Today the NT Government announced that it's ok to start fracking the Beetaloo Basin, claiming that all 135 recommendations from the 2018 Pepper Inquiry report have been met and, therefore, fracking can proceed. Most of the recommendations - and you can go through them all here: Action items | Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory - are outside my field of expertise as a linguist. There's a lot of regulatory stuff, things about the mining industry, stuff about land and water management that others know much more about than me. However, as a linguist working in the Katherine Region for 20 years, there is one recommendation that sits in my wheelhouse so, after today's announcement, I wanted to take a look at it. It's Recommendation 11.6, which says: That in collaboration with the Government, Land Councils and AAPA, an independent, third-party designs and implements an information program to ensure that reliable, accessible, trusted and accurate information...
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I was at an Earth Day expo today with some students. I cringed several times as earnest booth spokespeople used uselessly 'elevated' language to explain perfectly simple things. I was probably especially aware because I was with my English-learning students and I was listening with their ears. I wanted to tell people to speak plain English, but it would have just flustered them and made them feel bad and they really weren't trying to be knobs, it's just an unfortunate side-effect of a university education.
O, and also, (similarly to 'touching base') the phrase 'catch up'. "Let's catch up for a coffee". NO THANKS!