Changing English - The Cluetrain Manifesto - Kenneth | Learn English at EnglishCafe

In the year 2000 "The Cluetrain Manifesto - The End of Business as Usual" hit the market. This book was a sensation among many on the internet because it targeted the way people were communicating to each other. The book was based on 95 theses that make up the 'Cluetrain Manifesto' (the site provides translations of these theses in many languages). One of the main insights of theses is that the internet had changed business as usual by stating that markets are conversations, not places to deliver a message. In other words, businesses no longer should be delivering messages such as:

Buy Our Super Widget and Be the Most Popular Person on Earth

Rather, businesses, especially on the internet, needed to treat their potential customers as real people who require honest conversations in order to become interested in products. The authors point out that today's 'audience' is very savvy and understands when it is being 'pitched'. Furthermore, the authors maintain that this advertising voice was exactly the reason many customers were no longer listening to the commercials. Here are two of the original 95 theses that made up the Cluetrain Manifesto::

# 3 Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

# 38 By speaking in language that is distant, univiting, arrogant, they (companies) build walls to keep markets at bay.

I choose these two because they point to an extremely important point: language - in this case, the English language. What does this mean for language learners? Well, to be honest it means that some of the old school textbooks are teaching the exact type of expressions that the Cluetrain Manifesto is trying to fight.  

What does this mean to me, the English learner?

On a superficial level, it means that English as it used on the internet tends toward much more informal exchanges. Many business English courses now deal with this problem by pointing out differences in writing style between e-mails and formal letters. Going forward, I strongly suspect we will see this type of informality creeping into more and more of our communications. This move towards informality and 'honesty' in communications will in turn affect the type of language used.  

This is the first in a series of posts on the current movement towards more honest communication in English. This more 'honest and open' style leads to specific choices in syntax (sentence structure), register use (voice, 'feel') and vocabulary choices. The inspiration for these posts came about through The Cluetrain Manifesto. A book which is already a dinosaur in internet years (8 to be exact), but that continues to strongly influence the development of business style - with direct consequences for English usage for business purposes - especially on the internet.