Berlaymonster non-exclusive! EU press releases revealed to be carefully managed and cackhandedly executed drivel!
BRUSSELS – The average European Commission press release takes days to absorb, and requires a cognitive process longer and more complicated than any literature pre-dating the commission’s existence.
A recently-published thesis by a now-certifiable, Swedish academic shows that the style of the thousands of press releases churned out every year – 1,907 last year alone – is reducing the will to live, and read, amongst citizens across Europe.
Through a combined use of language and tense, the commission’s press releases are “sometimes openly nonsensical” and are occasionally tweaked to remove any last vestiges of clarity or content.
“The commission ostensibly uses press releases for informative purposes but actually to confuse and obfuscate,” says the study, adding that it often goes out of its way to repeat words and phrases with identical meaning – such as confuse and obfuscate – to deter non-native English speakers.
A commission spokesperson responded that the executive is very conscious of wording in legal and technical areas where “there is a possibility that anyone might understand what our policy is” and so must use carelessly irrelevant language.
DG EAC will be using the results of the study to promote new literacy programmes across the continent, but have yet to release a statement. Its press peer review board – three leading linguistics professors and a numerologist – were able to decipher the most recent draft, and work on a new algorithmic Sanskrit version is ongoing.
BM adds: We know it’s true … we read it in the Observer
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