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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Language: Irritating Cliché Department

July 28, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

This rhetorical padding is used by countless politicians and, it seems, nearly everyone interviewed or quoted in the news, from President Obama on down:

“…going forward…”

and its variant,
“…moving forward…”

Take it out of virtually any sentence and you will lose no meaning. Example:
“The administration will keep a close watch on this, moving forward.”
Getting rid of “moving forward;” now, that would be moving forward.
Of course, properly used, the phrase can be a source of inspiration…or amusement.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself—
Henry Ford

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game—
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward—
Dan Quayle

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Comments

  1. Michael Harris says

    July 28, 2010 at 12:58 pm




    Thought you might enjoy these Carlinisms!

  2. Seldom ConsultEd says

    July 28, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    So, moving one-word and up-word, maybe we could substitute the ever-more-highly-falutin’ term “excelsior,” but warped into a verb—to wit: “The administration will keep a close watch on this, excelsioring” and “We will excelsior, we will excelsior, and yes, we will excelsior.” That oughta level the playing field for any quayle caught between barak and a hard word… nest, Pa?

  3. Steve Provizer says

    July 29, 2010 at 9:54 am

    A man who made a lifetime study of the genre was Brian O’Nolan/Flann O’Brien/Myles NaGopalleen, creator of the Catechism of Cliché.
    (For an introduction to The Catechism of Cliché, go here:
    http://grammar.about.com/b/2008/10/01/the-myles-na-gopaleen-catechism-of-cliche.htm
    —DR)

  4. John Fielding says

    July 30, 2010 at 11:04 pm

    Spare a thought for we poor folk down under. Our shiny-new lady Prime Minister who is racing to an election has adopted ‘Moving Forward” as her election slogan.
    So we can expect to hear it endlessly.
    Presumably, it is seen as preferable to moving to the left or right or even standing in one place jumping up and down.

  5. Charlton Price says

    July 31, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    How about “call out” = as in “criticize, trash, rebuke, animadvert…” ?
    I think your “going forward” etc. was first a particular favorite of the Sub-Prime Financier Goon Squad and then the politicians with whom they “pay to play” (another boring bromide).

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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