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Recently there has been a big oil leak from a drilling rig in the Indian Ocean off the northwest coast of Australia. The delay in plugging the leak, or doing anything meaningful about it in the meantime, has been several weeks. Usually you would be able to blame EXXON or Shell or someone but in this case the perpetrators are a company called "PTTEP".
This is a wonderful name. It provides absolutely no information. The best you could do would be to imagine that Petroleum might be in there. Perhaps Exploration. But you can't be sure. It's not memorable in any way. It has no antecedents, no linguistic, cultural or corporate tradition. It doesn't even include any meaningful segments. Is it TPPTE? Or ETPPE? Who can remember. It's just a long string of random letters.
The company turns out to be Thailand's national oil exploration company. But who would know? The name is so absent, so teflon-coated, that it slips out of consciousness before you can think to be angry. It is already too hard to grasp before an announcer has even finished saying it.
I mean, if it were called Bastard Oil or something you could think of writing to your local member or ringing a radio station.
Is this, as I think, a new or different species of Unspeak? Usually Unspeak will be an acceptable or even positive word or phrase that hides a slimy monster but in this case while the monster is there, it is invisible, cloaked behind a term that itself is invisible to the conscious mind.
P.S. In an interview on Aussie TV tonight, Don Watson, author of a number of books about the misuse of language, including Weasel Words, (and erstwhile prime ministerial speech writer) talked about the anaesthetising effect of corporate and political language. That numbness is a good description of the effect I'm trying to describe. [ You can see the interview at http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200910/r448592_2178911.asx Watson reports that Sydney's Cardinal Pell signed off a fairly recent Advent letter, "May the Lord be with you, going forward." Me? I'm walking backwards for Christmas.]
Last edited by Lord Lumme (2009-10-07 17:57:23)
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Well, "PTT" = Petroleum Authority of Thailand; and "EP" = Exploration and Production, so while the name PTTEP might be rather a mouthful, I'm not sure it's deliberately trying to hide something. I do like the idea of a company called Bastard Oil, though.
Also, Don Watson is a dude.
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For clarification, I'm not suggesting that the company called itself PTTEP merely in order to avoid the ramifications of bad publicity. I'm just saying that that may be the effect. However, it can be intentional. Flying training is a highly competitive industry and businesses in high-competition industries do like to brand themselves. I asked the MD of a flying school why his company name and logo were not anywhere on the training aircraft. His answer was, "When a plane crashes, what is the first thing the TV news points its cameras at? The tailplane with the company name. The last thing you want is your name and logo being flashed around the country. It's commercial suicide." So even though crashes are very rare this was still a consideration.
In other news, I was amused to see on the PTTEP website the claim that they were dedicated to providing "a sustainable petroleum supply." Sustainable" is a weasel word rather than Unspeak in this context, isn't it?
Last edited by Lord Lumme (2009-10-09 03:28:37)
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