Tag Archives: language

Are we really in the lap of luxury?

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AS IS CUSTOMARY for me when making a point about the power of language, I’d like to start with a dictionary definition, paraphrased from the Collins Dictionary of English:

“Luxury (noun) – indulgence in and enjoyment of rich, comfortable and sumptuous living; something that is considered an indulgence rather than a necessity. Also a modifier (ie, luxury yacht)”

Pretty much everyone in Great Britain lives in some semblance of luxury if we apply the notion of comfort relative to the world as a whole. Even poorer people here tend to have a roof over their heads and access to food – along with commodities that would seem in other parts of the world to be an indulgence.

But in marketing terms, ‘luxury’ is not referring to this kind of comfort. Luxury is being peddled on a widespread basis to consumers as a little extra, something perhaps they don’t yet have but should. Something they can afford but believed they could not. Often the campaigns that use words like luxury involve other attempts at temptation, using words like ‘deserve’, ‘naughty’ and ‘treat’.

Now I’d like you to think about how often and in which situations you might commonly see the word luxury used. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have seen it on billboards advertising package holidays and high street clothes; you’ll have read it on countless hoardings to promote a new development of matchbox-sized houses and flats; you will almost certainly have heard it repeated in adverts on the TV, usually in relation to some generic bathing products or a cheap yoghurt.

In this context, how do consumers retain the ability to spot luxury when something is merely ‘good’ or ‘nice’? Will people eventually grow tired of marketeers telling them that a dollop of chocolate flavoured milk pudding is the height of luxury when they know full well it’s just a welcome comforter at the end of a bad day? Has the word’s meaning been lessened, and are consumers knowingly complicit because it makes them feel better to believe they are better off? I think the extent to which the word luxury is used is so ubiquitous as to render it an expectation or a right. Luxury as a concept then becomes commonplace – which is absurd, because by the very nature of its meaning, luxury cannot be so.

Compare overuse of the word luxury (and the related ‘luxurious’) in the mainstream with the actual luxury brands market. High-end products and their marketing teams very rarely use the word luxury at all. Instead, they employ a whole range of other marketing conventions to sell their products. Words will be used sparingly, perhaps even just the name of the brand itself. They are likely to sell the brand by using a very famous face, often without promoting a specific product. They are unlikely to show prices. Photography will be of the highest order, with perfect lighting and flawless post-production. Products themselves come in boxes and bags that are sumptuous to the touch.

Someone can see a high-end marketing campaign and immediately know its aim is to show you what luxury looks like. But it generally won’t tell you it’s luxurious. This subtlety is used not only to market high-end fashion, but also real estate, vehicles and holidays.

If people understand the conventions of exclusivity in marketing, it then follows that shoppers also understand the selling of false luxury as aspiration – be it a fat-free yoghurt or a new sofa they don’t actually have to pay for until the stuffing is oozing out of its fraying seams.

The problem with the retail sector is that its success is built on a constant round of consumption. It provides a huge swathe of jobs that the UK cannot afford for people to lose. So if the peddling of aspiration is what it takes to keep retail rolling in an uncertain economy, we’ll be hearing a lot more about false luxuries yet.

Frankenwords – a guest post for Content Desk

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HERE’S A LINK to another guest post I created for Content Desk, the web portal by Progressive that’s linked to their Content Cloud – a system matching up professional writers with blue chip companies in need of content.

This post focused on the phenomenon of Frankenwords – those marketing buzzwords where two normal words are spliced together to form another. They’re excruciatingly annoying, but nothing it seems can stop their march…

http://desk.thecontentcloud.net/features/frankenwords-use-run-mile#.VBMMOLYr6Jg

Proofreading for business – a guest post

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HERE IS A link to my guest post for the Content Desk, a web portal about creating good online content for business.

This is a shorter version of my original Word Wizard post about improving your proofreading skills.

http://desk.thecontentcloud.net/guides/six-steps-perfect-proof-reading#.VBMMT7Yr6Jg

Word play: continually or continuously?

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DO YOU EVER write a sentence and hesitate over a word? It’s a word you know you know, but somehow when it’s written down it doesn’t look quite right. You can’t quite put your finger on what is wrong with your sentence. So you leave it as it is, and move on.

Sometimes a word will seem correct because it appears similar to another word. In fact, no spell checker will pick up your error, because you have, in fact, correctly spelled a word. It’s just not the word you were after! Take the following example:

Jess was annoyed because her little brother continuously interrupted while she worked.

