TIMESPEAK

TIMESPEAK. An informal term for the STYLE of the writers of Time Magazine and similar news-magazines. Often pejorative, it identifies a homogenized, racy, digest-like prose in which the following often overlapping features are prominent: (1) Heavy pre-modification, in such phrases as ‘ Surgeon Barnard's cardiologist colleagues’, ‘Black Power Proselyter [sic] Stokely Carmichael’. (2) A wide-ranging, often whimsical vocabulary that uses such recherché terms as bravura and quondam, such slang terms as glitz(y), miffed, natty, and wacky (often in formal contexts), such neologisms as shopaholic, sweetspeak, hippiedom, and such phrase words as ‘Johnson's close-to-the-vest method’ and ‘the ebullient, inexhaustible, larger-than-life campaigner’. (3) Word-play, again common in headlines: ‘Call it Politics Lite, with lots of froth and little annoying substance’; ‘Once and Future Champ’; ‘Tressed to the Nines’. (4) Current, catchphrases and buzz words worked into the copy, often in adapted form, as when the name of the popular film Fatal Attraction was exploited in a feature on European road safety entitled ‘A New Summer of Fatal Traction’ (15 Aug. 1988). (5) An enthusiasm for sharp images: ‘Ambulances scream to multiple pileups’, ‘vacationers of the white-knuckle variety’. See JOURNALESE.