词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Weasel Words

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": May 9, 2002
Rebroadcast on VOA News Now: May 12, 2002

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- advice for battling weasels of a wordy sort.

RS: Weasels are small, nasty¹ animals. Their reputation gives us slang² expressions like "weasel words" -- language that's deceptive³ or evasive, or just simply does not say much.

AA: Ronald Walters has seen plenty of weasel words in thirty years of grading student papers. He's a professor of American history at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. High on his list of words to avoid are phrases that could sound self-important, like "one might conclude" or "as it were" -- as in this recent example:

WALTERS: "'One might conclude that we are in a depression, as it were,' instead of 'we're in a depression.'"

RS: "Now do students use these words because that's the way they talk?"

WALTERS: "I think they use them partly because they don't want to take too strong a stand and some of them they use because they want to sound important. So 'one might conclude that,' I think, is just pretentious⁴. They just want to sound like they're writing in an academic style, even though that's not an academic style. Phrases like 'to a certain degree,' 'in some cases,' 'it may seem that,' I think they're just hedging."

AA: "Isn't that what some of these hedge words are for, where you want to qualify⁵ and say, well in some case it's this, and to a certain extent it's that?"

WALTERS: "Yeah, and I think it's distinguishing⁷ those from the just-hedging-bets that makes them so insidious⁸, because there are times when they do mean something and times when they don't mean anything. It must be tough for people coming to English to try to deal with language patterns that either mean nothing or may mean something at one point and not mean anything at another point."

RS: "Well, how would a person who is learning English as a foreign language know to distinguish⁶ these words from any other words?"

WALTERS: "That, I think, is hard, and it's hard in other languages, too, and I think -- this is going to be a flip⁹ answer -- but I think, be relaxed about it and try to tune¹⁰ your ear to the context¹¹. So, does the speaker really mean 'in some cases,' or does the speaker just not want to take a stand? I'll give you another example of what I have in mind that's really coming into the speech I hear among students and adults, and it's coming into their writing too, and that's ending a sentence with 'and all' or 'and such' or 'and the like' or 'and everything.'"

AA: "For example, do you have a sentence there you can ... "

WALTERS: "Yeah, this one I really loved -- 'she started dating boys and all.' (laughter)"

AA: "And all what?"

WALTERS: "That was the question in my mind, I was interested in what else she was dating. But if your doctor walks into the room with a chart and says 'you have a problem with high blood pressure and all.'"

RS: "And you go, 'what else?'"

WALTERS: "You really want to know whether it means something or doesn't mean something."

AA: Professor Ronald Walters says he would give English learners who need help with writing the same advice he gives his history students:

WALTERS: "First, pay attention to the structure of what it is that you want to say, to the organization of it. Worry less about getting the perfect sentence and knowing more the order of the things that you want to say and the transitions¹² between points. I also tell them to take a piece of non-fiction that they feel is well written and take maybe two to five pages, just take them apart, paragraph by paragraph. Pay attention to the topic sentence, the first sentence of each paragraph, and maybe even just read four or five pages just reading the first sentences. What they'll commonly find out is that you can tell an awful lot about what they're reading just by doing that, because the authors are using the beginnings of paragraphs very clearly to state a main point. And that helps potential writers begin to think of paragraphs as units of analysis."

RS: Ronald Walters at Johns Hopkins University once wrote a style guide with one of his students.

AA: We found it posted on the Internet. Just do a search for "weasel words" (that's W-E-A-S-E-L) and "Ronald Walters."

RS: To find Avi and me, go to.........And our e-mail address is.............With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

MUSIC: "Pop Goes the Weasel"/Disney Silly Songs

 

1 nasty   

adj.令人讨厌的，困难的，恶劣的，下流的

参考例句：

• She got a nasty knock on the head when she fell.她跌倒时头部受到严重碰撞。
• When this material burns，it flings off a nasty smell.这种物质燃烧时发出一股难闻的气味。

2 slang   

n.俚语，行话；vt.使用俚语，辱骂；vi.辱骂

参考例句：

• The phrase is labelled as slang in the dictionary.这个短语在这本字典里被注为俚语。
• Slang often goes in and out of fashion quickly.俚语往往很快风行起来又很快不再风行了。

3 deceptive   

adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的

参考例句：

• His appearance was deceptive.他的外表带有欺骗性。
• The storyline is deceptively simple.故事情节看似简单，其实不然。

4 pretentious   

adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的

参考例句：

• He is a talented but pretentious writer.他是一个有才华但自命不凡的作家。
• Speaking well of yourself would only make you appear conceited and pretentious.自夸只会使你显得自负和虚伪。

5 qualify   

vt.取得资格，有资格，限定，描述；vi.取得资格，有资格

参考例句：

• I won't qualify until next year.我明年才具备资格。
• You must qualify yourself for the post.你必须使自己具备担任这一工作的资格。

6 distinguish   

vt.区别，辩明，识别，辨认出；vi.区别，辨别，识别

参考例句：

• It is not easy to distinguish cultured pearls from genuine pearls.辨别真正的珍珠与养殖的珍珠不容易。
• Some people find it difficult to distinguish right from wrong.一些人认为很难辨对与错。

7 distinguishing   

a.有区别的

参考例句：

• Command of the mother tongue is the most distinguishing mark of the educated man or woman. 运用本国语言的能力是受过教育的人最明显的标志。
• A small child's confusion in distinguishing the right from the wrong is quite natural. 小孩子不明是非是很正常的。

8 insidious   

adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧

参考例句：

• That insidious man bad-mouthed me to almost everyone else.那个阴险的家伙几乎见人便说我的坏话。
• Organized crime has an insidious influence on all who come into contact with it.所有和集团犯罪有关的人都会不知不觉地受坏影响。

9 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

10 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

11 context   

n.背景，环境，上下文，语境

参考例句：

• You can always tell the meaning of a word from its context.你常可以从上下文中猜出词义来。
• This sentence does not seem to connect with the context.这个句子似乎与上下文脱节。

12 transitions   

过渡，转变，变迁( transition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Before explaining a workflow, I'll explain a few simple pieces of terminology: states and transitions. 在解释什么是工作流之前，我先来解释几条简单的术语：状态(states)和过渡(transitions)。
• Both ionization and excitation lead to eletronic transitions that may be the emission of light. 电离和激发都将导致可能伴随有光发射的电子跃迁。