.
Do you think Vince Lombardi could have motivated his football teams by setting “aspirational goals?” Imagine Lombardi saying, “Guys, our aspirational goal is to win Sunday’s game.” Can you hear one of his rugged linebackers saying, “Coach, what the … are you talking about?”
To the plain-speaking Green Bay Packers coach, a goal was a goal and you achieved it by working hard and suffering pain if necessary. If anything, he would have set inspirational goals.
I thought of Lombardi when I read recently that the U.S. government was describing the troop withdrawal schedule being negotiated with Iraq as an “aspirational goal.” That’s an example of the cumbersome and redundant verbiage that has crept into our government speak, apparently as either a way to suggest that a goal is not really a goal or that one is aspiring to have a goal rather than setting one.
Or you could look at it another way: Since aspiration is a synonym for goal we are actually making it a goal goal or doubly goalish.
Such is the confusion that attends the contrived euphemisms that invade our language. They’re like the invasive species, such as the skin-burning wild parsnip, that invade our grasslands. We should uproot them wherever found.
Instead, the media dutifully printed “aspirational goals” as if we really understand what that meant, although sometimes the term is placed in quotes to let us know that there’s some question about the usage.
Aspirational goals was a new term to me, but it turns out I wasn’t paying attention. It’s been used in other contexts as well. For example, the president’s environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, used it earlier this summer to describe the view of the United States about curbing greenhouse gases. “The commitment at the international level will be a long-term aspirational goal,” he said in response to a question from the press. Right. That certainly makes it clear.
George Orwell, author of 1984 and inventor of a language called newspeak, wrote the following in an essay titled “Politics and the English Language” in 1946:
“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin, where it belongs.”
I think Lombardi, who talked about goals in the context of working to achieve them, would probably join in jeering “aspirational goals.”
.
Advertisement 
Advertisement 
