penalty every day of the week".
Speaking of temporal matters, a new favourite of commentators is "regulation time", which is the 90 minutes from the start of "early doors" to just before "squeaky-bum time".