Are you worried about your GPA? Worry no more, for I’ve come up with a new and improved way of studying that’s guaranteed to help raise your grades. I started using this virtually foolproof, clinically tested technique last year, and my GPA is 40 percent higher. What’s my secret?
I study with flash cards!
“But wait,” you may say. “Plenty of people already study with flash cards. It’s not such a special system. Besides, your GPA hasn’t changed by more than a tenth of a point since freshman year.” Have no fear, friend – I haven’t lied to you.
What I have done is employ subtle tricks to convince you that I really have come up with a new studying regime, when, in fact, I haven’t. These tricks, much beloved by advertising executives, are commonly called “weasel words” (they suck the meaning from sentences like weasels suck the innards out of eggs).
See, corporations would love nothing better than to lie to you. Sales of Cheerios would boom if General Mills could tell you, “This cereal will solve all of your cholesterol problems.” It’s too bad for the cereal makers that consumer advocacy groups, corporate watchdogs and the news media would call their bluff in an instant, resulting in public embarrassment and fines or lawsuits for fraud.
On the other hand, commercials can’t just tell the plain, honest truth. A Cheerios commercial saying, “A small study has shown that Cheerios lower average cholesterol levels by a bit, but might do nothing for you at all” is not going to move many boxes.
How can advertisers avoid telling the truth without lying? With weasel words. General Mills solved its problem by putting the following message on boxes of Cheerios: “Clinically proven to help reduce cholesterol!” Note that the claim being made is that Cheerios will “help reduce” cholesterol, not that it actually will reduce cholesterol. Cheerios will help, and that’s all. How will it help? Who knows — maybe it will actually reduce cholesterol, or maybe it will simply encourage you to eat better. Maybe it will just sit in the back and provide moral support.
This ambiguity is the key to weasel words. Advertisers who use them hope you will ignore them completely and assume there is a promise being made when, in fact, there is no promise at all. “Help,” as in “will help reduce cholesterol” or “will help fight cavities” is the biggest weasel word out there, because it makes any promise that comes after it utterly void.
Its cousins are the weasel words “virtually” and “practically.” These words mean “almost, but not quite,” and therefore reverse the meaning of a sentence. So, to say that a new healthcare plan would cover practically all Americans is to say that some Americans will not be covered. To say that a new drink has virtually no calories is to say that it does, in fact, have some calories.
Of course, you don’t need to have some defect to cover up to use weasel words to their fullest advantage. Suppose, for example, a magazine recently included your company’s latest model somewhere on a list of “The 300 Best Automobiles of 2007.” It doesn’t matter whether your car was rated first, 10th, 117th or even 300th on the list — you can still truthfully say that you produced “one of the best” cars of the year.
There is another, ninja-esque way to use weasel words. You may be wondering how I can say that my GPA is 40 percent higher when it really hasn’t changed. It’s simple. My GPA is 40 percent higher . . . than my slacker friend’s GPA.
By leaving out a crucial second part of a sentence, advertisers can rely on your mind to fill in the blanks subliminally, while keeping the truth hidden. This tactic works especially well with comparisons. When a bag of pretzels claims to have 60 percent less fat, look for the fine print; they probably mean “60 percent less than a large bag of chips,” not “60 percent less than before.” Similarly, if a new diet touts that it has been “clinically tested,” you are expected to assume that you, like the test subjects, will lose weight. But how do you know what happened to the test subjects? The ad didn’t tell you. Maybe the test clinically showed that the diet does nothing.
Unfortunately, there’s virtually nothing (cough, cough) you can do about weasel words. If you look for them, you’ll find them in all kinds of commercials, as well as in the speeches of politicians from both ends of the political spectrum. Before you get taken in by some amazing claim, make sure it really says what it looks like it means. Read ads with a lawyer’s eye, because you can bet that’s how advertisers think.
Aaron Segal, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].