TVTropes has a word for this…
May.29, 2008, filed under Miscellany
Exxon Mobil’s corporate citizenship report makes for some interesting reading. As someone working in environmental regulation, with an interest in language, what I noticed first was the structure of the writing.
Scientists are trained to finish with the conclusion. When they write a paper they start with the premise, move on to the theory, formulate a hypothesis, tell you how they tested it, and finally tell you what the results were. It’s logical and follows clear cause and effect.
It’s also desperately dull.
That’s not the way to engage with the public and with people who are short of time. The way to do that is to put the conclusion right up front, reinforce it at the end and bury anything you want people to skip right in the middle. Time pressures mean that people skim read most things, only paying more attention if they spot a bold heading that catches their interest. It’s a bit like being in a crowded bar and still hearing your own name over the general background noise.
This entire document is structured that way. Every paragraph invites reading only the first and last sentences. The bits they really want the readers to remember are highlighted in boxes and pretty colours. Look how green and responsible they are!
Compare the highlighted box on their attitude to corruption on page 39 (it says 37 but it’s 39 for the purposes of GoTo) with the paragraph misleadingly titled “Public Policy Research Contributions” on page 41.
In the highlghted box they tell you all about how they support human rights, are environmentally responsible and they are anti-corruption.
In their paragraph on public policy research contributions they slip in the admission that they’re going to stop funding certain climate change denial groups. Right in the middle of the paragraph, after a particularly dull and lengthy sentence. The idea there is that your mind will be so numbed by the first half of the paragraph you’ll miss that part (oh, um, yeah, we were, um, wrong).
If you have the time, and the patience, try reading it and looking for the things they know they have to tell you to be able to claim transparency (so that they can point to it when the auditors come round and ask) but they would rather slipped your mind. Try to find the things that they think detract from the message they are trying to send in the document as a whole.
It’s a bit like the Eurovision drinking game. Drink a shot for every confession…
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