We understand perfectly the meaning of the sentence: Jess’s patience is being tested by her brother, who won’t leave her alone. But does the word continuously properly belong in this sentence? Would the word continually work better?

First there is the similarity between these two adverbs to contend with. Continually and continuously each derive from an adjective that has the same root – continue. Continue is an intransitive verb, meaning ‘to maintain a condition or course’.

Continuously is defined under continuous in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as ‘uninterrupted’. Continually however, is listed as ‘constantly or frequently recurring; always happening’. They are accompanied by a usage note.

Oxford asserts that ‘continual’ means to happen frequently but ‘with breaks in between each occurrence’. ‘Continuous’ and its uninterrupted interpretation is taken as truly incessant. So the example above should in fact read:

Jess was annoyed because her little brother continually interrupted while she worked.

This is because at some point Jess will stop at her task, forcing a break. The use of the word ‘constant’ above for exaggerated effect is perhaps what is actually confusing the sentence. As a literary device, Jess feels as though her brother constantly interrupts, but this is not really true.

Word play: envisaged or envisioned?

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What can of worms have I opened with use of ‘envisaged’ versus ‘envision’ I wonder? Probably a debate over whether it’s best to UK English or American English!

That’s because ‘envisage’ and ‘envision’ technically mean the same thing: to visualise something or make a mental picture of it. A future possibility if you will.

Your choice between these two transitive verbs depends largely on whether you prefer the UK English ‘envisage’ to the American ‘envision’ – or whether to have a preference would be frowned upon (for example, do you work in America, or are you writing a piece for an English university?).

The danger with either word is that they should not be used in place of ‘expect’, to which they are closely related. ‘Expect’ can be used in a context where you are more certain of the outcome (ie, ‘the government is expected to report a lowering of interest rates’).

 

 

 

 

Word play: Circumvented or circumnavigated?

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TWO WORDS THAT may get inadvertently mixed up are ‘circumvented’ and ‘circumnavigated’. Here is an example of misuse:

‘There was a business deal on the table with some tricky elements, but we managed to circumnavigate those to get what we wanted’.

It is easy to see why the writer has chosen ‘circumnavigate’ by mistake instead of ‘circumvent’. Indeed, we still understand the intended meaning of the sentence.

The tricky element here comes from the fact the two words (which are both transitive verbs) share a common prefix – circum.

Circum- means round, or about, and comes via the Old French from Latin, to mean circle – hence, circus.

‘Circumvent’ would be the correct choice in the sentence above, as it means to find a way around a problem, especially by way of ingenuity, or using strategy to avoid an enemy. So, in the sentence we imagine ‘getting around’ the undesirable elements of a business deal to come out on top.

‘Circumnavigate’ on the other hand means to go around the earth, especially with reference to making a complete circuit of the globe. In the context of a business meeting? Nice work if you can get it!

 

Spelling explained: adviser or advisor?

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One word that commonly causes spelling confusion is adviser. Or should that be advisor? Is one variant more common, or more correct, than the other? Let’s investigate…

According to the New Penguin English Dictionary:

“adviser or advisor, noun: somebody who gives advice, esp professionally in specialised field”

Note that the spelling ‘adviser’ is listed first; this is usually an indication of the most common variant.

Now take the example as featured in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (9th ed). Oxford is somewhat firmer:

“adviser, noun (also disp, advisor): a person who advises, esp one appointed to do so and regularly consulted”

In this case, disp. is used to mean disputed. The anomaly prompts a second entry explaining usage:

“The variant form advisor is fairly common but is considered incorrect by some people. Its spelling is probably influenced by the adjective advisory”

Adviser, taken from the Old French root aviser or the Latin visare, make it the older, and therefore more trusted variant.

However, there is anecdotal evidence the North American preferred advisor is becoming more common. A familiar sight in the windows of the UK’s cafes and restaurants is the ‘TripAdvisor’ travel recommendation website logo. This is a company with American origins, hence the advisor spelling. How long before this spelling catches on in an even bigger way?

The adviser/advisor argument is a good example of our language in flux, reflecting the notion that it is a fluid beast that reacts to outside influence. So, as long as you stick to one or the other for consistency’s sake in your work, you can choose the spelling you prefer.

For the record, my preference is adviser.