They "focus on being articulate and logical instead of being engaging and expressive." And they "lack the awareness that words can touch a person’s heart or influence politics. They have never valued the importance of words."
Sounds like American CEOs, right? No, it's Japanese politicians that sociolinguist Shoji Azuma is kvetching about in the Japan Times article.
My experience is that most leaders in any society, if given the choice, would rather let their power do the talking, and only in the case of a power outage—read, the current economic woes and the in-your-face introduction of corporate fallibility—do they stop hiding behind platitudes ("honorific language," as the Japanese put it) and start talking for keeps.
Or, as we counsel our preschoolers, "using their words."
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