Coercion With a Smile
Within corporate culture and government
agency PR, Orwellian “doublespeak”
has become a common way of disguising coercion.
Can a “benefit” be beneficial if it’s compulsory?
Does an “incentive” do any good if it’s actually
a threat?
Employees may not be able to refuse the “offer”
of overtime, or the “aid” of close monitoring
of every small action. The unemployed have mandatory
“assistance” and “incentives”, including termination
of their payments if they don’t conduct their
“jobseeking” in exactly the prescribed
way.
Many long-standing compulsory benefits (eg
free compulsory education and the TV licence)
have a benign appearance, and are largely accepted
and unquestioned. This must indicate, to those
who use doublespeak, that it’s a highly effective
public relations strategy.
Marketing and PR people are aware of the western
cultural bias towards “self-determination”
(ie individualist self-control). They know we’re
more likely to yield to their persuasions if
we believe we’re personally in control
and not being coerced – when we sense coercion
we respond with resentment and resistance. Corporations
and government thus make frequent use of self-determining
words (eg “opportunity”, “incentive”
and “challenge”) as tools of resentment
management.
The technique is to let you believe you have
a free choice – when, in fact, all you
have is a dilemma (a “free choice” implies at
least one favourable option; a dilemma means
each option is unfavourable). The language of
the typical workplace is saturated with self-determining
words, which hide coercion by disguising
dilemmas as choices. In such environments, employees
may actually come to believe they are performing
repetitive, mindless tasks eight hours a day,
out of personal choice, rather than economic
dilemma.
Resentment management is a subset of “damage
limitation”. Damage limitation plays a
massive role in advertising – many large
organisations use commercials, not for selling
products, but for deflecting some of the hostility,
suspicion and anxiety the public feels towards
them. For example, surveys continually show
that people are hostile towards banks and other
financial institutions. Nice, friendly “family”
adverts are used to counteract this tendency,
often with no attempt to sell any specific services
or products.
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